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Component Manufacturing dverti$er
Don’t Forget! You Saw it in the
Adverti$er
April 2019 #11237 Page #19
Better Net Profits, Not Hyped-Up Business Philosophies
Todd Drummond
W
hether your company is a single-location or a huge multi-location operation, 2018 should have been a banner year for profits for your company. Most of my clients were in the high teens and many were in the mid-twenties for net profit to total sales. How well did your company perform in 2018? Too many poor-performing companies are promoting a “hyped-up single business philosophy.” By that I mean, they’re relying on a single strategy or practice that’s supposed to be their panacea of ideas to get better-than-average results. As an operation improvement guru, I can state, without any doubt, that no single practice, tool, or idea should be the allencompassing fix to all your ill ways of doing business. An overly used and hyped-up tool of the lean manufacturing toolbox is Six Sigma, which is not a cure-all, be-all tool that should be used in every area of your company. And yes, I have a Six Sigma lean manufacturing certification with industrial engineering training, so I know it won’t fix everything. Not everything needs to be studied for six months to find improvements that will make a real difference. Sometimes you need a finish hammer, not a sledgehammer, and the Six Sigma tool is a sledgehammer. For instance, if you want to load your delivery trucks more quickly, which makes sense to lower your operating cost and improve your existing capital investment of trucks and forklifts, try this simple process improvement.
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