12 Steps To Improving Business

TAKING THE GUESSWORK OUT OF BUSINESS decisions should surely lead to success, right? According to Charles Holland's book, "Breakthrough Business Results with MVT," (2005, John Wiley & Sons Inc.), the answer is yes.

And Holland, whose MVT (multivariable testing) training and consulting firm,

"MVT basically means testing a lot of different variables/solutions/business improvement ideas all at the same time," Holland writes. "When (applied to a business problem, it is a 12-step process that starts with dozens of practical, fast, cost-free ideas for improvement and uses advanced statistics to quickly sort out the ideas that will help from the ideas that will hurt or make no difference."

For a DuPont agricultural chemicals operation in LaPorte, Texas, MVT separated winning solutions from losers.

According to one of several examples in the 322-page book, the DuPont facility's plant manager used MVT techniques to enable the plant to increase manufacturing yields, Improve product quality, decrease maintenance costs and reduce equipment failures. Ultimately, the plant "reduced costs to the point [it] was successfully competing with China, against Chinese-made products, and beating the competitors on price," the author writes.

-TRACI PURDUM