An article in today’s WSJ, “Companies More Prone to Go Vertical,” discussed the current trend for some companies such as Oracle, Pepsi, IBM, General Motors, Boeing and Apple, to cite a few, to return to the practice of vertical integration. Vertical integration can be defined as the degree to which a company owns its upstream suppliers and [...]
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Yesterday Toyota announced that it is recalling 110,000 Tundra trucks built in 2000-2003 due to rust on the frames that is causing the spare tire to break off. Toyota is blaming a supplier, Dana Corporation, manufacturer of the cross member that holds the tire to the bottom of the truck, for the problem, and Dana [...] While American auto suppliers have not been directly bailed out, many have survived due to the bailout of their customers, GM and Chrysler. No so for small Italian suppliers. According to a WSJ article, the Italian auto industry has not received government bailout money. So the auto supply chain, comprised of much smaller suppliers than [...] Yesterday I wrote a guest post on Spend Matters about the recent raid on the Gibson Guitar plant in Nashville, TN for using illegal rosewood, despite the company’s use of certified tonewood providers. I discuss the fact that even when companies use good preventive measures to avoid supply risk, they still need to have good [...] Firing the customer is something taught in business schools and often mentioned as an approach for small companies to get rid of problem customers. The subject came up again recently in a WSJ article that reported on small businesses, who, despite the recession, are deciding to shed their high-maintenance and unprofitable customers. It’s a popular [...] In the past couple of months I wrote two guest posts on Spend Matters about an independent cycling trip that I went on in France. In the first post (An Uphill Battle with a Poor Supplier), I described how the tour company rented us supplier-provided bicycles that were in less than top condition, ill-fitted, missing air pumps and [...] It was only a matter of time before the ever-popular Six Sigma would reach the college classroom. I was reading an article about how York College in Southeastern Pennsylvania has begun to offer a course in Six Sigma in its MBA program. This is one of many MBA programs now offering Six Sigma courses. [...] I don’t know about you, but I’m getting tired of being asked to fill out customer satisfaction surveys. It’s not that I don’t understand the need for customer feedback. Understanding the customer experience is important part of a good continuous improvement process. But often I’m not sure whether a company is going through the [...] I recently heard a presentation at the AME Lean Conference that was given by representatives from Hershey Foods and K-Mart (part of Sears Holdings) about customer-supplier collaboration. A K-Mart General Manager and a Hershey Foods sales executive discussed how the two companies worked together on special in-store programs that delivered very strong financial results [...] Several weeks ago I had the opportunity to tour Fidelity Investment’s Cincinnati operations as one of the lean tours at the AME Lean Conference. If you’re a Fidelity customer, you may have noticed that most of your mailings including statements, checks, prospectuses, etc. come from Cincinnati and also that much of your paperwork to Fidelity goes to that center. [...] |
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