Finding opportunities in logistics
Logistics sometimes means different things to different companies, which we once made the mistake of pointing out at a trucking convention (see Lessons Learned # 2 – Don’t put down your audience).
Read More
Finding opportunities in quality
Quality has gone through many evolutions over the last twenty years driven by the popularity of gurus like Juran, Deming, and to a lesser degree, Crosby. Different concepts have caught on like
Read More
Finding opportunities in maintenance
As technology has advanced and organizations have become more and more reliant on smoothly running equipment, viewing maintenance as a critical function to support throughput, rather than as a cost center to
Read More
Finding opportunities in engineering departments
There are a couple of typical questions we explore when we’re looking for opportunity in engineering departments. Read more to find out.
Read More
Finding opportunities in sales areas
The main focus for performance improvement is to improve sales effectiveness and efficiency. In essence, can you sell more higher margin things at a lower total cost?
Read More
Finding opportunity in marketing departments
The first functional area we will look at is marketing, which also happens to be one of the more difficult functions to assess. The reason marketing is tricky is because it is
Read More
The conflicting objectives of inventory management
The ninth profit driver we look at for opportunities is inventory. Inventory reduction tends to go straight to the top of every production executive’s priority list when interest rates are high. Even
Read More
How to Determine When to Use Push or Pull Production Scheduling
To fulfill customer demand in the most efficient, cost-effective way, companies can use push- or pull-scheduling or something in between. Which one works best? That depends on the characteristics of your product and market.
Read More
5 Ways to Increase Your Plant’s Production Efficiency
Production efficiency is not easy and studies show most companies are squandering 50% of their key resources—labor and equipment. Based on 250,000 hours of observation of businesses in a variety of industries,
Read More
Why it’s hard to eliminate backlogs
Work expands because there is no additional work available.” If people are aware that no work awaits them after they complete their current tasks, they will naturally start slowing the rate of completion to avoid running out of work. This is very common in project-based work environments.
Read More