It is a very widely held belief in business that each station in a production line should be working as hard as it can in order to maximise its efficiency. This might be a car assembly line or an accountant's office processing tax returns using several different stages in the accounting...
This menu draws together the principal tools in 12Faces that focus on making your business as productive as possible. Explore profit optimisation techniques and streamline your business. These are usually Tools that can be used widely throughout 12Faces. Yellow Belt
There are merits to reducing the size of the batches you manufacture and/or hold in stock at any point in time. This might sound counter-intuitive because of the oft-quoted 'economies of scale' and the time cost of pulling down tool set-ups and changing them to manufacture another project. But, in...
Summary Especially in a manufacturing business, the variable cost of parts, resources and energy etc are likely to be a substantial part of your overall costs. This 12Faces Menu is a collection of distilled business wisdom relating to managing and reducing these costs. Variable costs are those that are directly tied to your level of production. If you produce more...
Eight Types of Waste The well-known Toyota car company identified seven types of waste that had an impact on Productivity and Profit. An eighth has been added more recently. By gradually reducing these wastes, you can improve the Productivity and Profit of your business. In Japanese, this is referred to as reducing "muda" (pronounced Moo-da). This article discusses how...
The ability to, and the act of, multitasking is sometimes seen as a good thing. However, it can be clearly demonstrated that multitasking is an inefficient process that can contribute to waste in any business. Yellow Belt
In a manufacturing or retail environment, having too much inventory of products your customers don't want and/or too little inventory on hand of what products your customers do want will cost you money and, consequently, profit. Many service businesses also have inventory even if it is items like stationary incidental...