Customer Responsiveness

We discovered many things as we began working at becoming a true Quick Response company. One was that we could not do it all ourselves. We had to keep the day-to-day operations going well, and to continue making short-range fixes to keep our customers fairly happy with us as we strove to develop the longer-term solutions. Also, we needed a different perspective on our business practices, systems, and operations. We sometimes saw things as we wanted to see them, not as they really were or definitely should be. We decided to find a management consulting firm that had the capability, experience and dynamism to guide us and assist us. After interviewing twelve very successful consulting firms, we selected the Herbert W. Davis Company, logistics and customer service specialists. We made an excellent choice.

Our consultants convinced us that our goal of positioning the company for growth and profitability for the next ten or more years will result from achieving the other objectives, and getting all elements of the company working together to achieve those objectives.

We learned that becoming recognized as a leader in Quick Response capability requires the substance as well as the appear­ance of operating in QR mode. This means being able to demonstr­ate to customers that you can consistently meet (or preferably exceed) their requirements for short cycle times, high product availability, and prompt, complete status information, and actu­ally delivering orders as promised (complete and on time, every time).

You must reduce the administrative and physical-handling cycle time to process and service an order to a bare minimum, and the product must be available to ship when the order arrives.

To grow while remaining profitable, you must meet customer service requirements with minimum finished goods inventories. You must be able to forecast, plan, manufacture and ship the products that your customers need, when they are needed, without excess inventories.

The essence of operating successfully as a Quick Response company is to have exactly the right quantity of the right products available in the right place at the right time without holding excess inventories. This requires planning and managing inventory closely, from acquisition of raw materials and purchased parts all the way to its arrival at the customer facility (and even to the customer's point-of-sale).

To accomplish this, we assimilate customer-supplied point-of-sale data into our demand forecasts, making the forecasts more reliable and helping us plan reduced finished goods inventories that meet

consumer demands. This process then will work with Distribution Requirements Planning and Manufacturing Resource Planning to keep our products flowing from raw materials to our customers as needed, without redundant inventories. The lower inventory levels throughout the material pipeline result in significantly lower inventory carrying costs and reduced warehousing space require­ments and handling costs.

In addition to reduced inventory costs, we are reducing waste significantly throughout our manufacturing and distribution pro­cesses: simplifying and streamlining our operations to reduce cost as well as time in rework, handling, and transportation.

New supporting systems greatly reduce the clerical time typically spent in many of the administrative and supervisory functions to manage a cumbersome set of processes with inadequate support. This frees key people from menial, time-consuming work to perform higher-level tasks more productively.

Lean Six Sigma Consulting   World Class Manufacturing   
Balanced Scorecards  Strategic Tactical Planning  
Supply Chain Inventory Management  Principles of Total Quality Management
  Manufacturing Process Improvement