Business Vault

Lean Manufacturing is a culture and a strategy. It’s a way of doing things that helps companies improve efficiency, quality, and flexibility. It’s not just about tools and processes—it’s about people, too. Lean Manufacturing is all about making things more efficient. It focuses on eliminating waste and…

Continuous Improvement, The 1% rule, or Marginal Gains, whatever terminology you want to call it, they are all similar in philosophy and application. It is the idea of focusing on small incremental improvements to grow your business easily. The most successful businesses are always striving to improve…

Discussion on the following How do we get Manufacturers playing an active role in recruiting and engaging the younger generation? How can SME's get involved in the Virtual Intern and UK Manufacturing Festivals initiative?

Activity Sampling and more over Time Study Techniques seem to be a lost art within Manufacturing nowadays. Activity Sampling for me, is one of those essential tools that you keep in your back pocket, a fantastic technique that enables to economically study a lengthy activity or a…

UK Productivity and the SME focus I do find it interesting in reading reports on UK Productivity and the SME focus on how there are a lot of SMEs making slow progress in this arena. If we step back, which some reports have eluded to… the SME…

I was stood at Exhibition Floor Layout today trying to find a particular company I had arranged to meet, I began to notice and listen to the conversation of 3 Sales People next to me, they seemed to be from the same company or team (I’m assuming…

Expose the Problem for What it is – Waste, Cost, In-Efficiency Always find it interesting how we accept things in our manufacturing processes, we’ve highlighted it as an issue so many times, but it hasn’t been resolved or it has always been like that. Example, we are…

Lately I’ve been asked to comment and give talks on OEE (Overall Equipment Effectiveness) and the missed opportunities within Manufacturing, I include Logistics with this as well, under the OLE measure (Overall Logistics Effectiveness), so decided to do an update. (Original article ‘Click Here‘) OEE as I’ve…

The difference between stagnation and growth often lies in mindset and management approach. The case of an SME Manufacturer with an £8m turnover, which lost a monumental £1.5 million order to a competitor that did not even manufacture but merely outsourced, illustrates a vital lesson in resilience,…