•     How does your coordination of work processes affect performance?
•     How do you ensure decisions are made with total corporate performance in mind?
•     What can be done to create a better alignment of your processes?

Strategic alignment refers to the coordination of the various corporate functions aligning their goals, objectives and actions to those of the strategic plan. What is often missed is an effective linkage of the processes from job function to job function. For example; the purchasing department locates a product that meets the specifications required at a lower price than currently paid (their alignment to the corporate objective of cost reduction). However, the lower-priced vendor does not have the same level of technical support as the previous supplier. This creates additional cost related to setup, additional downtime, increased maintenance costs, reduction in customer satisfaction and lost throughput. These results were not in alignment with the corporate objectives of increased quality, reduced total cost and increased customer satisfaction. In essence, although the purchasing department was in alignment with their objective, they were working at cross-purposes with a number of other departments' objectives related to reducing costs.

MLD assists clients in determining where these types of disconnects occur within the process linkage, and the steps needed to improve performance throughout the system. Utilizing the MLD process management protocol, the decisions made in one work unit can be weighed in terms of their impact on other work units. The entire organization benefits from increased efficiencies, improved quality and a reduced cost of doing business.