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Oct 23, 2014

Improvements from State of Utah’s SUCCESS Program Adds Jobs for Inmates and Doubles Revenue at Utah Correctional Industries

Utah’s SUCCESS Program led by the Governor’s Office of Management and Budget (GOMB) has reported positive results on an initiative that supports of Governor Herbert’s mission to reduce recidivism (the relapse of criminal behavior) in the State. NOVACES, a management consulting firm that provides performance improvement solutions to the government, is teamed with Goldratt Research Labs to deliver operational excellence training and facilitation support to Utah Correctional Industries (UCI) as part of the initiative.

Studies show that 66% of inmates return to prison within three years of release, whereas inmates with UCI work experience return only 55% of the time. NOVACES is teaching new skills to the inmates and streamlining manufacturing processes in an effort to increase revenue and expand opportunities for inmates at UCI’s Furniture shop.

With the help of NOVACES and GOMB staff, UCI applied operational excellence methods to increase production capability in the furniture manufacturing process. As a result, the furniture shop was able to better manage production and could deliver more orders on time to its customers. The production capacity and revenue was more than doubled, and most importantly this has generated new job opportunities for inmates.

UCI expects to add between 21 and 26 new jobs for inmates as a result of the new manufacturing processes. Currently there are over 7,000 inmates in the Utah prison system at an average cost of $28,000 an inmate per year. Although 3,417 inmates are eligible to work, currently just 740, or 21%, are employed by UCI. Their goal is to be able to provide a job for every eligible inmate.

This initiative’s success will enable UCI staff to further expand process improvements to its 16 industries including construction, furniture, print shop, signs, and embroidery. Alan James, Director of UCI, thanked NOVACES for the excellent work on the initiative and expressed support of  replicating the outstanding success of the furniture shop in other UCI businesses.

Jun 18, 2014

NOVACES Presents on Critical Chain for Facilities Management at the 2014 Project Management Symposium

NOVACES presented on Wednesday, June 11 at the 2014 Project Management Symposium, sponsored by The Project Management Institute’s Silver Spring Chapter. Their presentation, Taming the Chaos in the Annual Capital Budgeting Process with Multi-Project Critical Chain, was presented by Hilbert Robinson and covered the use of project portfolio management and critical chain concepts to improve the management of maintenance and capital improvement projects at a non-profit medical center.

This presentation is based on a case study with St. Alexius Medical Center in Bismarck, North Dakota. NOVACES worked with St. Alexius to implement BeingManagement, a project portfolio management solution that enables an organization to increase productivity, improve on-time completion reliability, and produce more accurate forecasting.

St. Alexius Medical Center is a 306-bed, full-service, acute care medical center offering a full line of inpatient and outpatient medical services, including primary and specialty physician clinics; home health and hospice services; durable medical equipment services and a fitness and human performance center. Since the hospital’s founding in 1885, St. Alexius Medical Center has been serving residents of central and western North Dakota, northern South Dakota and eastern Montana.

The result of this implementation has allowed St. Alexius management a much improved line-of-sight on project delays, and the ability to better prioritize which corrective actions need to be taken to protect cost and schedule requirements.  When asked about his impressions of the outcome of the project, Mr. Robinson responded, “An important result is improved coordination with the construction trades which has produced for St. Alexius significantly more value and predictability from its investment in the capital projects – the chaos has truly been tamed.”

Those interested in receiving a copy of the presentation can send a contact request at www.novaces.com/contact.

Jun 6, 2014

NOVACES Scheduled to Present Jointly with Three Clients at the 2014 TOCICO Conference

NOVACES will make three joint presentations at the 2014 Theory of Constraints International Certification Organization (TOCICO) Conference with the State of Utah, St. Alexius Medical Center and Turkish Airlines Technic.





NOVACES will make the presentaionts at the Theory of Constraints International Certification Organization Conference (TOCICO) conference June 8-11. The presentations are reports of projects conducted at client organizations, which include applications of Theory of Constraints tools including Critical Chain Project Management, Dynamic Replenishment, and Thinking Processes.





TOCICO is a global not-for-profit certifcation organization that unites people who share a passion for win-win holistic thinking and share a vision that this will become the main way to manage organizations. The Theory of Constraints (TOC) provides a set of holistic processes and rules, all based on a systems approach that exploits the inherent simplicity within complex systems through focusing on a few “leverage points” as a way to synchronize the parts to achieve ongoing improvement in the performance of the system as a whole.





The 2014 TOCICO Conference takes place at the Bolger Center in Washington, D.C from June 8-11. NOVACES presentations include the following:





Theory to Practice in a Social Service Environment; presented by Bahadir Inozu of NOVACES LLC and Greg Gardner, Director of Operational Excellence at Utah Governor’s Office of Management and Budget

Taming the Chaos in the Annual Capital Budgeting Process with Multi-Project Critical Chain; presented by Hilbert Robinson of NOVACES LLC and St Alexius Medical Center

Implementing Dynamic Replenishment for Higher Availability with Less Inventory: Results from Turkish Airlines Technic; presented by Bahadir Inozu of NOVACES LLC and Turkish Airlines Technic.





When asked about the role NOVACES is playing at the conference, co-founder Bahadir Inozu, Ph.D. said, “the NOVACES team is excited about the opportunity to present the applications of Focused Performance Improvement in Government, Aviation MRO and Hospital Construction & Maintenance industries at the TOCICO conference. The principles of TOC – Theory of Constraints – have been applied to find the leverage points and then Lean and Six Sigma were utilized to very quickly produce the best and most consistent results.”

In the Dynamic Replenishment presenation, Dr. Inozu will show the approach that enabled Turkish Airlines Technic to reach 98% service levels with about 40% less inventory.

Dr. Inozu added, “We are especially delighted to work with the Utah State Government’s Success Program to boost the quality and efficiency of government services with the goal of delivering ever-increasing value per dollar to the citizens of the state of Utah.”





More information about the conference can be found at http://www.tocico.org/?page=2014_speakers.

May 28, 2014

NOVACES Awarded a Task Order Under Government-Wide Continuous Process Improvement to Support the Office of the Chief Management Officer

NOVACES is teamed with Calibre to provide technical support to the Office of the Deputy Chief Management Officer.





NOVACES, a leading management consulting firm for public sector process improvement services, announced today that they were competitively awarded a Task Order (TO) under their Blanket Purchase Agreement (BPA) for Government-Wide Continuous Process Improvement Services. NOVACES is teamed with Calibre, who is the prime contractor for the BPA.





Under this task order, NOVACES and its team members will provide functional and technical support to the Office of the Deputy Chief Management Officer (ODCMO) and other Department of Defense (DoD) agencies. Specifically, this functional and technical support will be to use Continuous Process Improvement and Lean Six Sigma techniques to significantly reduce process inefficiencies, improve transaction times, mitigate costs, and increase return on investment within DoD operations.





NOVACES, who has supported government performance improvement initiatives and business transformations for nearly ten years, promotes the use of a suite of best-practice management tools to improve government processes. “We cannot expect government to become more efficient without providing them the same advances in management strategy and performance improvement that the private sector has employed with great success,” said Radovic. “There is a constant learning curve in this area that the government must keep up with to meet the expectations of our taxpayers.”





More information is available at www.novaces.com/gsa-pm-cpi-bpa.

Oct 28, 2013

NOVACES Enters Agreement to Become Exclusive North American Reseller of BeingManagement Software

Being Co., Ltd. expands its global sales initiative of BeingManagement3 (BM3), a best-selling project management software in Japan, by forming this alliance with NOVACES for the North America territory.

NOVACES, a Louisiana-based management consulting firm, has entered into an agreement with Being Co., Ltd., to become the exclusive North American reseller of BeingManagement3 (BM3), an enterprise project portfolio management software designed to leverage the Critical Chain methodology.





NOVACES currently uses BeingManagement3 as a platform for its project management consulting business and has already implemented it with clients in the healthcare and manufacturing industries. This new relationship further strengthens the firm’s position to introduce the project portfolio management software to clients who require the business benefits of better schedule performance, increased capacity, and a more reliable system for planning and prioritization.





Being Co., headquartered in Tsu City, Japan, is a publicly traded software development company (JASDAQ: 4734). Being Co. has developed several highly successful software programs since its establishment in 1984, including its flagship civil construction estimating software called Gaia. Global sales of BM3 project management software has been steadily increasing since its launch in 2006 and is now being offered through a reseller network in Europe, India and North America.





BeingManagement3 project portfolio management software now holds the largest market share in Japan behind Microsoft Project according to the 2010 Fuji Chimera Research Institute study. In addition to a strong financial backing by its developer, Being Co. also has published implementation case histories with clients such as Omron, Mazda, and Ricoh. With more successful implementations in industries such as automotive manufacturing, software development, construction management, shipbuilding, engineer-to-order, and fleet maintenance, BeingManagement3 is well-positioned to serve the North American market.





As part of the alliance with Being Co., NOVACES will be responsible for performing marketing and sales activities in the North American territory, including development of a channel partner program and a global brand presence on the web and major social media outlets. More information about BeingManagement3 is available at www.novaces.com/beingmanagement and www.beingworldwide.com.