Remove Lean Manufacturing Remove Marketing Remove Operations
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How to Reduce Operational Costs for Your Small Business 

Strategy Driven

For small business owners, reducing operational costs is essential for the success of the company. Fortunately, there are several strategies to use for reducing operational costs and ensuring that a small business remains profitable. Below are eight effective ways to reduce operational costs in your small business.

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Can Lean Manufacturing Put an End to Sweatshops?

Harvard Business Review

It involves replacing traditional mass manufacturing with “lean manufacturing” principles. Over the last thirty years, the lean approach — developed by Japanese automakers — has permeated the manufacturing sector in developed countries, but is much less commonly used in the developing world.

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Three Things Your Company Can Learn from a Bottle of Water

Harvard Business Review

That's more than triple the rate of the market. As a manufacturing company grows, it benefits from economies of scale and can focus teams of people on extracting the maximum productivity from its plant operations. IKEA originally designed its "Bang" mug to cost just 50 cents. But service companies are different.

Company 17
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The Dirty Little Secret About Digitally Transforming Operations

Harvard Business Review

the Internet of Things (IoT), Digital Manufacturing, and big data and advanced analytics. Operations in a Connected World. Back in the 1980s and 1990s, lean manufacturing was the Big New Idea and it seemed like everyone was learning new tools with Japanese names. ” Insight Center. Sponsored by Accenture.

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How Chief Data Officers Can Get Their Companies to Collect Clean Data

Harvard Business Review

Cleaning up data downstream is expensive and not scalable, because data is a byproduct of business processes and operations like marketing, sales, plant operations, and so on. This requires close collaboration with the operating units and IT. High-quality data can reduce the cost and risk of IT projects.

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Bringing Gender Balance to Nestle Italy

Harvard Business Review

More in my series on showing how the gender balancing program at Nestle , on which I have been working with them, has gone down well even in the more macho countries in which the company operates. Market share has increased 10% per year. "We This time I'm looking at Italy. To be innovative, we need to be gender balanced," he says. "In

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Breaking the Death Grip of Legacy Technologies

Harvard Business Review

Managers constantly try to fit new market needs to existing processes and routines. The Future of Operations. Even General Motors, which had a bird’s eye view of the Toyota Production System from its joint venture with Toyota at New United Motors Manufacturing Inc. Sometimes they are a fit, but often they are not.