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Soviet Style Savings

14 March, 2010 by James Lawther Leave a Comment

vladimir kabaidze

We make life complicated We add new products, new services, extra checks and balances.  It is easy to do. Somebody wants it. But we rarely take things away, remove services, cut stock keeping units, rationalise organisation structures.  That is hard to do.  Nobody wants it. Unfortunately all that complexity is, well, complicated; and consequently expensive.  […]

Filed Under: Blog, Process Improvement Tagged With: bureaucracy, complexity, cost saving, error proofing, reinforcing behaviour

Save Yourself Rich

8 March, 2010 by James Lawther Leave a Comment

All operations are too expensive, no matter how good they are there is always an obligation to reduce cost further, and when the cost has been taken out there will always be pressure to remove more. There are 5 key problems that are common to operations of all types: 1.  There are numerous opinions about […]

Filed Under: Blog, Process Improvement Tagged With: capacity planning, clarity, complexity, cost saving, purpose, rework, supply and demand

How to Calculate the Cost of Poor Quality

4 March, 2010 by James Lawther 1 Comment

Coat of Quality

Do you ever have quality problems? Here is a technique to help you work through the cost of poor quality.  Get a group of people in a room and the ask them to estimate the answers to the following questions. How many customers do you treat badly each year? How many of them complain? When […]

Filed Under: Blog, Operations Analysis, Tools & Techniques Tagged With: cost of poor quality, cost saving, poor service, waste

Are You Cheap Or Nasty

15 February, 2010 by James Lawther Leave a Comment

spam

You get what you pay for Product quality and cost are correlated; “you get what you pay for”. It is easy to cut costs, just reduce the quality of what you offer: 1.  Take longer to answer the phone 2.  Close the local branch 3.  Supply Spam instead of Ham Unfortunately the customer wants what the […]

Filed Under: Blog, Process Improvement Tagged With: cost saving, cost versus quality

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