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Pink Shirts and Bullwhips

1 November, 2011 by James Lawther 1 Comment

Bullwhip Effect

People wear pink shirts, they like pink shirts, but there are really only so many times you can wear a pink shirt in a week. The market for pink shirts is pretty much stable. This is a problem if you sell pink shirts for a living.  The solution, run a promotion, 2 for 1, give […]

Filed Under: Blog, Process Improvement Tagged With: bullwhip effect, supply and demand, supply chain, tampering

Tony Hayward

12 July, 2010 by James Lawther Leave a Comment

Has been sacked.  (With a year’s salary and a pension of £600,000 p.a. BP are welcome to sack me as well). Does sacking Tony help clear up the mess in the Gulf? I imagine he knows more about it than most people and I guess he is a capable person, you don’t get to run […]

Filed Under: Blog, Employee Engagement Tagged With: fessing up, political intervention, supply and demand, video

One Every Three Seconds

12 June, 2010 by James Lawther Leave a Comment

Apple has sold a million iPads in the first 28 days.  That is one iPad every 3 seconds. That is a lot of iPads, where are they all coming from? According to the Independent they are being made by Foxconn in Shenzen China: – The factory employs 420,000 workers – They each work 60 hour […]

Filed Under: Blog, Process Improvement Tagged With: Apple, innovation, marketing, outsourcing, supply and demand

Evolutionary Pressure

12 May, 2010 by James Lawther Leave a Comment

Outsourcing costs jobs right?  It is bad for the economy; exporting jobs to low wage countries. Well maybe not.  In an interesting economics paper John van Reenen of the LSE puts a different slant on it.  His view is that the increased imports from China and India have led to job losses in areas of […]

Filed Under: Blog, Process Improvement Tagged With: assumptions, capability, continuous improvement, outsourcing, supply and demand

Loo Break

12 May, 2010 by James Lawther Leave a Comment

Here is a super graph.  It shows water consumption in Edmonton Canada on the day of the Olympic hockey final and compares it to the rather smoother usage the day before. A little analysis will no doubt show this is the inverse of beer consumption. Demand spikes are a common problem whether you are supplying […]

Filed Under: Blog, Operations Analysis Tagged With: bullwhip effect, capacity, data presentation, mura, supply and demand

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