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Claus Schafhalter is executive level Management Consultant and owner of Sunogos - Change for the Better

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Bay Area Consulting Business Level Index At 95

By Claus Schafhalter | April 12, 2011

 

The Bay Area Con­sult­ing Busi­ness Level Index (BA-CBL) came in at 95 for the week end­ing April 10th 2011. This is up 10 points from last week’s read­ing of 85.  A read­ing below 100 sug­gests sub­dued busi­ness activ­ity for con­sul­tants and exec­u­tive level con­trac­tors in the Bay Area.

The 95 read­ing is clos­ing in to the neu­tral line for this index and is slightly above the index read­ing for March 2011 which came in as 93.

Please keep in mind that the BA-CBL is exper­i­men­tal, and the weekly read­ing can swing wildly.

Suno­gos and its affil­i­ates decline any respon­si­bil­ity if the index is used for any purposes.

Claus Schafhal­ter, Man­age­ment Con­sul­tant @ Suno­gos

Topics: Bay Area Consulting Business Level Index - BA-CBL | No Comments »

Reading 93 For March 2011 Bay Area Consulting Business Level

By Claus Schafhalter | April 6, 2011

The Bay Area Con­sult­ing Busi­ness Level Index (BA-CBL) came in at 93 for the month March 2011.  A read­ing below 100 sug­gests sub­dued busi­ness activ­ity for con­sul­tants and exec­u­tive level con­trac­tors in the Bay Area. The 93 read­ing reflects a con­tin­u­ing mod­estly weak busi­ness envi­ron­ment for con­sult­ing. Con­sul­tants — on aver­age — can still expect rate pres­sure and a highly com­pet­i­tive envi­ron­ment. As this is the first monthly read­ing of this exper­i­men­tal indi­ca­tor I am not able to sup­ply a pre­vi­ous month com­par­i­son, how­ever anec­do­tal infor­ma­tion sug­gest we improve from a much deeper slump.

Please keep in mind that the BA-CBL is exper­i­men­tal, and the  read­ings can swing wildly.

Suno­gos and its affil­i­ates decline any respon­si­bil­ity if the index is used for any purposes.

Claus Schafhal­ter, Man­age­ment Con­sul­tant @ Suno­gos

Topics: Bay Area Consulting Business Level Index - BA-CBL | No Comments »

Bay Area Consulting Business Level Index At 85

By Claus Schafhalter | April 5, 2011

The Bay Area Con­sult­ing Busi­ness Level Index (BA-CBL) came in at 85 for the week end­ing April 3rd 2011. A read­ing below 100 sug­gests sub­dued busi­ness activ­ity for con­sul­tants and exec­u­tive level con­trac­tors in the Bay Area. As last weeks BA-CBL was 106, the cur­rent read­ing of 85 sug­gests a dete­ri­o­ra­tion in busi­ness activ­ity for man­age­ment consultants.

Please keep in mind that the BA-CBL is exper­i­men­tal, and the weekly read­ing can swing wildly. I will post the BA-CBL for the month of March 2011 soon.

Suno­gos and its affil­i­ates decline any respon­si­bil­ity if the index is used for any purposes.

Claus Schafhal­ter, Man­age­ment Con­sul­tant @ Suno­gos

 

 

 

Topics: Bay Area Consulting Business Level Index - BA-CBL | No Comments »

Introducing The Bay Area Consulting Business Level Index

By Claus Schafhalter | April 4, 2011

Suno­gos recently started to track the state of busi­ness for con­sult­ing (man­age­ment con­sult­ing and inde­pen­dent con­tract­ing for exec­u­tive level con­sul­tants) based on a pro­pri­etary index. At the cur­rent state this index is at an exper­i­men­tal stage. The index also has some lim­i­ta­tions, espe­cially there is no adjust­ment for sea­son­al­ity or other factors.

Hav­ing said that, we plan to release a monthly index and a weekly index.

Here are some basic facts:

• Name: BA-CBL … Bay Area Con­sult­ing Busi­ness Level Index
• Aim: Mea­sure level of busi­ness activ­ity for man­age­ment con­sul­tants and exec­u­tive level con­trac­tors in the San Fran­cisco Bay Area
• Data used: Pub­licly avail­able data derived from web sites and job boards
• Adjust­ments: There are cur­rently no adjust­ments, be it for sea­son­al­ity or other exter­nal events
• Fre­quency of pub­li­ca­tion: Weekly and monthly for cal­en­dar month

What does it mean:

• 100: A read­ing of 100 on the BA-CBL reflects a neu­tral busi­ness climate
• Above 100: A read­ing of above 100 reflects ele­vated busi­ness activ­ity, 150 would mean very strong  busi­ness activity
• Below 100: A read­ing below 100 reflects sub­dued busi­ness activ­ity, 50 would mean a very weak busi­ness activity.

As this is a brand new index we reserve the right to change the data basis and the cal­cu­la­tion method at any time. Because of the exper­i­men­tal nature of the BA-CBL index we strongly dis­cour­age to use this index for any busi­ness or other decisions.

Suno­gos and its affil­i­ates decline any respon­si­bil­ity if the index is used for any purposes.

Claus Schafhal­ter, Man­age­ment Con­sul­tant @ Suno­gos

 

 

 

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Lean Means Sustainability — Step 5 — Control

By Claus Schafhalter | December 15, 2010

In ear­lier posts I wrote about “Define”, “Mea­sure” ‚  “Ana­lyze” and “Improve” as part of Lean Six Sigma’s DMAIC cycle. The exam­ple I used in these pre­vi­ous posts showed that our office is not energy effi­cient, but an ana­lyze phase showed us why, and the improve phase let us imple­ment solu­tions to waste less energy.

The con­trol phase of Lean Six Sigma ensures that results are mon­i­tored over a longer phase, and that the respon­si­bil­ity to main­tain or improve results is given to a process owner as part of his or her usual daily duties.

It is prefer­able that auto­matic report­ing sys­tems are used, usu­ally as part of an exist­ing con­trol­ling sys­tem. This lets process own­ers see if the improve­ments are sus­tained and allows for cor­rec­tive action if changes to the desired results are seen. How­ever if auto­mated sys­tems can­not be used, a task of man­u­ally col­lect­ing data peri­od­i­cally can accom­plish a sim­i­lar con­ti­nu­ity. Actu­ally, in my expe­ri­ence it can be very pow­er­ful if  a per­son col­lects data, puts it into a mon­i­tor­ing sheet vis­i­ble for every­one, and cap­tures mea­sures to ensure that the improve­ments stay on tar­get. I used “Flag Map” sys­tems very suc­cess­fully, as they also empha­size own­er­ship to main­tain improvements.

One other thing: The con­trol phase is the last step of a Lean Six Sigma pro­gram. If suc­cess­ful do not for­get to cel­e­brate and thank the par­tic­i­pants for their achieve­ments. After all you want to en a pro­gram like that on a pos­i­tive note, as usu­ally one suc­cess­ful pro­gram spawns a seri­ous of other improve­ment activ­i­ties that can really make a dif­fer­ence for organizations.

Do you want to know more about how to start and orga­nize an improve­ment pro­gram? — Please con­tact me!

Claus Schafhal­ter, Man­age­ment Con­sul­tant @ Suno­gos

Topics: Sustainability Concepts | No Comments »

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