May 9th, 2010
We are pleased to announce that we have been engaged by Mills & Reeve to help them increase innovation and efficiency in their business. Mills & Reeve is a Top 50 UK law firm that has been listed in the Sunday Times ‘Top 100 Companies to Work For’ for the past 6 years.
We are seeing increasing interest from progressive law firms in improving their competitiveness by application of proven business approaches such as process re-engineering and Lean thinking. In addition, firms are also looking at how they can improve their value to their clients and differentiate themselves from rivals by improving their ability to innovate.
We have worked with a number of major UK law firms to help them put in place new methods and thinking to improve their ways of working and innovating.
Categories: Codexx News, Innovation, Law, Professional Services, Re-engineering, Uncategorized
Comments: 1 Comment »
March 25th, 2010
The tough economic environment is driving an increased cost focus across businesses, causing budgets to be cut and cost reduction measures to be introduced. This cost-down pressure rolls back through the supply chain, impacting other businesses. Professional services organisations, such as Law Firms, are not immune to this. In the UK this pressure for change has come on top of ongoing deregulation in the legal sector. Law firm management is looking at ways of increasing their own efficiency to operate within this tougher business environment. We are now seeing increased interest in process re-engineering approaches – typically firms have not applied process management and improvement methods to their work. But needs must, and the current business conditions have created an increasingly ‘hot platform’ for change, giving support to those Partners and Directors seeking new ways of working in their firms.
For those interested in understanding more about business process re-engineering and how it can be applied within law firms, then why not come along to a a masterclass on ‘Re-engineering Law Firm Work for improved efficiency and service’ being given by Alastair Ross, Codexx Director, on behalf of ARK Publications in London on 27th April 2010. He will be sharing his experience gained over the last 20 years in re-engineering across multiple business sectors and with law firms since 2005. For more information, go to http://www.ark-group.com/mp_introduction.asp?ac=887&nc=1&fc=167
In addition we are just completing our latest whitepaper on ‘Business process re-engineering in law firms’ and it is just undergoing peer review with selected firms. This document provides a substantial and practical introduction to re-engineering and how it can be applied in law firms, considering both the opportunities and the challenges to be faced. If you work in a law firm and would like to receive a complimentary copy of the paper, then contact us via our website http://www.codexx.com/contact-codexx.php
Categories: Law, Professional Services, Re-engineering, Uncategorized
Tags: Codexx, Innovation, Law Firm, Re-engineering
Comments: 3 Comments »
March 24th, 2010
In many (most?) manufacturing businesses,Maintenance is very much a ‘Cinderella’ function – it works away in the back-room of the business and never gets to go to the Ball unlike other more glamorous business functions. Maintenance is not somewhere that ambitious young managers typically seek a career in as it is often seen as something of a ‘backwater’ in the business. Maintaining and repairing equipment is not something seen as difficult or even that important to the business. The image of the spanner, the hammer and the oily rag are what many people envisage when the subject of maintenance comes up. Maintenance is somewhere out of sight where grubby stuff goes on that senior managers don’t spend much time thinking about.
But hang on a moment. Aren’t most factories these days filled with machines? Aren’t these machines expensive and complex devices like CNC machine tools, laser and water-jet cutters, presses and robots? And with Lean being a dominant way of working in most factories, isn’t equipment availability critical to achieving on-time delivery and high OEE? And isn’t RONA (Return On Net Assets) a key financial metric for any review of a company’s effective use of key assets such as production equipment?
Well, yes, indeed.
So what’s wrong with this picture? It’s simple: The view of maintenance as a non-critical function is out of date and a serious impediment to factories achieving high performance manufacturing. Maintenance must be brought into the 21st Century, along with management thinking. A key result of this old thinking on maintenance is the return on production equipment being lower than what would be possible with high equipment availability and also impacts on on-time delivery performance. Simply put, low equipment availability results in poor delivery performance and unnecessary purchasing of new equipment to provide additional capacity.
Read the rest of this entry »
Categories: Best Practices Assessment, Industrial Sector, Re-engineering, Supply Chain
Comments: 7 Comments »
January 11th, 2010
Today Codexx launched a study on ‘The Innovation Journey for High Technology, High Speed Businesses. We are working with Professor John Bessant at the University of Exeter Business School and Gill Jennings & Every LLP (GJE), leading UK Intellectual Property Attorneys. The ability for high technology businesses to bring their new products to market quickly and successfully has never been more important. Being late to market with a product offering that is simply a functional ‘me-too’ will never compete with rivals who have captured the hearts and minds of the customers. It is the effectiveness of the innovation journey that businesses make from the initial idea to their product in the hands of the customer that is key.
Alastair Ross, who is leading the study programme, said “We are aiming to bring new insight to this important aspect of innovation. Those businesses that take part in the study will gain the opportunity to review their own innovation journey against best practices. They will also receive a copy of the final study report which will allow them to compare themselves against other businesses – on an anonymous basis of course. Since participation is at no charge, I think this is an excellent opportunity for businesses interested in improving their innovation.”
We are studying the innovation practices and performance that hi-tech businesses have in their innovation journey, from ideas to market. The study questionnaire is based around a nine stage model of the innovation journey, developed for the study. Whilst good practices in innovation are generally understood, we are aiming to determine best practices for these particular types of business across the end-to-end innovation journey. If you are interested in taking part, contact us at innovation@codexx.com.
Categories: Codexx News, Industrial Sector, Innovation, Strategy & Studies, Systematic Innovation
Tags: Codexx, GJE, innovation journey, John Bessant
Comments: 3 Comments »
December 9th, 2009
Lean manufacturing techniques enable companies to dramatically improve their customer service, reduce their costs and improve their quality. The origins of Lean Manufacturing are over 50 years old, Toyota first started developing the new thinking and methods that became Lean in the 1950s. Toyota has used Lean to help it become the largest automotive company in the world, overtaking Ford and GM in the process. Read the rest of this entry »
Categories: Best Practices Assessment, Industrial Sector, Lean, Re-engineering
Tags: Lean
Comments: 1 Comment »
October 1st, 2008
The 2008 Financial Times Innovative Lawyers awards, held at the Royal Courts of Justice in London on 16 October, announced that Blake Lapthorn is now the 21st most innovative law firm in Europe. The firm rose 18 places in the rankings, from its 2007 position.
The firm was commended for 4 project areas covering new services and ways of working including a new ‘Life Coaching Offering’ and ‘FirmJam’ an internal brainstorming week run on the firm’s intranet. Alison McClure, Transformation Partner, said: “The team have done a really good job this year in implementing our various Innovation projects and it’s extremely rewarding to see that all our hard work has received such great recognition in today’s FT Innovative Lawyers report. We will continue to generate our Innovation projects, which play a key part in the firm’s ongoing development.” Codexx has provided Blake Lapthorn with ongoing consulting support since 2005, to establish their innovation process and develop new services and ways of working.
Categories: Innovation, Law, Professional Services
Tags: Award, Blake Lapthorn, Financial Times, Innovation
Comments: 1 Comment »
September 8th, 2008
Codexx has announced the release of its ‘New Vector’ re-engineering solution, based on over 15 years of re-engineering experience on client projects. New Vector has been developed to provide a time and cost-effective way of applying best practice re-engineering approaches for Services and Industrial companies. It uses a challenging and structured approach with a focus on strong involvement by client managers and employees. For more information, check our services.
Categories: Uncategorized
Comments: 2 Comments »
June 27th, 2008
Codexx is pleased to announce that Grundfos A/S, the world leading pump manufacturer, has achieved a World Class level of manufacturing practices in its Danish factories according to the PROBE model. Alastair Ross, Director of Codexx, who led the recent benchmarking assessment at Grundfos said: “I have led regular best practice benchmarking assessments, at Grundfos since 1996 and have witnessed first-hand the major improvement effort and results achieved by their people. Their focus and sustained resourcing of improvement activities should be a lesson to all manufacturers. It has been a pleasure to work with Grundfos and apply methods such as benchmarking, world class manufacturing and Lean, to gain measureable and major improvement.” Grundfos A/S won the EFQM award in 2006 and continues to drive improvements across its manufacturing operations.
Categories: Best Practices Assessment, Industrial Sector, Lean
Comments: 2 Comments »
January 17th, 2008
Codexx has been certified as a training partner for the ‘Managing Innovation’ training course developed by Dr David Francis of CENTRIM (Centre for Research in Innovation Management) at the University of Brighton and Barnes & Conti Inc. This unique course provides training in key skills across the innovation cycle. It is based on research conducted by Dr Francis with over 100 innovative organisations world-wide to identify common skills that were key to effective innovation. Alastair Ross, Director of Codexx said: ” I am pleased that we are able to offer this excellent course to clients – as far as we know, this is a unique course, and complements our other innovation solutions. ” Codexx has worked with CENTRIM on a number of innovation projects since 2002.
Categories: Catalyse & Train, Codexx News, Innovation, Systematic Innovation, Uncategorized
Comments: No Comments »
July 12th, 2007
Codexx announced the opening of an office in Second Life, the fast growing online virtual community which is seeing increasing use by progressive businesses. “We will be using the office to provide an additional point of contact to Codexx services for businesses and more importantly to experiment with new ways of working, working with our clients and partners,” said Alastair Ross, Director of Codexx.
The Codexx office is located in the Depo Business Hub.
Categories: Codexx News, Innovation, Virtual Business
Comments: 1 Comment »
