In today's world of global competition and pricing transparency, companies are facing margin pressures unlike ever before. Longstanding customers now routinely review their vendors for price advantage. New competitors enter markets at unprecedented rates. And companies with human resource costs ...

Lean production is generally associated with manufacturing but the principles apply equally well to service industries.The construction industry is naturally inclined to benefit from lean practices because winning bids require the contractor to provide superior customer value on the thinnest ...

Contrary to what the term implies, lean manufacturing is not simply a system of reducing expenses or “trimming fat”. The central goal of lean practice is the elimination of muda, activities that do not add value to the customer. By extension, this means that investments in activities that provide ...

If asked, what would you say sets UPS apart from its competitors? Your first response will likely be that you can track your shipment and trace its progress through the delivery process: track and trace. While all logistics providers provide this service now, UPS set itself apart years ago by being ...

We've written a lot lately about lean manufacturing and how it can help make the infrastructure value chain more productive. We are applying lean principles internally and have developed Idencia's features to make it a useful tool for implementing lean practices. Taiichi Ohno, one of the early ...

More often than not, manufacturers have capital tied up in inventory that could otherwise be invested in growth. This is typically due to less-than-optimal production systems rather than over-purchasing, so most of the bloat resides in work-in-process (WIP). The good news is that manufacturers can ...

Do you sometimes feel as if you live in a state of frustration when it comes to inventory control? We hear precast manufacturers and infrastructure contractors tell us that inventory management is the source of greatest inefficiency for their operations; both for the time that it consumes and the ...

When a large capital investment in new equipment is made, the purchase is always accompanied by our intention to optimize its useful life with proactive maintenance on a regular schedule. In practice, maintenance typically follows some partial or complete breakdown, usually because regular ...

Kamps Pallet is a lean manufacturing success story. As a manufacturer of pallets, the company serves as a good model for infrastructure manufacturers seeking to improve profiability in a low-margin business.