Pilot a ready product on one branch or one production cell first

Skip your easiest branch. Skip your worst as well. Pick one that is typical, with a manager who will report problems honestly and early, because a pilot at a site that hides errors teaches nothing.

For a multi-branch group, choose a branch with the full mix of work, including the awkward cases that head office hears about. For a plant, choose a cell that runs a complete flow, from issue of material to the finished count.

Name one owner for the pilot. That person needs the authority to say yes or no, and the time to read the daily difference sheet; a committee will not do. Nor will a vendor.

Decide which records are entered twice. Keep the list short, or staff will drop it by day three. Daily takings, the recall list, root canal sittings booked, the shift’s scrap count and one counted box of composite resin are usually enough.

Give the double entry a time limit. Two weeks is plenty. Beyond that the team resents the extra work, the old register gets filled in from memory, and the comparison stops meaning anything at all.

At close each day, one person compares the two totals and writes the difference on a sheet, with its cause. Differences are the best output of the whole pilot.

Pass marks stop the decision from turning into an argument; write them down before the pilot starts and have the owner sign them. Each one must be something a person can check with a tick.

Good marks are concrete. Totals match on every day but one. A receptionist books a returning patient in under a minute, a shift supervisor closes the count without a calculator, and nobody calls the vendor for a routine task. Write yours that plainly.

Add one mark for the vendor. How fast did they answer when something broke? Log each issue with the time raised and the time fixed; the answer is then a number and not an impression.

Take a dental group with two branches. Run the pilot at the smaller branch, the one with the busier lab link. Appointments, treatment plans, instalment payments, OPG referrals and crown orders to the lab all run on the new system while the old diary stays open beside it. Chairside staff test it hardest.

Now a tuition centre with morning and evening batches. Pilot the evening batch first. It has more late fee payers, more missed roll calls and the mock test series. Keep the morning batch on the old fee receipt book until the pass marks are met.

For a plant, pick the packing cell, where the count is easy to check by eye. Issue each job on the new system and on the paper traveller together; compare the carton count and the rework tags when the shift ends.

Put the decision date in the diary at the start. At that meeting, compare results against the pass marks one by one. There are three outcomes. Yes. No. Or yes after named fixes and a second, shorter pilot.

If it is yes, plan the next site from what the pilot taught you. Reuse the cleaned masters and the approved print formats, and borrow a trained staff member from the pilot site as a floor guide for the first week.

Today, name the pilot site. Then write down three pass marks.