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Lines are a fact of life. They result from a company trying to keep the costs of providing its services in check in the face of fluctuations in customer demand. With enough resources to handle spikes, companies never make customers wait. Of course, profit would drop significantly because employees would Read more…
People make decisions every day about what tasks to add to their schedule. They basically have two choices. They can do the important stuff, or they can take on the urgent stuff. Urgent things are due immediately, and often have people hounding the taskee to get them done. Important things Read more…
Standardization is the act of establishing a specified condition, process, or practice. It is a very general, blanket term which covers a variety of ways to add consistency to whatever is being standardized. Standardization is one of the most important concepts in continuous improvement because it provides a stable platform Read more…
SOPs are instructions that describe how to behave in a particular situation. SOP stands for standard operating procedure, or, alternatively, standing operating procedure though the latter term is falling out of use. Both are generally used interchangeably. An SOP should be documented. Informal SOPs exist but, more often than not, Read more…
The term order interaction point refers to the location in the fulfillment process where a specific item becomes attached to a specific customer. This doesn’t matter much when there is a standard set of products, but it does have relevance when products require customization. The order interaction point is, in Read more…
Note taking is a valuable skill. Most people can’t remember all the details they are deluged with every day. Having a method to record the important morsels of information without getting buried in all the noise can mean the difference between being effective at your job and being a black Read more…
Ownership creates responsibility. Whether it is a company, a process, or a desk, people tend to take more responsibility when they are dealing with something that is theirs. Pride of ownership is a term that is most commonly applied to homes, but it also applies to processes and work areas. Read more…
Barriers to entry are the variety of factors that keep new entrants from competing in a particular industry. It may be the strength of the brands of the incumbents. It may be the cost of developing competing technology. It may be access to raw materials or distribution channels. It may Read more…
There are countless quotes about rules, most of them negative. Rules are made to be broken. –unknown There are no rules here – we’re trying to accomplish something. –Thomas A. Edison Rules and models destroy genius and art. –William Hazlitt The common perception of rules is that they are stifling, Read more…
When someone is happy, they say “I am happy.” They do not say, “I am not sad.” When people speak in negatives, they are typically meaning, at least subconsciously, whatever they are saying with the “not” removed. In the case above, if a person says, “I am not sad”, it Read more…
Many parts and instruments have specifications that call for a tolerance. That just means that there is a given range within which the part has acceptable quality. One way to determine if the part is good is to measure and compare the results to the specification. This, however, is a Read more…
Days sales outstanding is a measure of how effective an organization is at getting paid. DSO indicates how many days of sales are still left uncollected. Obviously, an excessively high number means a lot of cash is tied up in the cost of producing and shipping products. On the surface, Read more…