Recast Your City


Book Description

Community development expert Ilana Preuss explains how local leaders can revitalize their downtowns or neighborhood main streets by bringing in and supporting small-scale manufacturing. Small-scale manufacturing businesses help create thriving places, with local business ownership opportunities and well-paying jobs that other business types can't fulfill.




Surviving Supply Chain Integration


Book Description

The managed flow of goods and information from raw material to final sale also known as a "supply chain" affects everythingâ€"from the U.S. gross domestic product to where you can buy your jeans. The nature of a company's supply chain has a significant effect on its success or failureâ€"as in the success of Dell Computer's make-to-order system and the failure of General Motor's vertical integration during the 1998 United Auto Workers strike. Supply Chain Integration looks at this crucial component of business at a time when product design, manufacture, and delivery are changing radically and globally. This book explores the benefits of continuously improving the relationship between the firm, its suppliers, and its customers to ensure the highest added value. This book identifies the state-of-the-art developments that contribute to the success of vertical tiers of suppliers and relates these developments to the capabilities that small and medium-sized manufacturers must have to be viable participants in this system. Strategies for attaining these capabilities through manufacturing extension centers and other technical assistance providers at the national, state, and local level are suggested. This book identifies action steps for small and medium-sized manufacturersâ€"the "seed corn" of business start-up and developmentâ€"to improve supply chain management. The book examines supply chain models from consultant firms, universities, manufacturers, and associations. Topics include the roles of suppliers and other supply chain participants, the rise of outsourcing, the importance of information management, the natural tension between buyer and seller, sources of assistance to small and medium-sized firms, and a host of other issues. Supply Chain Integration will be of interest to industry policymakers, economists, researchers, business leaders, and forward-thinking executives.




How to Start a Manufacturing Business


Book Description

This guide will walk you step by step through all the essential phases of starting a successful manufacturing based business. To profit in a new manufacturing business, you need to consider the following questions: What business am I in? What products do I provide? Where is my market? Who will buy? Who is my competition? What is my sales strategy? What merchandising methods will I use? How much money is needed to operate my firm? How will I get the work done? What management controls are needed? How can they be carried out? And many more. This guide will help you answer all these questions and more. Here's what's in the book: Things to consider before you start - crucial things you must consider before you start pouring in your hard earned money. Ignore it at your own peril. How to plan and start your new manufacturing business - complete, step by step instructions, this is must-know must-do information; ignore it and you stand a good chance to fail. You get specifically designed instructions for each phase. How to develop winning marketing strategies for your manufacturing business How to plan and execute a results driven advertising program - tips and strategies to make your advertising pay off big. How to find new customers - new customers and more sales are essential for profit and growth. Here's a little known yet extremely effective ten-step formula to locate and find new customers. How to set the right prices - pricing secrets to help you make money and still be competitive. You get specifically designed instructions for a manufacturing based business. How to fix production mistakes. How to set up a quality control system. The lease or buy decision - a revealing look at the pros and cons of leasing vs. buying and which option is right for you. All these and much much more. Get These 5 Valuable Free Gifts (a limited time offer) Place your order by the end of this month and I will also include instant download instructions for the following free gifts: Free Gift #1: Business Financial Planner This is a multi featured, fully operational Excel based software program. It is a financial management program that will help you prepare budgets, cash flow projections, projected income statements, plan and analyze your start up expenses and sales and much more. Free Gift #2: A Simple Business Plan Template In MS Word Format Allows you to craft a good basic business plan quickly and easily. Free Gift #3: How to Improve Your Leadership and Management Skills (eBook) How to lead and manage people; powerful tips and strategies to motivate and inspire your people to bring out the best in them. Be the boss people want to give 200 percent for. Free Gift #4: Video Training Course - How To Gain A Competitive Advantage Learn how to get a competitive advantage with this course. Learn how to brand, study your competition, identify customers and their preferences, create pricing strategies and much more. Leverage the uniqueness of your business to create a real competitive advantage. Free Gift #5: Video Training Course - How To Grow Your Business You have started your business and now you think you are ready to grow. How do you really know if you and your company are ready for the next step? This course will help you determine if a growth opportunity is right for you.




The Unpredictable Certainty


Book Description

This book contains a key component of the NII 2000 project of the Computer Science and Telecommunications Board, a set of white papers that contributed to and complements the project's final report, The Unpredictable Certainty: Information Infrastructure Through 2000, which was published in the spring of 1996. That report was disseminated widely and was well received by its sponsors and a variety of audiences in government, industry, and academia. Constraints on staff time and availability delayed the publication of these white papers, which offer details on a number of issues and positions relating to the deployment of information infrastructure.




Service Business Development


Book Description

Over the last decade, capital goods manufacturers have added services to products as a way of responding to eroding margins and the loss of strategic differentiation. Based on over twelve years of research, this book provides a thorough overview of the strategies available for value creation through service business development.




It's Not Magic


Book Description

It's Not Magic is a two-part story of how a small, struggling manufacturing supplier, Magic Inc., transformed itself into a leading manufacturer of springs and stampings. First, is the historical account of a group of people who faced the realities of the current and coming business world head on--not only did they survive--they thrived and increased sales from four million dollars annually to sixty million annually. Second, Klein and Zawacki share the processes and programs they used to stabilize Magic, Inc. in The Magic Workbook, designed for students and professionals alike. They include the charts, lists, questionnaires, and programs that will be of practical use to others seeking to economically re-energize a company.




Lean Manufacturing for the Small Shop, Second Edition


Book Description

A how-to guide to shortening delivery times, eliminating waste, improving quality, and reducing costs. It describes not only what to do, but includes many tools useful to the reader describing how to do it. It explores tools including kaizen, value stream mapping, takt time, determining optimum lot sizes, setup reduction and problem solving.




21st Century Manufacturing


Book Description

The Manufacturing Extension Partnership (MEP) - a program of the U.S. Department of Commerce's National Institute of Standards and Technology - has sought for more than two decades to strengthen American manufacturing. It is a national network of affiliated manufacturing extension centers and field offices located throughout all fifty states and Puerto Rico. Funding for MEP Centers comes from a combination of federal, state, local and private resources. Centers work directly with manufacturing firms in their state or sub-state region. MEP Centers provide expertise, services and assistance directed toward improving growth, supply chain positioning, leveraging emerging technologies, improving manufacturing processes, work force training, and the application and implementation of information in client companies through direct assistance provided by Center staff and from partner organizations and third party consultants. 21st Century Manufacturing seeks to generate a better understanding of the operation, achievements, and challenges of the MEP program in its mission to support, strengthen, and grow U.S. manufacturing. This report identifies and reviews similar national programs from abroad in order to draw on foreign practices, funding levels, and accomplishments as a point of reference and discusses current needs and initiatives in light of the global focus on advanced manufacturing,




Information Technology for Manufacturing


Book Description

This book describes a vision of manufacturing in the twenty-first century that maximizes efficiencies and improvements by exploiting the full power of information and provides a research agenda for information technology and manufacturing that is necessary for success in achieving such a vision. Research on information technology to support product and process design, shop-floor operations, and flexible manufacturing is described. Roles for virtual manufacturing and the information infrastructure are also addressed. A final chapter is devoted to nontechnical research issues.




Manufacturing Mastery


Book Description

While there are those who say manufacturing is dying, it is not and will not. Without a universal vow of poverty, growing economies will only increase demand. Manufacturing in the 21st century is not a question of if -- Rather, it is a function of why, what, who, where, and how. The nature and pace of change in those factors are overwhelming many. Fear, futile resistance, and uncertainty are common. While manufacturing will not die, individual manufacturing companies will if they do not learn to thrive in this new world. This book is a dynamic guide for manufacturing leaders who want to reduce the ambiguity and overwhelming changes and develop a realistic, progressive, and responsive thinking process that enables success. It provides a business operating system framework that is the foundation for connecting the many pieces of a manufacturing business into an effective, profitable operation. The author walks through the elements, relationships, capabilities, and mutability 21st-century manufacturing requires. Executives of manufacturing companies will be better able to think about and execute viable strategies leveraging the changing economy. Essentially, manufacturing is becoming increasingly complex, as are business and socioeconomic and political realities. Rapidly evolving technology adds to the confusing environment that precludes “more of the same, better, faster and cheaper” as a workable business strategy. The tsunami of information hitting owners and leaders is overwhelming many, and it is easy to become frozen in place. Economic growth and improving standards of living require that all of this change be broken into bite-size understandable pieces that thaw the minds of executives, allowing them to assess what is best right now, and move forward. This book does not overwhelm with details and models; rather it provides thinking and examples in small chunks that enable manufacturers to develop and master skills for high-level strategic leadership in ambiguity.