We’ve been hearing about the slow but unrelenting downfall of traditional media over the last couple years. By ‘traditional media’ I am refering to information providers that rely predominantly on print media, paid subscriptions and the related revenue from advertisers. Aside from the breakdown in traditional communication, this has never seriously bothered me until recently. Friday, April 16th, I found out that Reed Business Information is shutting down operations of two industry publications of interest to APICS members: Logistics Management and Supply Chain Management Review.

Ouch! I’ve been in the logistics and operations business for two years now, and both of these were sources of invaluable information for me… especially when I was first getting started. Each also maintained active websites with bloggers who worked in our industry giving timely commentary on the continually changing atmosphere we work in. To say that I am going to miss these resources is an understatement.

(more…)

Share:

Six months ago I was required to read a book called The Goal: A Process of Ongoing Improvement for Mgmt 341 Operations Management. Let me start out by saying this book is an absolute must read for anyone going into Operations.   It starts out with the main character, Alex Rogo, getting yelled at by his boss and needs to save the plant in the next couple months.  Through a large amount of help from his friend Jonah who coached Alex through all of his problems.  The book goes over push and pull systems, quality control issues, priority systems as well as the theory of constraints.

As boring as I thought that I this book was going to be, it wasn’t your stereotypical nasty dry reading textbook.  It actually had an in depth story with somewhat of a love story wrapped up in the middle.  Sure, at parts it was kind of textbook like, but still the amount of information I retained from reading this was much higher than any other, even well written, textbook.

(more…)

Share:

“The Goal” is one of the best business novels I have ever read and is a highly recommended read for Manufacturing/Supply Chain professionals like us. The author looks into the manufacturing system of a plant and comes up with a step by step way to improve throughput, inventory and operational expense, hence saving a dying plant. The book is not only written to make the reader aware of an idealistic way to approach a manufacturing problem, but it also highlights common mistakes in strategy and how they may create bottlenecks at various levels of a manufacturing process.

The author introduces the Theory of Constraints (TOC) in the book. TOC and its refined forms have been successfully implemented by many companies worldwide as a method of continuous improvement. Many have started using TOC, Lean and Six Sigma in tandem to continuously improve their present processes which some call the TLC Methodology.

(more…)

Share: