2011-Aug: Operational Excellence by Design eNewsletter

Featured Articles:
Operational Excellence for Facilities Management;
How to Build an Authentic Personal Brand;
What is the effect of WIP on Process Cycle Times?

XONITEK eNewsletter

August 2011

Operational Excellence by Design

– A cross-disciplinary approach in the pursuit of perfection.

CHAIRMAN’S PERSPECTIVES

Operational Excellence for Facilities Management

By Joseph Paris; Chairman, XONITEK Group of Companies

Question: What immediately comes to mind when you hear the phrase “Facilities Management”?

If you are similar to the average person, you immediately think of “Janitorial Services”, “Property Maintenance” and other comparable and rather mundane tasks associated with the more superficial aspects of maintaining a building and its surrounding property. You might even think of routine preventative and remedial maintenance of infrastructure items within the building itself.

And you would not be entirely incorrect in answering thus – just grossly incomplete.

According to a paper published by the Royal Academy of Engineering, one can conservatively expect that the building maintenance and operating costs be five (5) times as much as the construction costs of the building over the lifetime of the asset. In addition, the business operating costs (utilities and the like) can be conservatively estimated at two-hundred (200) times as much as the construction costs of the building.

So for example, if a building costs $10-million to build, then it will cost $50-million to maintain and an estimated $2-BILLION to operate over the its life-time. Obviously, we are not just talking mopping the floor and cutting the grass at these numbers.

Where does all of the money go?

Click here for full article…

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OPERATIONAL EXCELLENCE

How to Build an Authentic Personal Brand

By Prof. Hubert Rampersad, PhD

In life, as in business, branding is more effective, powerful, and sustainable than marketing and sales and an effective way to eliminate your competitors. It’s about influencing others by creating a brand identity that associates certain perceptions and feelings with that identity.

Branding isn’t just for companies anymore. There is a new trend called Personal Branding. Successful Personal Branding entails managing the perceptions effectively and controlling and influencing how others perceive and think of you. Having a strong Personal Brand seems to be a very important asset in today’s online, virtual and individual age. You should take control of your brand and the message it sends and affect how others perceive you. This will help you to actively grow and distinguish yourself as an exceptional professional.

Click here for full article…

What is the effect of WIP on Process Cycle Times?

By Jim McCarthy

I hear people talking about “WIP” and I have to say that I have no Idea what they are talking about. Also, I hear this “WIP thing” used when they want to reduce the time it takes to do parts in a manufacturing plant. What are they talking about, and how can this help me speed up my game by improving customer delivery times?

We are in danger of losing some customers if we don’t improve our “on time” customer deliveries; and this could be catastrophic in today’s economy. Further, we are trying desperately to maintain a credible business reputation, but we can’t seem to be able to predict and/or control our process times in manufacturing and the office.

Our team (10 people) holds a daily morning meeting (usually 45 minutes long) to uncover some of the root causes and make changes, but we are still delivering “late” and our Sales people are continually apologizing and offering concessions to make up for our poor and inconsistent performance. Lately, my entire day is filled with firefighting related to delivery and “on time” performance issues. Please help!

Click here for full article…

Contact the Editor

DeMars

You are getting this eNewsletter because; you subscribed, are a member of one of the internet communities managed by XONITEK, or met someone from XONITEK. Please feel free to contact me if you have any questions or comments related to this publication – or if you might be interested in submitting an article for consideration in the eNewsletter.

Sincerely,

Trinity DeMars – Editor

DeMarsTK@xonitek.com