The “Inside Edge on Improvement” Newsletter

COMING SOON …
Would You Like To Know Secrets
that Not 1 in 100 Manufacturers Know
about SERIOUS Performance Improvement?
Then Sign Up Now For Our “Inside Edge” Newsletter!

The Theory of Constraints challenges some VERY sacred cows. Even if you’re a firm advocate of Lean Manufacturing or the Six Sigma technology, this Mini-Course and Newsletter contain information that is guaranteed to give you an “edge” in your improvement efforts. Our feedback from Workshop Participants confirms that 60% to 80% of our material is new even to experienced managers.Our site visits over the past 20 years, through to today, confirm that even the few managers who ARE aware of these issues rarely understand them to the level of practical use.

Do You Know:

  • Why cost accounting remains the number one enemy to productivity and profitability and many improvement efforts – and how you can get FAR more useful decision-support data with a lot less effort?
  • The EXACT circumstances under which even dramatic improvements in lead time or on-time delivery will make no difference whatsoever to your “value proposition” in the eyes of your customers? This can lead to tremendous frustration and disappointment.
  • The circumstances when those same changes can position you to increase your price for your products, with customers and new prospects lining-up to do business with you under the new terms?
  • The cause-effect realities behind why so many Six Sigma projects and Kaizen Events have little bottom-line impact, even when clearly successful in conventional terms … and what it takes to make their impact up to 15 times (Lean) and 23 times (Six Sigma) greater?
  • The handful of steps you can sometimes take in as little as a single day that will add 20% to 30% more to your plant’s output? Without additional Operating Expense?
  • Do you know the one change in your systems that, all by itself, will dramatically boost on-time performance and shrink cycle times and lead times? (Hint: all you have to do is STOP doing something that most manufacturers today consider ESSENTIAL).
  • Exactly what causes a Plant, running like clockwork after strenuous improvement efforts, to collapse when sales volumes increase?
  • Or how downsizing can cripple a plant … even when the capacity reports tell you there is plenty of remaining capacity?
  • The Sales Tactics that can grow a company even without serious Ops improvement … but which EXPLODE a company’s sales and profits when combined with a sensible improvement strategy?
  • How to immunize your sales, profits and workforce against a market downturn?
  • Do you know why in real life a judiciously UN-BALANCED plant will outperform a carefully balanced one, 99 times out of 100?

Sorry!
New sign-ups on hold as we redesign “The Inside Edge.”
 

When Theory of Constraints experts walk into a manufacturing business for the first time, they don’t see the business through the same “Lens” that most manufacturing people do.They don’t look for what most people look for.They don’t ask the questions most manufacturing people would.And they don’t draw the same conclusions from the data that most people would.And in an implementation, they go about things entirely differently than most; and they consistently get far bigger results, more quickly, than any other consultants on earth.The Inside Edge on Improvement newsletter is intended to transfer some of this specialist, “Insider” know-how.Published approximately monthly, the Inside Edge is designed to provoke thinking, and provide you with questions, insights, and valuable information to help you with any ongoing improvement efforts you’re engaged in.It will reflect the unorthodox thinking of the Theory of Constraints, but it will also pull-in articles and opinions from Lean and Six Sigma experts, too.And it will definitely be opinionated.

Rightly or wrongly.

My partner and I have a lot of material for you – drawn from our combined 10 years of implementations of manufacturing systems, and 35 years of implementations of low-inventory, fast-flow, short lead, high productivity, high on-time delivery implementations using the Theory of Constraints.

Plus my 10 years of implementing MRP and scheduling systems, and my partner’s 18 years of Plant Management and Total Quality Management.

What if you’re “into” Lean, or Six Sigma, or… something other than TOC (after all, TOC’s popularity isn’t even a blip on the radar compared to Lean and Six Sigma and still TQM, these days)?

Well, that’s great for you.

Because if you are expert in any of the other technologies, and you gain just a smattering of TOC understanding, you’re going to be a hero.

The TOC amplifies the results of all the other technologies by an order of magnitude.

And you don’t have to call it Theory of Constraints, of course! ( Employees of a plant belonging to a well-known corporation voted TOC their most powerful Six Sigma tool a couple of years ago!)

From time to time we’ll also invite one of our colleagues from their own world in Theory of Constraints, Lean, Six Sigma, ERP, or the school of common sense, to contribute. Between us we have an absolute wealth of experience … and you can pick and choose from the nuggets we will present you with.

If we come across any great white papers, or books, we’ll let you know.

We’ll talk about implementation specifics.

We’ll invite your great ideas.

And occasionally we’ll ask you if you have any specific issues you’d like to see discussed, or questions you’d like to see answered – then we’ll arrange an interview with an expert in that field, record it and make it available to you for download as a pdf file or a podcast or (most often) both.

I have to give you two warnings.

1. I want to stress again that I AM opinionated, and the newsletter will reflect this. You might not agree with my opinions … and that’s fine!

2. I’ll write with a minimum of “consultant speak” … and that might mean my grammar slips, and I get close to using some colorful language. I hope you’ll agree that this adds spice to what could otherwise be bland offerings.

So just a reminder … If you haven’t already, SIGN UP NOW!