5 Ways to Improve Processes
Stay focused on continual improvement of your processes to keep your business at the forefront of your industry.
What is an Eagle Eye Strategic Focus?
A keen eye for details can uncover big savings. In my experience, I've found that watching trends is vital to success - if you can pick up on a key trends and get better positioned than your competition and/or jump on-board with strategic innovations early, you'll be guaranteed [...]
How to Thrive in 2010’s “New Normal” Business Operations Environment
Published in "IndustryWeek" website, December, 2009 The business environment has changed and will not "return to normal"; instead, a "new normal" is emerging. The U.S. and the world economy have been in a recession for at least a year, and the media is starting to discuss a slow recovery. [...]
Lessons Learned: ERP Failure
How effective is your ERP selection and implementation process? Published in "The ACA Group" website, November, 2011 ERP system implementations fell off the grid during the recession; however, I've seen resurgence in the last year. Companies are thinking about investing again. However, although businesses are picking up, they are [...]
Succeed During These Turbulent Times – Manage for Cash Part 1: Manage Inventories
Businesses continue to cut back as the economy continues to worsen - seemingly every day. Cutting costs in a reasonable and smart manner is required; however, cost cutting alone rarely achieves success. As one of my mentors used to say, the best problem to have is a cost problem [...]
Lessons learned from my Procurement Mentor: Negotiations Success
My procurement mentor exemplifies "profit through people" and can achieve more on a golf course in 2 hours than an entire team of Harvard MBA's could achieve in a year. He took all the complex terminology, confusing pricing indicators, economic trends and world events and turned it into a [...]
Cycle Counting
The key to effective cycle counting is to not get bogged down in resolving every dollar, but rather focus on the significant discrepancies. The main goal of cycle counting is to cycle through your inventory to ensure inventory accuracy on a consistent basis. (In contrast, a physical inventory is [...]
A Few Secrets to Plant Manager Success
Today's international business climate is becoming more and more competitive and tough to stand out in the crowd. Additionally, more and more plant operations are moving to Mexico, China and other countries where there are lower wage rates, less intensive laws (workers compensation), etc. To succeed in today's environment, [...]
Commodity Businesses, Throw Out Continuous Improvement!
I was asked to give a speech in January of 2008 on trends and opportunities of 2008. While researching for the speech, I reviewed the last several months of Wall Street Journal alerts and other trends, and the overall story was downright scary - oil continues to push to [...]
Keys to Plant Management Success
To succeed in today's environment, it is no longer desirable to have a world class operation focused on providing a value add while maximizing resources; it is a requirement. Today's global business climate is becoming more competitive. It is tough to stand out in the crowd, and it is [...]