A Brief History of Bubble Quest® and FirstLine™

Greg Simpson and Glen Walmsley have operated as a successful interim management and consulting team since 2002. Greg has managed the client's operations, establishing the corporate strategy, cascading objectives and raising the performance standards and Glen has educated and motivated the first-line management in both the office and manufacturing environments alike. Rapid, significant and lasting improvements have been made through a simultaneous 'top-down/bottom-up' approach to change management and the provision of knowledge transfer.

Into this package has gone years of experience at all levels of the hierarchy plus repeated successful application of Lean concepts in the most demanding of industrial and office environments. FirstLine™ uniquely addresses the needs of the First-line manager and aligns effort on the ground with the objectives of the business allowing everyone to contribute.

In designing the package we wanted it to:

• Be easy to navigate and use for those with limited computer experience and have rapid navigation for the more advanced.
• Be flexible and allow for the terminology adopted by different sectors to be incorporated.
• Use the familiar and flexible Vb.Net Microsoft database which integrates with Microsoft Office.
• Answer the questions before they were asked through 'as you go' guidelines and embedded fact sheets.
• Be quick to install and get running independently of other systems but be integrated later if required.
• Give the management and senior management standard reporting for business performance meetings.
• Have sustaining elements such as chart owners, expiry dates and audit points.
• Be upgradeable and fully backroom supported.
• Stand alone for those that start the Lean journey with a blank piece of paper, or be tailored for clients' current requirements along the road to Lean.
• Be as applicable in an office or a manufacturing environment, in fact, anywhere people and processes come together for a common purpose.