Operational Problems Piling Up? Solve Them With These 8 Steps
When operational issues occur, a company need to find a solution fast to solve them. These are important steps to take to solve these operational problems.
As your business grows, certain operational issues will usually occur along the way. The bigger the company, the more difficult it feels to manage the operational problems. It is also common that business owners encounter the same issues over and over again despite after being resolved the first time.
Operational issues are inevitable in business, and it can cost business owners a lot of time and resources to resolve them. Therefore, it is essential to implement a problem-solving approach to resolve the problem from the root cause. By doing this, business owners can save themselves from recurring issues by finding the perfect solutions for them.
These are some key steps that will help business owners to identify the problems and solve them.
1. Identify Problems
The first step to take before solving any issues is identifying the operational problems. It can appear in various forms, such as temporary setbacks, production interruptions, or efforts that go wasted.
It is important to realize and acknowledge that these problems really exist. While it may be hard to see the problem as it is, you can use them as an opportunity to improve your business over time.
2. Get to Know the Issues
It is not enough to only know that there is an issue. You need to fully understand the problem to solve the problem efficiently and effectively. You can ask questions to make sure that you understand the problems.
Some questions that you can ask include the cause of the issue, whether it happens often, when and where did the issue occur, and other related questions. By asking those questions, you will be able to figure out what started these operational issues.
3. Save Time by Getting Issues Addressed Faster
By now, at least you know already what the problems are, even though you haven’t reached the root of the problem. When an issue occurs, you will have to stop what you are doing to analyze and find the right person to solve them.
This can waste a lot of time and disrupt the workflow of the team. Therefore, it is important to address the issue faster to reduce unproductive hours caused by the problem.
4. Implement Temporary Measures
It is understandable that you may want to find the right and perfect solution right away. However, you can’t always able to do this and you cannot wait for the perfect solution to solve the operational issue. Waiting will waste more time and possibly halt production or productivity.
You need to implement temporary measures to ensure that you can resume the production while analyzing the root cause. It is important to fix the issue using possible fix right now, although it is only temporary.
5. Find the Root Cause
The exact cause of an operational issue sometimes cannot be found right away, and that is fine. You can apply the temporary measures; however, you will still need to find the root cause of the operational problem.
Finding out the root cause will prevent the same problems from happening again. If you are dealing with simpler problems, then you can use the 5 Why approach to trace the root cause of the problems.
6. Propose Solutions
Once you find out the root cause of the problem what you can do next is propose a solution to solve them. You may need to find several different possible options to solve the issues. Then, analyze each of them carefully to find out which one is the best solution.
It is important to come up with several different solutions. This way, if one solution does not work out, you still have other possible solutions to try.
7. Establish an Action Plan
Don’t just start solving the issue right away, even when you have several options of solution. It would be best if you established an action plan beforehand to make sure the problems get solved effectively and efficiently.
When establishing an action plan, you will need to allocate sufficient resources and plan a timeline. You will also need to monitor the progress to see how well the problems are resolved and whether it can be applied to other types of problems.
8. Check Results
Finally, don’t forget always to collect data to evaluate the results of the implemented solutions. Create an indicator and benchmark so that you have a standard on how well the solution is going.
Use Nimbly
There are simpler ways to solve business operational issues, one of which is using Nimbly. This digital solution offers a service which helps companies to monitor, manage, and evaluate business operations effortlessly.
The issue tracker features they have makes sure that you can note down the issues occurred and monitor the resolution proposed. This way, you do not need to write a messy Whatsapp or Email chain just to address one issue. It is simple, easy, and hassle-free.
Summary
Operational problems are bound to happen along with the business’ growth. Therefore, you need an effective and efficient strategy to solve them so that it won’t affect your company’s productivity. If you want a helpful companion for all these processes, try Nimbly to make your customized digital checklist and track the company’s issues.
About Nimbly
Nimbly is a mobile solution that digitizes operations, improves efficiency, and generates cost savings by providing companies’ management with data-driven insights from field operations remotely and in real-time.
Originally published at https://hellonimbly.com.
