Have you recently converted a spare room in a home office? Completely remodeled an out-of-date kitchen? Organized all the tools in your garage?

If so, you probably invested a good amount of time considering how the change would make it easier for you to be more productive, while meeting the needs of family members and others.

The many businesses within John Deere also recognize the value of updating and streamlining how they meet customer needs. Thanks to a new methodology called Business Process Excellence, employees throughout Deere are finding it easier to create innovative and cost-effective work processes.

Known as BPE, Business Process Excellence is one of four major initiatives set forth by the Executive Quality Council. Together the initiatives help insure the ongoing pursuit of business excellence and take the company to higher levels. Business Process Excellence uses a two-phase process known as AIM and IMPACT. Here's how it works:

Managers use the AIM phase when comparing current and emerging customer needs with business objectives and what processes are necessary to close the gaps.

The acronym AIM comes from the three steps of aligning business and customer needs with processes, initiating projects to improve processes, and managing performance of projects all the way through to implementation. A Master Process Pro position was created and exists at almost every John Deere unit in the world. Master Process Pros are trained to lead managers through the AIM process, and to link all improvement activities within a business unit to its strategic plan.