A new year quite often brings with it, new intentions, both personal ones and business objectives. With all the unknowns surrounding 'Brexit' and its possible impact on UK companies, now is the time to examine your business and get prepared for a new era of trading.

With the talk of possible new trade deals that can be negotiated outside of the EU, maybe it is now more important than ever that we should look at our own businesses and think to ourselves that 2019 is the year that I will be better prepared and organised for the future.

That all makes logical sense, but how do we plan and where do we look within our business to improve our ability to start the planning process? We start by being positive in the attitude to planning and eventually to aim for higher productivity, greater efficiency and where possible to initiate better cost values. These factors will influence your plan and will enable you to monitor, control and schedule performance with projects, staff, stock, machinery and maintenance.

Have you ever thought of using a visual planning board within your business? They can be developed and defined to suit any trade or business and provide relevant information that everyone can gain access to with an easy glance.

The great advantages of visual systems are that they are very user-friendly and highly durable. Installing them is easy and you can dovetail them to suit any existing management systems that you are currently using. The main benefit for using any planner has to be to offer clear concise information in a logical way. Information shown will improve communication, reduce administration costs and easily highlight human error.

To summarise planning boards can be used to:

• Improve efficiency.
• Reduce inspection costs.
• Ensure better use of resources when controlling production, office and despatch areas.
• Ensure that service and maintenance projects are made at scheduled times.
• Reduce down-time on machinery.
• Improve quality of finished goods.

There are many designs and styles of planning boards/cards available so maybe now is the right time to think ahead and get your business organised for 2019.

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