Record-Breaking Sales: Barely Braking Even
I was talking the other day with the chief executive of a shop when he made the following comment, "We have record-breaking sales, yet we’re barely breaking even. We ran the numbers, and on almost every line item, our costs are up a tenth of a percent or so. That doesn’t sound like much, but at the end of our study, those one-tenths added up to almost 7 percent. The Fed and Greenspan missed it. Inflation is alive and well. I can show it to you in my books."
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前几天，我在一家商店的首席执行官发表评论时说：“我们的销售量有创纪录的销售，但我们几乎没有打破。占百分之十的十分之一。这听起来并不多，但是在我们的研究结束时，十分之十的加起来加起来近7％。美联储和格林斯潘错过了它。通货膨胀还活着。我可以在我的书中向您展示。”
他是对的。他是“十分之一的死亡”。但是，对这种情况的责任不仅属于我们的供应商。大多数公司发现自己在钳子之间，客户群要求一方面有不断减少的价格，而另一方面则是供应基础，而另一方面则降低了成本。公司要做什么？
特色内容
Customer Base
当然，我们的客户期望他们购买的产品的价格持续不错，这当然不是新闻。许多原材料的全球升级和短供应是对许多较大的原始设备制造商的警钟和现实检查。这些OEM基于其机构绩效和购买代理绩效激励措施，该绩效激励措施持续从每个供应商那里降低购买价格的5％。
但是，为了使减少目标变得更加不可能实现，这些公司的政策和购买计划实际上是通过减少地块尺寸，减少交货时间并偿还向供应商的付款来增加供应商的成本。
Reduced lot sizes make parts more expensive by increasing the percentage of setup time for each of the smaller number of parts produced. Decreasing lead times make spot purchases for materials, tools or supplies necessary usually at higher-than-budgeted prices. Perhaps premium freight is needed.
将福特和通用汽车降至垃圾债券状态意味着，大男孩们肯定会通过向其供应商扩展付款来利用其供应商的信用，而不是向商业纸市场支付高昂的利率。快速 - 与在债券市场上以超过14％的利息借贷相比，额外的30天额外付费节省了什么？
Supply Base
Even Rip Van Winkle could tell you what has happened to raw material prices over the past 2 years. Anyone who drives knows that the price of gasoline is no longer $0.339 a gallon. Electricity rates and energy costs might be only a few percent of your operational cost, but ours is a transformational industry. Without the application of ever more expensive energy to make materials, there will be no parts to ship. Also, what area of the economy and our industry's supply base is not affected by increases in materials or energy costs?
What's A Company To Do?
当攻击来自两个方向时，必须做的第一件事是保护袭击即将来临的边界。帕特·布坎南（Pat Buchanan）从未到达白宫，但他在9/11后的时代中对我们所有人的呼吁都忠于我们所有人。我们的业务也是如此。
注意我们的应收账款必须是一项日常任务，或者我们可以发现是我们正在从客户方面承销攻击的是我们。同样，我们必须在尽可能地从供应商那里维持稳定价格的纪律。如果全球现实使这不可能，我们必须负责并确保我们的业务不会受到这些增加的伤害。
在这种情况下，真正的教训来自于避免三轴压力的冶金学教授的原则。只要应力在2D字段中，材料就可以保持其完整性。但是，当以三轴或3D方式遇到压力时，材料很快就会失败。作为经理的最重要工作是防止第三战线发挥作用。
第三面
我们的操作是第三阵线。如果我们要从客户或供应商方面幸免于难，我们必须绝对确定我们的运营是有序的，并且它们正在不断改进。这样，我们可以在其他方面恢复可能的损失。
较小的地块尺寸可以通过减少的设置时间来抵消。这也有助于您的公司在较短的交货时间内保持敏捷。避免在整个操作中浪费是盈利的另一个领域。您是否真的需要拥有所有这些用品，工具，包装材料和方法？
Inside the four walls, floors and ceilings of our shops, everything we see (and most of what we don't see) had to be paid for. Why is it there? Should it still be there? What is on order that doesn't have to be?
There is not much we can do about customers that believe the globally lowest price, decreasing 5 percent per year is their birthright forever. There is not much we can do to lower the prices of raw materials needed to make our products. There is nothing significant we can do to lower the cost of oil and energy in today's global market.
However, the secret to our business success today and sustainability in the future lies with our ability to continuously improve our operations: reorganizing, requalifying, rethinking, reconsidering and reinventing the way we transform materials into parts.
Read: Take Your “Economist,” Not Your Engineer, to IMTS This Year
That is why the chief executive I mentioned was so cheery as we discussed his plant reorganization. He knows what the issues are and he knows what his people can do about them. How about you?
