I used to make sweets in a factory for a living. We obsessed about “set up time”. The amount of time it takes to switch from one product to another. Just think about it for a second, every time we switched from making a product with nuts to one without, maybe Snickers to Mars bars […]
Are you a Manager or a Couch Potato?
couch po·ta·to Noun: A person who spends little or no time exercising and a great deal of time watching television. What can you learn in the Midlands? I live in the Midlands, We make cars in the Midlands. A while back I thought I’d go and have a look, see what I could learn from […]
Why Service Operations are So Much Harder to Manage
We can be a little elitist in the service industry. We look down our noses at our manufacturing cousins. We deal with intangibles, they deal with things, and let’s be honest, they tend to be dirty noisy things at that. But pride comes before a fall. Here are a handful of prejudices about our uncouth […]
The Office Tour
Whenever I visit somewhere new I am always given a tour of the offices. I am not entirely sure why. I have been in offices in Manchester, London, Glasgow and Swansea and they all look the same. More to the point I have been to Bangalore, Washington, Rotterdam and Sydney and to be honest they […]
Looking for Junk
Here is a contentious statement for you. “Manufacturing operations are better run than Service operations”. Why do I think that? Is it because the manufacturing guys are cleverer? Is it because operations are more important in manufacturing? Is it because service operations are harder to run? I doubt any of those are true. I think […]