Product Management - All Posts - Ze'ev Ronen - Business Excellence

A few days ago, at one of my late-night stops at a gas station, I felt like eating a popsicle. Unable to decide which brand to choose, I bought one of each. At that point I noticed that although wrapped in similar size wrappings, one popsicle weighed more than the other. MAGNUM weighed 85 grams while Milka weighed only 69 grams. The Milka popsicle is more expensive. Yes, it costs more though it is substantially smaller.

Ei'lam and I analyzed the company's operations, and for all other fields managed to create a profit generating work-plan with reasonable effort. Contrastingly, it seemed impossible to create such a work-plan for the import and distribution side of the business.

One of the immediate and daily examples for this technique, also mentioned in the book, is shaving razors. Until 1971 only one blade was commonly used. Then Gillette released a razor with two blades: one pulls the hair and the second cuts it.
Later, they added a third, and even fourth, blades. I stopped at three blades.

At the time Moshe was the CEO of Eyal Optics, and I was just starting as the CEO of Shamir Optical Industries. Shamir Optical and Eyal Optics had a complex relationship. On the one hand Eyal were our clients. We supplied them with glass molds for manufacturing plastic multifocal lenses, and they owed us a lot of money. One the other hand, Eyal were our "home lab".

The subtraction used by Itamar isn’t only of a key or other accessory whose role in opening the door is eliminated. The essence is simple and smart management of the right to open the lock and enter a home, club, center, pool, etc. Instead of the subtracted key, the system utilizes an accessory most of us already have: a smartphone. I believe anyone managing a community center or using one often appreciates Nemlock's use.

What did it feel like, the last time you were complimented? For a nice outfit, doing well in school or on a successfully completed project? How did you feel posting about your kid's or grandkid's high grades on Facebook, or WhatsApp, and got dozens of likes?

In a course I gave to a certain company, some employees mentioned the "lean production" the company was implementing at one of its divisions. Nathan, who works at that division, stated that "actually, all this lean stuff has one hidden agenda. It's directed towards moving maintenance over to the operators, loading them with more tasks than they are already loaded with".

Just keep one spare tube in the drawer. When the current one is finished, take out the new one, take it out of its box, but don't throw the box away. Place the empty box in the same place as your shopping list, as a reminder of what you need to buy. By the time you use up the present tube of toothpaste, you will have bought a new tube on a routine shopping trip at the drug store or supermarket.

If we have product trees, where the materials composing the final product are detailed, it is easy to work in the IT system to link the materials requiring movement from the warehouse for production and packing of the product sold or entering the warehouse before sale.

Many companies I have encountered search for ways to save "in the spotlight", meaning areas where it is easy to see and to attribute to a particular focal point in pricing – for example, purchasing, defective product, work costs or logistics. And an action whose objective is to strengthen employee bonds falls under Welfare and is usually considered a luxury, ending up being the first thing to cut.

When the dilemma is personal, I recommend making your own decision in all cases. Remember that everyone, including those close to you, has personal agendas and interests in your decision. However objective the person you choose to advise you may be, they will be influenced by their own attitudes and perceptions of the matter. When the decision is an organizational one, the situation is different, and I'll expand on this later.

This is the first chapter from my new book: Manage! Best Value Practices for Effective Management. The purpose of this book is to provide a fresh look on how you can improve business results by making your company matter to your employees.

At a major public company's plant, output was never measured. Production planning was performed on the basis of machine work hours for each product, and there was no control undertaken on this either. As the objective is to produce some kind of product, or to provide a service, we need to measure output and not the hours during which we have manufactured or planned production.

If we address the 20% of principal products manufactured (see example later on), we can attain a significant improvement in results (eg. profits). In this way, we can concentrate our efforts and resources and be decisive and efficient.