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Safety-Stock Calculations Are Risky – Demand, Lead Time and Service Level
This is a big and touchy topic, I know. I intend only to begin a dialog, not present an exhaustive treatise. First, let me define what I mean by “safety stock,” or SS: Not the restrictive, MRP-specific adder to gross requirements, but the general concept of buffer inventory. SS, determined correctly and optimally, protects against random variations…
Histograms – 101: See the Quality…
An important aspect of total quality is the identification and control of all the sources of variation so that processes produce essentially the same result again and again. At a glance, a histogram is a tool that allows you to understand a variation that exists in a process. Although the histogram is essentially a bar…
Unlocking Employee Engagement: Driving Productivity and Profits #2
Summary: As a business leader, you hold the key to unlocking the full potential of your workforce. However, achieving high levels of employee engagement is no easy feat. If you are like most American businesses today, two out of your three employees or teammates are not engaged. And that, according to Gallup, is the highest engagement…
Escape the Improvement Trap; What Elite Companies Do to Improve
Over the last twenty years, organizations have adopted many different improvement programs – TQM, Re-engineering, Lean, Six Sigma, etc. Despite working hard to adopt/apply the particular improvement methodology, very few organizations actually experience a true transformation and radically improve their competitive position. The competitive position typically stays the same since competitors also advance by adopting…
Small Teams, Big Results
Small teams in large corporations can ‘out small’ today’s successful smaller players, and win big. Smaller competitors to today’s largest corporations are consistently winning in customer satisfaction ratings without the so-called economies of scale associated with large (frequently out-sourced) customer care centers. For the largest companies in some key sectors – such as telecommunications, technology, andfinancial services – there is the potential…
The Psychology Behind Effective Crisis Leadership
ByHBR.org
Summary. It is often said that a strong vision makes a good leader. But in a crisis, people don’t need a vision to inspire them–they’re already raring to act. Instead, they need what psychologists call “holding”–leaders who acknowledge their emotions and give them a sense of context and reality. Holding allows people to channel their desire…