EVOLVE Business and Professional Magazine August 2019 | Page 33

Q
uestion: What’s the connection between disposable diapers,
surgical gloves and fashion textiles? Answer: They are all part of
a vast and diverse manufacturing community in Volusia County,
one that is always striving to make a good product and deliver it to the
customer at a reasonable and competitive price. And while the products
themselves may differ, the industry offers some valuable lessons to those
in and outside the field.
Just ask Mike Sibley, CPA, and a
partner with James Moore, Certified
Public Accountants and Consultants.
Originally from Maine, Mike attended
St. Joseph’s College, where he studied
accounting and computer science. After
graduating in 1998, he joined a large
accounting firm in Portland, before
joining James Moore and moving to
Daytona Beach in 2001. In his current
role, he oversees both the Daytona
Beach and DeLand offices and he helps
companies implement change based on
manufacturing principles.
Mike has spent his entire career
working with manufacturers. His goal is
to help his clients be as effective and as
Mike Sibley
efficient as possible. To do that he said he
focuses first on the big picture: What are the owners’ excited about? What
are their concerns? How did the business start and how has it changed
over time? What problems have they encountered? How were these
problems solved? Is the company reaching its goals? “Then we talk about
financials...A company’s financial statements tell a story,” he said. “It could
be a Fairy Tale, an Adventure or a Horror Story.
To help his clients, Mike often uses principles drawn from a problem-
solving method called Lean Six Sigma (LSS). The method, which
originated in the manufacturing industry, employs tools and processes
which help owners and workers identify, understand and solve problems.
Mike, a Black Belt in LSS, says the process benefits industries beyond
manufacturing, including his own. “We use these tools internally to
improve our own operations. And we apply them to businesses as diverse
as construction, light assembly, and local government. It is the same
methodology that manufacturers use to improve their operations.”
LSS involves evaluating different processes to determine where there is
waste. One good example is to evaluate time. In manufacturing, “through-
put time” measures the length of time it takes to turn raw materials into
completed products. For analysis, time is divided into cycles consisting of
process-time, inspection-time, move-time, and queue-time. Only process-
time adds actual value to the product and often, through-put-time is
not considered complete until the product is actually sold. So then, if a
company can reduce the amount of through-put-time it means a product
makes it to market faster. Likewise, companies and organizations outside
of manufacturing can benefit from analyzing time spent performing tasks–
anything from how efficiently one delivers the mail in a business to the
amount of invoices or checks a business may have to process. Decreasing
wasted energy and variability is the name of the game.
Another area that can benefit from an LSS approach - talent
management. “ Hiring, training and supervising are critical to every
business,” Mike said. What are the talents and skills of your present
workforce? Are the right people in the right positions? Can they be
better trained, or trained to do a different job? Identifying underutilized
employees is often a critical step toward reducing waste in this area. And
then there is the training itself. To produce a consistently good product or
service, two people doing the same job should be trained in the same way.
This holds true for businesses in other industries too.
AUGUST 2019 | 33 |