Business Management - Productivity/Process Improvement

After more than a year of offering my book “Monday Morning Manager” free on e-mail request in this column I’ve sent out almost 400 copies. Have I changed one mind? Not so far, as I can tell. Has one single printer stopped using budgeted hourly rates to set prices? I don’t think so. Has any software supplier begun using weekly reporting of financial results for a printing company? I don’t believe so. Please tell me if I’m wrong. Am I discouraged? Is it time for me to shut up and quit? Not as long as I have breath, a keyboard and a willing publisher! Let’s

Maybe I've just been too hard on those printers with an average of 50 days outstanding receivables by saying they were buying sales by extending credit. It's possible I just don't understand the problem. Okay. Let's get back to some basics. 1. Study 2. Plan 3. Execute 4. Test Then we'll start the cycle over. We'll study again, plan again, execute again, test once more and keep doing that until we accomplish our objective. What's our objective, you say? Thirty-five days? Forty days? Make it something reasonable and achievable. Remember there's always a little hooker in the path—getting the invoice out promptly! Never forget that when you're

It wasn't until I read "Blink, The Power of Thinking Without Thinking," by Malcolm Gladwell, that I realized I'd become an expert in appraising the production system of printing plants in a blink of an eye—so to speak. After you've run four or five plants, walked through 40 or 50 more across the world, like it or not, you acquire some degree of expertise that enables you to reach a quick, snap judgment about the production system. It only takes a thin slice of experience—quite thin—to reach this point. Arrogance? Hubris? Read the book. That quick judgment doesn't satisfy a client who's paying you $10,000

More than 20 years ago I sat in a committee meeting of printers and magazine publishers in, as I recall, Hershey, PA. The conversation turned to Just-in-Time raw paper inventories. "What are the benefits of stocking paper inventories?" someone asked. "We get a price break from the mills and paper merchants that our printers can't get," a publisher piped up. "It's a safety cushion to protect against shortages and railroad or trucking mishaps," a printer rejoined. "Well, what are the detriments—the disadvantages—of having a 30- or 60-day backlog of paper sitting idle in the warehouse?" was the next question. "Insurance premiums." "Property taxes." "Taking up

I just pulled the plug on the PREM Web Press Database after 14 years. Kinda sad. But it was time for sundown. Every month since October of 1991, web printing companies had sent me data collected by AutoCount devices on their presses: gross, net, makeready and running waste impressions; number of forms and running stops; hours spent in running, making ready and recovery from unscheduled stops. In total, as the sun went down, the Database had more than 11,000 press-data months contributed by 68 companies from 205 web presses comprised of 53 press models. The companies were primarily from the continental U.S., but also

Nashville, TN, is the home base of country music. But it's also the home of some advanced, solid thinking about pricing the printed product and running commercial printing companies. I discovered this about Nashville, much to my surprise, in the past month. Mention Nashville to me and my thoughts used to turn to Elvis, Garth and Dolly, not to printing management. No longer. My first awakening was from a book called System Buster by Philip Beyer about systems developed at his company called Beyer Printing (www.beyerprinting.com). My second Nashville insight came from a 30-page article titled "Throw Away BHRs: Win the Pricing Game"

Pricing decisions are the most mysterious and least understood in the business of commercial printing. We want our prices to be fair. We want them to cover our costs. We want them to provide a profit. Our salespeople moan that everything depends on the price of the job. Our accountants wail that we mustn't drop our prices below a given level or we'll go broke. What the Sam Hill is the right price for a job: the fair price, the competitive price, the price that covers the costs, that yields some profit? Where and how shall we decide? Looking for Answers We want the Lone Ranger's silver

Some people are just plain good at running a printing company by the seat of their pants. They don't need a computer or any organized data system at all. I can't do that. Just haven't got the knack for it, I guess. Me? I've gotta have some numbers to help me make decisions. I can't do "seat of the pants." Take this accompanying table, for example. Job Throughput HoursJobPaper in InventoryWork in ProcessHours to BillingCollect RcvblTotal HoursAnnual Turns A835872451,4802,6473.3 B720542534501,4775.9 C1,452984801,3683,3982.6 D976541989802,2084.0 E74872041,3501,7155.1 Total4,0573801,3805,62811,4454.2 Avg.811762761,1262,2894.2 I don't think you've seen the likes of it before because I just devised it for this article. It's totally blue-sky. But I'd sure like to have

Job Throughput Hours Paper in Work in Hours to Collect Total Annual Job Inventory Process Billing Rcvbl Hours Turns A 835 87 245 1,480 2,647 3.3 B 720 54 253 450 1,477 5.9 C 1,452 98 480 1,368 3,398 2.6 D 976 54 198 980 2,208 4.0 E 74 87 204 1,350 1,715 5.1 Total…

"The buck stops here," as President Harry Truman put it. Responsibility starts at the top —with the Chief Executive Officer of every printing company—every company, in fact. The CEO sets the policy for the company, sometimes consciously, most often unconsciously, by his or her demands and actions. Take the question of when a job can be billed. Is it with the first product delivery, mailing, or shipping? Or is it when the final delivery or shipment is made? It's up to the CEO to say, isn't it? What's the policy in your shop? Is it different for different customers? Do you even have an articulated