The Pathway to Unleash Enterprises

In the beginning

'Pathway Enterprises' was set up in 2008, in the wake of the financial-crisis fuelled recession. The irony of that recession is that it was the first in living memory that was not the result of poor manufacturing performance, but due to financial profligacy and mis-management, and in fact did a significant amount to kick-start our still ailing industries, because for the first time in decades the government of the day, realising the complete lack of trust in the financial sector, turned to the manufacturing sector to see if it could manufacture us out of the mess we were in.

A significant factor in this was a huge tranche of funding that was made available for qualifications that would teach the skills to help make our industries more efficient, effective and productive, one of which was the Business Improvement Techniques (BIT) Diploma, which taught and embedded the skills of Continuous Improvement, leading to Lean business operations.

Pathway to Business Improvement Techniques

This qualification proved very popular, and especially when delivered in the way that we devised, which was a combination of classroom underpinning knowledge training, followed by three ‘live’ workplace improvement projects, observed and facilitated by me, which ensured that:

 
• The classroom learning had been understood
• It could be turned into a meaningful activity
• A repeatable delivery method was established
• Valuable and genuine improvements were made during the training

Crucially, this was all delivered in a simple, no-nonsense way, that made it understandable for everyone who participated, which was essential if these skills were to be retained and deployed after the training.

This was, and still is a popular training option, and a method through which we have trained over 1500 people in more than 70 different businesses, across a wide range of sectors, such as those shown on the left

Whilst the content of the qualification was sound, and broadly covered the main elements of Lean, we felt the educational requirements were somewhat restrictive and so we developed and deployed several other training methodologies of a diverse range and type:

 
• A ‘commercial’ version of BIT, which focused more heavily on the core competencies of Continuous Improvement, but gave the participants a wider range of options when it came to selecting the scope for their improvement activities
• A range of one and two-day awareness courses which provide the basic principles of Lean to many people very quickly
• Accreditation to deliver Chartered Quality Institute Level 3 Certificates and Level 5 Diplomas in Quality
• Fully bespoke courses in other areas of Lean, Quality and Business Management (ie SMED; Training/Coaching, SQA etc)

Unleash

More recently we have developed an exciting new range of products, which we believe provide a full suite of options for businesses to deliver ‘Best practice’ in their organisations:

Know Care Can Do

KCCD is a unique tool which assesses a businesses readiness to implement Lean

Tell Me More

A ‘deep dive’ employee engagement tool, which identifies employee opinions, and sets goals for improvement

The Excellence Engine

The Excellence Engine is an innovative structure which delivers best practice people and business management

The business has now grown in size and stature, and so is now looking to continue to devise products, courses and tools that will have a genuine positive impact on our clients’ business performance, whilst retaining the no-nonsense ethos that has always made our work accessible, contextualised and deployable at all levels of a business.