https://6sigma.com/cycle-time-reduction-littles-law/ Six Sigma Certification and Training Fri, 28 Feb 2025 10:11:43 +0000 hourly 1 https://6sigma.com/cycle-time-reduction-littles-law/#comment-25584 Sat, 19 Oct 2013 17:52:13 +0000 https://opexlearning.com/resources/?p=9023#comment-25584 Thank you all for your contributions. Every one of them forced my mind to think of the things I have done by instinct. We seem to have a lot of theories but not much actual experience quoted. Nothing operates in a vacuum and the two areas I see missing are the Capital constraints and the contribution of the sales department. The last company I worked for we turned out orders in an average of 7 to 10 days which ideally would take 4 to 6 weeks. We were constrained by capital as we were not allowed to buy steel coils until we had an order, headquarters mandate due to lack of capital. Customers wanted delivery immediately in the business of new big box stores or refit of same.
I changed the requirements by going after an industrial market where longer lead times were the norm and we could shine with our fast times. Also reduced the price on standard sizes to encourage choosing them over similar non standard components. Reasoning also that if you collected a large number of smaller orders even though they were discounted more heavily than.normal , we would be more profitable running same components in bulk without machine changes (4 to 8 hours). Also buying similar steel meant more utilization of same coil in less time.
Increased sales of this new product by 40% in two years. But never able to get a true profit figure out of it because we had to report to corporate along with a sliding scale contribution. Often wondered whether that was intenteniol to bolster main company profits to secure continuing financing.
That was the real world!
I would welcome comments on my reducing price of similar components to nudge customers into them resulting in less expense during throughput.

]]> https://6sigma.com/cycle-time-reduction-littles-law/#comment-25583 Sat, 13 Aug 2011 21:29:27 +0000 https://opexlearning.com/resources/?p=9023#comment-25583 I read this post and thought about at least two situations in a Call Center environment, reduction of Average Handle Times (or time it takes to process a call, start to finish) and cases that get delayed in queues. Both are potential projects I would like to start working on. Pete, your post is really helpful. It gives meaning to topics everyone at work is aware of but don´t quite understand why, me included. Thank you.

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