“The action may be fierce, but when facing what is in front of you, do not move the mind”
Kiichi Hogen, twelfth century swordsman
Focus Leave a comment
Paying too Much Leave a comment
“It’s unwise to pay too much, but it’s worse to pay too little. When you pay too much, you lose a little money – that’s all. When you pay too little, you sometimes lose everything, because the thing you bought was incapable of doing the thing it was bought to do. The common law of business balance prohibits paying a little and getting a lot – it can’t be done. If you deal with the lowest bidder, it is well to add something for the risk you run, and if you do that you will have enough to pay for something better.”
John Ruskin 1819-1900
The Hidden Factory Leave a comment
Most operations, whether a factory, an office or a distribution center; have losses in the form of wasted materials, excessive labor, lost capacity and missed management opportunity. We come to accept these “standard losses” as part and parcel of the work environment and quite often opportunities for improvement go unrecognized.
The concept of the hidden factory awakens us to this mental block that we tend to form. If we can imagine that there is a factory that produces defect free product at optimum material yield, then we can also imagine that there is a “hidden factory” where we buy materials, hire employees, spend management time and allocate capacity to produce and rework defects.
Once everyone develops this perspective, the mission is clear, shut down the hidden factory.
Product Development Process Leave a comment
The product development process is best managed by a sequence of development steps and decisions at defined milestones. Since the purpose of new products is to make money, cost and revenue projections are refined at each critical stage. If the cost model remains viable and development goals are achieved, a decision to move forward is obvious. If profit projections and technical hurdles appear, it may be time to modify or drop the project while the investment is still low.
The other important aspect of this process is optimization of resources, the most important being expertise and time. Enlisting expertise, internal and/or external, can reduce product development cycle time beating competition and capturing market opportunities.
John Demo Consulting Inc 