January 10, 2023 | Mark Paradies

Low-Hanging Fruit & Industrial Performance Improvement

Is It Time To Get More Than Low-Hanging Fruit?

Experienced fruit pickers always start at the top of a tree,
where the fruit is more ready to eat because of greater exposure to the sun.
Christopher Peterson

You’ve heard of the 80/20 rule. That 20% of the effort will get you 80% of the results. Some people call it picking the low-hanging fruit. The rule seems to imply that there is always an easy answer to improving performance.

But what happens when the low-hanging fruit is picked? You can’t come out the next day and start picking low-hanging fruit again. All the low-hanging fruit is gone! You’ll need to get a ladder and work harder to get the remaining fruit.

Performance Improvement Programs

The same is true in industrial settings.

Early in an improvement program, you can often get easy gains. But once these easy improvements are achieved, the job of improving performance gets tougher.

This may seem obvious to anyone who has been involved in performance improvement. The better performance gets, the harder it is to improve.

Unfortunately, some managers think that the low-hanging fruit is a perpetual opportunity. That we should get continuous major improvements with little effort. (Sounds like a Dilbert cartoon, doesn’t it.)

Get Better at Improving

There is one way to keep your improvement program improving at a rapid pace … Get better at improving. And that’s where TapRooT® Root Cause Analysis and the TapRooT® Summit can prove their value.

If you have already picked the low-hanging fruit, let TapRooT® RCA and the Summit be your “ladder” to help you overcome your tougher problems.

If you have already attended our essentials course, the 2-Day TapRooT® Root Cause Analysis Course, you should attend the 5-Day TapRooT® Advanced Root Cause Analysis Team Leader Course. See the upcoming public 5-Day Courses HERE. Or CLICK HERE (or call 865-539-2139) to get information about holding a TapRooT® Course at your site.

Improvement Ideas from the Global TapRooT® Summit

What is the Global TapRooT® Summit (held on April 24-28) all about? Networking, benchmarking, and sharing best practices with leading experts from around the world.

It starts on Monday and Tuesday with two days of special pre-Summit Training. See the ten pre-Summit Courses to choose from HERE. And listen to Emily and Barb describe the courses in this video…

Since the video was made we added an addition (the tenth) course: 2-Day Risk Assessment and Management Best Practices. CLICK HERE for the course description.

After the pre-Summit Courses, the Summit starts on Wednesday and includes our amazing Keynote Speakers…

and continues all week with interesting Best Practice Breakout Sessions in eight different Best Practice Tracks. These tracks include:

Just click on the link above for more information about the sessions in each track. Or see the complete Summit schedule HERE.

Where is the 2023 Global TapRooT® Summit Being Held?

The Summit is being held at the Margaritaville Lake Resort, Lake Conroe, near Houston, Texas. It’s a great place to have a conference. See this review by YOLO Texas TV…

Register NOW to Get This Low-Hanging Fruit!

Don’t wait. The pre-Summit Courses will fill up. Register early to get your first choice. And register early to qualify for the early bird drawing. (Does the early bird get the low-hanging fruit?) Just click on the picture below for information about early bird registration and the prize!