Productivitime drains at your business
What drives you as an entrepreneur? Supplying your customers with products or services you are proud of, so they happily pay you on time. Isn’t it ironic, then, that you are losing so much time on things that don’t add value to your business? Just think of the time you spend on essential tasks, such as stock management and ordering, physical management and distribution of auxiliary raw materials and spare parts, tools and office equipment or personal protective equipment, for example.
Time costs money
All time you sink into manual tasks is lost productivitime — and that productivitime is exactly what drives your profits. There’s no other way to make your business flourish.
The warehouse manager uses a pen and paper to check stock at a construction firm. One day, he’s off ill. As soon as the next day, two construction sites grind to a halt: the welding gas cylinders are empty. Why are things like this still allowed to happen? Throw out the pen and paper and allow your warehouse to check itself automatically, order extra stock and get it delivered to your sites.
Fragmentation costs money
You negotiate hard when it comes to raw materials and investments, and rightly so. But what about the hundreds of other suppliers of products that keep your organisation and production up and running day after day? Sure, they may only account for up to 10 percent of your procurement budget, but they swallow up a disproportionate amount of time for dozens of staff, who all end up doing the same tasks slightly differently. What a waste of time! And what a shame that you’re missing out on volume discounts as a result of this fragmentation.
Which supplier should we go for? The one offering the lowest prices, or course! But have you ever asked yourself why? Here’s something to try: let your internal customers help set the selection criteria. With input from production, services and engineering, you can guarantee you’re making the right choice — and you’ll save big further down the chain.
Think outside the box
Is your warehouse getting too small? It may be best to hold off for a while on requesting planning application for extra stacking space on expensive land. Try enlisting the services of a productivitime architect first to help you find solutions that don’t require any extra construction work at all.
Your warehouse is bursting at the seams. Time to build an emergency extension, right? Hold on a moment! Why not use the space between the shelves more effectively? A computer-controlled vertical lift can add hundreds of metres of rack space in an 8-metre-high, 4 by 4 cylinder!
Get the most out of your staff
Repetitive tasks are boring: no one enjoys doing them. And that’s exactly why they’re behind so many errors. So, what’s the most logical next step? Identify repetitive tasks and do something about them.
Picture a busy printworks. Pallets of A4 paper are brought in from stock. Then, a huge urgent order comes in from a top account — and a member of staff takes her eyes of the paper stack for just a second. The printing press grinds to a halt, and pandemonium ensues. The solution: an IoT sensor to monitor the paper stack as part of an integrated approach to stock management.
