Boeing and Manufacturer of Southwest’s Florida One

This is a wonderful video depicting the manufacturing of a Boeing 737 for Southwest Airlines:

I hope you enjoyed that as much as I did!

Dave Gardner, Gardner & Associates Consulting
http://www.gardnerandassoc.com

Dave Gardner’s “Thank God It’s Monday” 26APR10

“Thank God It’s Monday” is to help companies thrive!

This week’s focus: business execution

Kaizen, a Japanese word for “improvement” or “change for the better,” is an approach for eliminating waste and improving business execution.

Kaizen is not a program or a project with a beginning, middle and an end—it is a never-ending quest to implement changes that ensure a company, a department or a function continues to improve.

How is your department eliminating waste and improving each month, quarter and year to ensure you thrive?

Thought for the week:

“There are precious few Einsteins among us. Most brilliance arises from ordinary people working together in extraordinary ways.”
Roger Von Oech

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Dave Gardner, Gardner & Associates Consulting
http://www.gardnerandassoc.com

© 2010 Gardner & Associates Consulting  All Rights Reserved

Note:  To receive an email version of “Thank God It’s Monday” to start your week, please subscribe here.  I would very much appreciate your suggesting to others that they subscribe.

Privacy Statement:  Our subscriber lists are never rented, sold, or loaned to any other parties for any reason.

Best practices for selling and producing customized, configurable products

The best practices for selling and producing customized, configurable products are:

• producing a customized product on demand,
• for a specific, named customer,
• based on the order attributes specified by the customer (or their representative) within an online tool offered for that express purpose,
• after receipt of an actual order, and,
• a customized product is produced with the same efficiency as one would expect from a non-customized (or mass-produced) product.

Most manufacturers of customized products produce them under sub-optimal business processes. We often find that the sales, dealer and customer side of the business are not well aligned with the back office creating tremendous inefficiencies, errors, rework and order delays. We work with clients on the front end of the process and, when indicated, on the back office processes as well.

The inefficiencies come with a considerable cost.  Industry experts estimate a customizer’s inefficiencies nominally cost 1.5-3.5% of gross revenues year after year and sometimes much more.

Many customizers experience low single-digit profits that they are constantly challenged to attain or even maintain as the cost of variety increases which further erodes profits.  There is nothing worse than working your tail off to make almost no profit quarter after quarter, year after year.

To realize enterprise-wide efficiencies, I have long advocated that manufacturers offering configurable products look at this business challenge holistically. I apply a holistic approach with my clients.

If you are a customizer, isn’t it time you implemented a solution that improves efficiency and profits and delights your customers as well?

Dave Gardner, Gardner & Associates Consulting

http://www.gardnerandassoc.com

© 2010 Gardner & Associates Consulting

Take your company to the next level–free resources

If you’re past the honeymoon stage in your business, you know that taking shortcuts have a nasty way of blowing up in your face.  Eventually.

BUT there are always a few people who seem to effortlessly zero in on the key points in any meeting, negotiation, management crises or opportunity.  They get more done, faster – both alone and through others.

Warren Buffett is an extreme example.  In 1991, his multi-billion dollar investment in Salomon Brothers was at the edge of disaster.  The government was *this close* to effectively shutting them down.

Buffett had to choose a new CEO, making what he considered the most important hire of his life.  And he did.   In 15 minutes.  He met the guy for 15 minutes and decided to hire him.  And it was a fantastic choice.

Astounding, no?

Was it luck?  No.  Nor was it a kind of reckless shortcut in which he “hoped” it would work out.

Buffett has systematically trained his mind to see subtle things in every day situations that almost everyone else misses.  He can “see the unseen.”

Not in a mystical way.  In a practical way.

The good news is that you and I can learn these skills.  Maybe not to the level of  Warren Buffett, but certainly to the level that you know in your heart you were meant to achieve.

My friend and colleague Dov Gordon has put together a free online video course for entrepreneurs and small business owners that teaches you just that.  It’s only available for another week or so and I recommend you go get it now.

The course is called “The Simple Secrets of Gordian-Knot Management.”

You get it in four parts:

Chapter 1:  ”How to Strike at the Root, While Everyone Hacks at the Leaves.”   This is short, just 14 minutes.  But it will change the way you think.  (Available now. No registration required.  Click here to be taken to the web page.)

Chapter 2:   “How to Win Your Customers’ Hearts – by Reading Their Minds.”  (Available now at the same link.  Free registration required because he usually sells this for $149.  Naturally, Dov protects it behind digital walls.  But this week you can walk in without paying.)

Chapter 3:  ”Time Alchemy.”  If you’ve ever had only “some” success with time management, it’s because you’ve never yet seen the big picture this clearly!  (Available in a few days.)

Chapter 4:  ”The Critical 10% of Management Skills that Make You Look Brilliant 90% of the Time.”  The 90-10 rule applied to management skills.  It’s much simpler when you can confidently focus on just a few things that give you leverage.  Real leverage.  (Coming soon.)

I don’t often promote other people’s material.  However, I’ve seen Dov’s work.  I’ve known him for a long time and have always been impressed with his clear thinking and unique ability to teach it to others.

And it won’t cost you anything.

WHY is Dov giving this all away for free this week and next?  Because he wants to introduce himself.  He knows that some will want to continue with him in a paid program.  If you do eventually buy something, I will probably earn a commission for having made the introduction.  But you’ll thank me for telling you about his free training long before that happens.

So do this:

1.  Go register for the $149 training while it’s still free:

2.  Watch your email so you know when chapters 3 and 4 will be released.

You have nothing to lose and everything to gain!

Dave Gardner, Gardner & Associates Consulting
http://www.gardnerandassoc.com

Paradox of Choice is ludicrous

It’s one thing when a person writes a book and gets it all wrong but it is yet another thing when entrepreneurs believe the nonsense Barry Schwartz is promulgating merely because he is a psychologist and a college professor.

I just posted the following comment on a different blog:

From your post, you offer this observation:

“People only want a limited amount of choice. And that’s not to say consumer behavior won’t change in the future, but consumers are fairly intolerant of the paradox of choice, which basically states that choice brings us happiness but too much choice makes decision-making miserable.”

This is nothing other than pure, unadulterated B.S. The professor who wrote about the “Paradox of Choice” writes about being overwhelmed after walking into a retail outlet to “just buy a pair of jeans” and was “overwhelmed” about all the choices he could chose from.  He said it was so disturbing that he had to write a book to understand his reaction. Customizers need to throw a flag on the concept of “paradox of choice.”  This book is complete nonsense.  Just because a professor writes a book doesn’t make it so.  Customize on–give your customers what they want.

Barry–get a grip!  Less is not more–it is simply less.

Also, here are some best practices to consider to help your customers converge on a solution that best meets their needs.  If you are considering constraining choice from your customers, stop!  It may be that you need a configurator to guide customers through the variety available to them.  My firm helps companies with that.

Dave Gardner, Gardner & Associates Consulting
http://www.gardnerandassoc.com

© 2010 Gardner & Associates Consulting  All Rights Reserved

Dave Gardner’s “Thank God It’s Monday” 19APR10

“Thank God It’s Monday” is to help companies thrive!

This week’s focus: business execution

Look at everything through the eyes of the customer; understand all customer experiences determine whether customers come back for more.

Using social media to identify customer satisfaction issues is good, but, only if you relentlessly follow up to resolve customer issues. If there is no closed-loop corrective action process, then the lesson you learn is of no benefit to your company or your customers.

Companies that thrive pro-actively head off issues before they create friction with customers.

Thought for the week:

Visionary leaders have a clear sense of their destination and exactly what things they need to accomplish to get there. They know intimately their high-yield activities, those that result in the progress they need to make to get to where they want to go. Anything else is a waste of their precious time and they disregard it. They know that the real secret of personal effectiveness is concentration of purpose.” Robin Sharma, “The Monk Who Sold His Ferrari” page 175

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Dave Gardner, Gardner & Associates Consulting
http://www.gardnerandassoc.com

© 2010 Gardner & Associates Consulting  All Rights Reserved

Note:  To receive an email version of “Thank God It’s Monday” to start your week, please subscribe here.  I would very much appreciate your suggesting to others that they subscribe.

Privacy Statement:  Our subscriber lists are never rented, sold, or loaned to any other parties for any reason.

Best practices for the a la carte customer

If your company offers configurable products or services, what are the best practices for connecting with your customers?  Your company would:

• Modularize your offerings in such a way that customer requirements can be derived from standardized modules (or components or capabilities) allowing for acquisition “a la carte.” This, of course, requires that there has been a “rationalization” effort to identify those essential options or value components that customers will require.

• Maintain a listing—usually within a configurator—of standardized modules as well as any rules for combining the modules into fully-configured customer orders.

• Provide a means to seamlessly share the same understanding about customer options across the enterprise (with customers, distributors, sales, order administration, and customer service).

• Extend the capability to create personalized orders and explore quotation alternatives with the customers, distributors and channel partners (extended enterprise) via tools offered and supported for that purpose. This allows customers to conduct a “what if” analysis looking at different capability and pricing options.  [Note: Three things a customer really cares about are (1) what are my options, (2) how much is this set of options going to cost, and, (3) for manufacturers of products, how long will it take to produce it? Truly effective systems need to address all of these issues.]

• View the likelihood that any two orders would be identical as a coincidence and set up the business accordingly, e.g., complete modularity—no bundles.

• For product manufacturers, produce orders only after receipt of an order—no stocking of any finished products.

How does the business behave differently?

• For product and service providers:
  • Orders are driven directly to Order Administration or Customer Service
  • Development, Product Management and/or Marketing is involved only when a new module is needed.
  • Product management makes determinations about “saleable” option combinations.
  • No people-dependency for expert knowledge about allowable option combinations.
• For product manufacturers:
  • Engineering is not involved in the creation of a bill of material to support individual order configurations.
  • Engineering defines “allowable” product configurations based on technical feasibility, not marketing or sales policy. This is important. You do not want to change the logic behind allowable or permissible configurations every time the marketing or sales philosophy changes. To do otherwise creates constant rework and churn.
  • Engineering designs the product with product modularity in mind.

The attributes above demonstrate why offering configurable products and services must be approached as an enterprise-wide business strategy, not merely a departmental hurdle.  Efficiencies must flow across the entire enterprise. The mission is providing unique products and services tailored to the customer’s needs with the same or greater efficiency than is presently realizable.

The modularization of the offerings must not occur in a silo separate from the rest of the organization or the impact will be sacrificing speed and efficiencies to meet each customer’s requirements.  And, the inefficiencies, of course, undermine profits.

Customers at the high-end of the marketplace want products that are highly-personalized, unique and offer superior value. For example, there is a product configurator for the Bentley GTC Speed, a very high-end automobile is an excellent example of how a company has approached giving customers a lot of choice in how they want their $250,000 automobile configured.

Dave Gardner, Gardner & Associates Consulting
http://www.gardnerandassoc.com

© 2010 Gardner & Associates Consulting  All Rights Reserved

A medical malpractice trial Part 2

My family initiated a medical malpractice trial against a doctor for failure to follow the standard of care required to safely perform a cardio version procedure back in April 2007. I wrote about some of the issues related to the trial here yesterday.

Background: To safely perform this cardio version procedure requires that the patient be on a therapeutic level of a blood thinner for 3 weeks prior to the procedure and 4 weeks after to dramatically reduce the risk of stroke that might ensue from this procedure. She was not at a therapeutic level prior to or the day of the procedure. The risk of stroke from not being properly prepared was estimated to be 200 times what it would have been without proper protection. There was no claim that my mother had not been compliant taking the medication as directed to prepare for the procedure.

In spite of the fact my mother suffered a massive stroke and died 3 days after the procedure, we lost the malpractice case today in what appears to be a case of jury nullification.

The jury took it upon themselves to only look at one issue–the fact that my mother would not follow the advice of the doctor to take a drug that was known to cause her severe nosebleeds when first diagnosed with atrial fib–and refused to even consider the evidence that the doctor was negligent. We learned this when our attorney was able to interview the jury immediately following the verdict.

The jury reached their verdict based on their feeling that my mother was negligent by not taking a blood thinning drug since the onset of her atrial fib as recommended by the doctor, and, based on that, they concluded “it was inevitable” that she would have a stroke so the doctor should not be held liable.

Probability is not inevitability–it is simply probability. There was no testimony about “inevitability.”

We took the doctor to trial for his negligence. The defense put my mother’s health history on trial. The defense prevailed.

Our attorney advised that juries are loathe to find doctors guilty of malpractice. They figure that even if the doctor is guilty, they likely won’t do it again. The doctor lied on the stand about material facts but that ultimately didn’t matter as the jury never looked at his actions or testimony in rendering their verdict.

I encourage you to read Part 1 of this story. You’ll read (amongst other things) that this doctor has lost 4 prior malpractice cases during his 16 years in practice, a fact that the jury never heard due to legal restrictions.

I am disappointed this matter concluded the way it did.  But, I’m not sorry we pursued legal action.  We owed it to my mother.

Dave Gardner

A medical malpractice trial Part 1

For the past week, I’ve been involved in what seems and feels like an around the clock effort:  a trial my family initiated against a cardiologist for medical malpractice in the premature death of my mother nearly 3 years ago.  This is a jury trial in Superior Court in the State of California.

• When you initiate legal action, even when you hope the matter will settle, your attorney prepares as though you will have to go to trial even when you hope the matter settles between the party.  Since December 2008, the doctor’s lawyer and insurance company have encouraged the doctor to settle with us–he has consistently declined.
• Our jury was selected from a panel of 66–about 30 of whom had a serious opportunity to serve on the jury panel.  Many of the potential jurors spoke English only as a second language.  The judge had no difficulty dismissing potential jurors immediately if they had language skills that would make it difficult to follow the case.  Our jury was selected after about 5 hours of actual court time.
• The trial is mentally and physically exhausting for the family.  I can’t tell you if this is because it occupies your mind every waking minute, because there is so much at stake for both sides, because of the mind-numbing detail in this case or perhaps because of the personal loss that brings this matter to court.
• The medical lobby has been extremely effective in California.  Because my mother died, the maximum possible financial damage award is $250,000.  The jury is not aware that there is a cap on award.  If we prevail, they could award $0 or millions.  After they have completed their jury service, they are thanked for their service and never know that the amount of the award is capped at $250,000.  This amount has not been increased by the state legislature for over 30 years. This low amount makes it difficult to find great attorneys willing to take on such cases.  [Note:  If you survive medical malpractice, the same caps do not apply--it's only if you die.]
• In another troubling nod to the medical lobby in California, prior medical malpractice cases are inadmissible in a malpractice trial.  The jury does not know that, in this specific instance, the cardiologist has faced a total of 5 malpractice cases in his 16-year career.  We know that prior to December 2008, he has lost 2: 1 by jury verdict and 1 by settlement.  Our attorney has told us that the other 2 are settled and our case is all that remains. The California state website for physicians indicates that it is the authoritative source for information but it does not provide any negative information about a doctor’s background.
• Our attorney only goes to court in about 20% of his cases.  A trial requires the attorney to work all day, prep witnesses before court, at lunch, and after court is dismissed and work into the evenings.  It is grueling work.  Each case is quite different.
• In a civil trial, the plaintiffs need to convince 9 out of 12 jurors that the defendant is guilty;  the defense needs to only convince 4 out of 12 that the defendant is not guilty.  The burden is much lower than in a criminal case.  We have to prove that it is “more likely than not” that the doctor was negligent and that his negligence resulted in my mother’s premature death.
• Today in the defense presentation, I witnessed incredible sloppiness and disingenuous statements by their experts.  They took bits and pieces of data out of context and “generalized from a specific” which means to take one piece of data and apply it very broadly, even though the generalization is not only incorrect but misleading.  That is incredibly frustrating to listen to. My sense is that our attorney got more benefit out of the defense experts than the defense did via his very effective cross examinations.
• If we win the case, Medicare wants to claim $8,000 of the possible award.  Why can’t Medicare pursue their own case against the doctor?  Why is Medicare able to piggyback on our case?

Tomorrow, the defense will rest.  The judge will issue jury instructions, the attorneys for both sides will give closing arguments, and, then, the jury will get the case to render a verdict probably later in the day.

Are we going to prevail?  I believe we will. I’ll provide an update soon.

Dave Gardner

Dave Gardner’s “Thank God It’s Monday” 12APR10

“Thank God It’s Monday” is to help companies thrive!

This week’s focus: configurable products and services

The more companies can help their customers configure their lives around your products and services, the more reliant they are on you.

Companies can accelerate sales with buyers if all the options are laid out appropriately so the buyer doesn’t have the impossible task of trying to figure out what’s possible which is in all likelihood impossible.

This is how companies thrive satisfying the needs of “the a la carte customer^TM.”

Thought for the week:

“Life is mostly froth and bubble; Two things stand like stone: Kindness in another’s trouble, Courage in your own.” Adam Lindsay Gordon (1833-70)

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Dave Gardner, Gardner & Associates Consulting
http://www.gardnerandassoc.com

© 2010 Gardner & Associates Consulting  All Rights Reserved

Note:  To receive an email version of “Thank God It’s Monday” to start your week, please subscribe here.  I would very much appreciate your suggesting to others that they subscribe.

Privacy Statement:  Our subscriber lists are never rented, sold, or loaned to any other parties for any reason.

Dave Gardner’s “Thank God It’s Monday” 05APR10

“Thank God It’s Monday” is to help companies thrive!

This week’s focus: leadership

Sign on the street outside an event venue:

Psychic Fair cancelled due to unforeseen circumstances.

Besides the obvious contradiction here, many “unforeseen” circumstances in business are foreseeable.

Companies that thrive pro-actively anticipate the “unforeseen” circumstances. You aren’t tied to the railroad tracks so don’t behave as though you are. Ask for help! Call us.

Thought for the week:

“When you lose, don’t lose the lesson.” His Holiness, the 14th Dalai Lama

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Dave Gardner, Gardner & Associates Consulting
http://www.gardnerandassoc.com

© 2010 Gardner & Associates Consulting  All Rights Reserved

Note:  To receive an email version of “Thank God It’s Monday” to start your week, please subscribe here.  I would very much appreciate your suggesting to others that they subscribe.

Privacy Statement:  Our subscriber lists are never rented, sold, or loaned to any other parties for any reason.

Highest manufacturing growth since 2004

Great news this morning from the Associated Press:

The U.S. manufacturing sector expanded in March at its strongest pace in 5 1/2 years, a private trade group said Thursday, as industrial companies continue to lead the recovery from the recession.

The Institute for Supply Management, a trade group of purchasing executives, said its gauge of industrial companies rose to 59.6 in March from 56.5 in February. It is the eighth straight month of expansion and the fastest growth since July 2004, when the index was 59.9.

Economists polled by Thomson Reuters had expected the measure to read 57.

Very encouraging!

Dave Gardner, Gardner & Associates Consulting
http://www.gardnerandassoc.com