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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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5 Ways to Retain Employees with Lean Management Practices

Chart Your Course

Lean management practices are supremely focused on company behavior and operation, and it’s just one reason why so many Silicon Valley companies have created cultures that mix fun, family and business into one profitable environment. Other Lessons From Manufacturing.

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Toyota’s Management History

Deming Institute

In 1979: A two-year management capability improvement program was implemented with the department and section managers specifying topics for operational improvement. And some people still today think of these ideas as limited to manufacturing operations.

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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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The Failure of “The Livonia Philosophy” at my GM Plant

Deming Institute

General Motors wasn’t my ideal workplace after having read Deming’s Out of the Crisis and learning a bit about Lean manufacturing in college. As I wrote about in my first post , my first job out of college was at the GM Livonia Engine Plant, outside of Detroit. But, I needed a job, so I cast a wide net.

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We Need a Better Language for Organizational Relationships

Harvard Business Review

But just as we need to know whether the evening we are about to spend is with our mother-in-law or a university buddy, managers inside organizations need to know whether the meeting they are about to have with a manufacturing expert is with an internal supplier, a team member, or a lobbyist for lean manufacturing.

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How to Break Free from Email Jail

Harvard Business Review

A lesson from lean manufacturing. One of the critical steps in lean manufacturing (or bringing lean to any other process, for that matter) is shifting to a "pull" system. Think of all of the emails and documents you have going back and forth.