Articles

Advanced Planning
In our world of global economies, tight supply chains and rising customer expectations, it is practically mandatory for an organization to consistently meet exact delivery dates for its customers. Many customers— from heavy manufacturers to retail chains to service industries—are now imposing financial penalties for shipments that do not arrive on time, emphasizing the need for suppliers with optimized supply chains.

CPI Basics
In this column, we’ll explore the various methodologies, technologies and people-based strategies that organizations may utilize to implement continuous process improvement (CPI) or simply continuous improvement (CI).

Executive Responsibility for CI
An executive recently complained to me about the quality of information she was getting. Part of her complaint was that she was being “shielded” from certain types of information by people who want to protect their turf or appear to be better than they are.

Information Accuracy
A number of years ago, I was contracted to deliver an in-house seminar on the fundamentals of JIT that was scheduled to
begin early one morning. Every planner in the organization was late for class. I started the meeting by asking why the planners were late. The answer: they were all on the production floor taking a count and getting last night’s production numbers so they could do their work.

Integrated Business Process Management
For the past few years, I’ve been watching the new standard of integration that is coming in enterprise solutions that take them from the realm of ERP information systems into the realm of Enterprise Resource Management (ERM) enablers.

Knowledge Capital
One of the metrics that a number of organizations keep is their current level of Knowledge Capital. There are a number
of abbreviations for this metric, such as “IKC” (Invested Knowledge Capital) and “TKC” (Total Knowledge Capital). I’ll
stick with these two for now.

Management by Exception
I have seen several surveys over the past few years that claim management wastes a great deal of time looking for, or arguing over, information. The articles discuss the various ways that time is used to find or determine the validity of information.

People - The Foundation of CI
In my previous column, we explored what comprises continuous improvement (CI), as well as outline the three critical
components necessary for an organization to undertake a related project—methodology, technology and people.

Single Point of Contact Service
Have you ever called an organization and been shuffled from one department to another? Have you called one number
and then been given another number to call because you got the wrong support group? How about the call you made to a
customer support line where you were given a useless answer? Frustrating? You bet. Are your customers having the same frustration? You better find out.

Supply Chain Management
Supply chain management (SCM) is typically perceived as the ability to control inventory from the raw state of materials
through to the consumer. When we think in these broad terms, we’re talking about the planning and controlling of materials through various levels of manufacture and distribution from the ground up. This results in moving materials with maximum speed and lowest cost.

Technology Has History
It’s important to learn from history. This especially applies to the purchase and implementation of technology. Regarding the use of manufacturing resource planning (MRP) and enterprise resource planning (ERP), I wonder if buyers of technology have learned their valuable lessons.

The Lean Enterprise
Some of the most common issues raised when I’m speaking with managers are the effects that an initiative undertaken by one area of the organization may have on another area, or the fact that an initiative didn’t go far enough in creating a lean environment throughout the organization.

Vendor Relationship Management
Many organizations concentrate large amounts of resources on CRM (Customer Relationship Management) to build and maintain relationships with their customers in order to more effectively serve them, retain their business and reduce the cost of acquiring revenue.