• Reduce working capital by approximately $15M
• Lower yearly costs by nearly $2.5M
• Reduce lead times from forecast to delivery to 70-110 days putting them in the top quartile of their customer’s vendors.

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Purchasing Best Practices were important to two supply chain optimization projects we recently completed for a University and a $400M manufacturer of consumer products. All companies purchase goods and services and have various organization structures, business processes and technology backbones for handling it.  In both projects, these were significantly different from each other. Irrespective …Read More

February 11, 2019 – (Upland, CA) – Group50, a privately-held, full-service supply chain consultancy founded in 2004 is pleased to recap its 2018 results and announce the addition of Lara Abrams to its team of executives.  …Read More

Most organizations do Leadership Succession Planning at some level of effectiveness. Very little has been written about the need for incorporating technology succession planning and while technology leadership is part of the standard succession planning model, little is done about succession planning and skills development for subject matter experts, their supporting teams and successive upgrades and new technologies. Teams …Read More

I was recently asked by an executive about how he should manage the division he just took over as its president. I told him to “Manage it like you are going to sell it – Optimize enterprise value and mitigate multiple risk”.  The executive gave a strange look and asked why that mattered.

Many leaders think that their only measure of success is the P&L–the amount of operating profit the company generated. Those who believe that are missing …Read More

In Part V of the series on Driving Continuous Improvement, we discuss the importance of utilizing the right combination of continuous improvement tools and data. This is where the rubber meets the road. Once you have your program aligned with your business strategy and …Read More

Many people believe that continuous improvement is a culture.  It certainly is in the eyes of the Japanese and many others, but is continuous improvement really a culture or something else? …Read More

The Internet of Everything: 8.4 billion and $2 trillion!  Those are the estimated number of connected ‘things’ on the internet and the amount spent on these devices and services by the end of 2017, according to a Gartner study.  The number of connected things is expected to …Read More

Introduction:

The impact of both the 2009 ARRA-HITECH Act, HIPAA and the federal healthcare reform legislation is felt throughout the industry. Healthcare organizations are challenged by managing the cost providing quality care but recognize implementing EMR is a must have. Both are needed and implementation can be a drain …Read More

In the introduction, I identified 5 things you need to do to drive continuous improvement.  They are:

1. Align continuous improvement with strategic objectives
2. Don’t overdo process excellence at outset; this is an evolutionary process
3. Integrate continuous improvement into a culture of strategic execution
4. Blend the best practices from the different methodologies
5. Focus on data, not emotions

In this article, we show how business strategy should drive continuous improvement programs and not the other way around. Continuous improvement …Read More