Why? As a child everyone asks why? Parents and teachers said this was a sign of a good student as they were not satisfied with the “because”. From an early age I was that child – Why can’t I be the yearbook photographer? When told because I did not know how to develop my own pictures, I found a mentor, learned, excelled and was not only the yearbook photographer but the literary magazine one also. At my first big job, not everyone had a computer at their desk, and most things were manual. The first year as their accounting administrator, I was tasked with helping with the inventory analysis for the CPAs. When I witnessed the program took 5 hours to spit out the first piece of information, of course I said, “why does this take so long, there has to be a better way?” I had a colleague show me a DBASE programming book and the company was never the same. I took classes, bought many help books, found a mentor, and developed a program for purchasing, receiving, Bill of Materials, where used, and reports for new orders that compared parts needed to current inventory and of course a new inventory program. Why not just an inventory program? Because there were lots of pieces to the puzzle to improve the use of doing that manual inventory. Puzzle?I find that if you look at the why something is done a certain way, there is a way to improve it. Every job is a puzzle, and some puzzles have more pieces than others, but in the end we all work for the same company, looking for the same result - increased profitability, customer satisfaction. To get that, collaboration on the puzzle is how we get there to enhance the experience for all parties. While working for a gas exploration company, I was tasked with keeping track of all the leases and details for the different departments. I had to work the puzzle backwards, by looking at the result needed. Finding that the result was different for each department, I broke all the pieces down for efficient input for the database, and then built result reports and documents for each department based on their needs. This kept all the information in one place to be documented one time (the pieces to the puzzle), but the finished puzzle for each department looked different. Doing this improved all processes and time spent tracking the many pieces of data.Process Improvement is necessary in all businesses to grow, increase profits and to keep customers happy. Over my career I have helped many companies improve the WHY by breaking apart that PUZZLE.How can I help you rebuild your puzzle?