Affordability: Integrating Value, Customer, and Cost for Continuous Improvement

Affordability is a new concept that allows the implementation of Continuous Improvement for any organization. It encapsulates contemporary methods that improve product and service profitability, increases market share, value, speed, quality and capability, and cuts down on cost. This new method addresses the needs of growing, improving, and sustaining an organization. It provides a framework and foundation for launching improvement initiatives, deploying continuous improvement, and maintaining the cultural habits and behaviors required to continue such efforts. Case studies from a variety of industries, businesses, and institutions are provided.

Paul Odomirok is President and CEO of Performance Excellence Associates, Inc. For the past 40 years, Paul has been involved in several careers from Academia to Corporate Leadership to Consulting to Entrepreneurship. In his ’first career’, he taught Mathematics and Computer Science at all levels of learning, from Pre-School to Post-PhD. He was even involved in designing graduate level curriculums at the University of South Carolina as an Adjunct Professor.

His second career began in 1985 with NCR. Beginning as a Senior Programmer Analyst, he was promoted to Manager - Software Development, Product Manager, Manager - Product Management, Corporate Strategic Planner for Banking, Director - Retail Systems Product Integration, Director of Quality and Corporate Coach. During his stint corporate America, he experienced the NCR/AT&T merger, and was responsible, as a Director of Quality, for the cultural transformation and change leadership for the Retail Systems Division Organization in Duluth, Georgia. He was trained by Bell Labs, and utilized as an Executive Coach for NCR/AT&T Executives.

He left NCR/AT&T in 1995 to pursue a consulting career, in the areas of Leadership, Team Development, Strategy, Structure, Systems and Organization Performance. Over the past 20 years he has trained, coached and mentored hundreds of IIE and ASQ Green Belts and Black Belts in Lean, Six Sigma and Lean Six Sigma, as well as coached leaders and managers how to develop and implement strategic plans. He’s worked with more than 80 organizations on over 140 different performance improvement projects, organization change programs and continuous improvement initiatives. His expertise ranges across a variety of disciplines, including Lean, Six Sigma, Manufacturing, Engineering, Supply Chain, Healthcare, multiple Services, and Leadership/Management Development. Although most of his projects have been concentrated in the commercial business area, his most recent projects have been in Defense and Healthcare for leadership development, strategic planning, increasing process speed, improving quality, lowering cost and attaining supply chain logistics excellence for two specific programs; F/A-18 ’Super Hornet’, MRAP (Mine Resistant Ambush Protected vehicle program) and several Healthcare Institutions.

Both his B.S. and Master’s degrees are concentrated in Mathematics, which he utilizes today for complex problem solving, implementing change and improvement, teaching Transformation /Change, Project Management, Lean Six Sigma Green/Black Belt Training through the Institute of Industrial Engineers, Lean Manufacturing Principles using Statistics, and other data analysis methods and approaches. He has been involved in research with Bell Labs for Technical Team Design, and served on a Harvard research team called ’The Events and Motivation Study’ (HBS T.E.A.M. Study).