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November 2020 #12256 Page #43
Preparing for the 2021 Build Season
D
espite all the turmoil of the skyrocketing lumber prices, pandemic, and elections, the building industry is doing very Todd Drummond well. Hopefully, your company is doing very well, and now your attention is focusing on potential growth for 2021. Most companies are looking for modest tweaks to their current practices and some investment in new equipment. Well, quite frankly, there is a lot of money being invested in new equipment and not enough emphasis on other areas for improvement. When looking for potential growth opportunities, it can be helpful to categorize the areas of your business into four main groups: 1. People 2. Communications 3. Pricing 4. Equipment Client, “Todd, what area do you think we should focus on to garner the best ROI?” TDC, “All of them. Rarely is it ever one area that needs refinement and improvement. And quite frankly, the areas that you may think are doing just fine may be the most in need of refinement.” People – What most do not realize is that your managing, training, and staffing can be vastly improved upon and simplified using lean principles. Too many companies are making the implementation of the lean tenets too intangible and too complex for everyday use. And absolutely yes, lean principles can and should be used for proper managing, training, and staffing of company personnel. For example, the training of the needed skills for any area for the vast majority of companies is far too slow with information that overwhelms most new hires. If a company wants to shorten or flatten the learning curve drastically, there are many tools in the lean practices toolbox that can have an almost immediate positive effect. Most management teams are poorly taught how to use lean tools or understand that the lean tools are far more than just for the manufacturing areas. For more information about potential improvement concerning personnel, see my recent articles, “Basic Principles for Effective Employee Attraction and Retention” and “Better Profits with Effective Employee Retention and Growth.” Continued next page
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