Tips to Make Your Company Lean and Mean in 2016

This past year saw steady growth throughout the industrial sectors of the United States and Canada. With the stress of an election looming, and an uncertain future in Asia, businesses are seeing a steady decline at the start of the New Year.

Business cycles come and go. Growth will eventually prevail, but until then, here are some tips and tricks to keep your business above water.

Eliminate Extraneous Expenses

Every company has that one machine or computer from the Stone Age that keeps breaking down or a process/procedure that has become redundant over time. Now is the time to replace the long-term liability with a short term cost or investment of time. Even if replacing the old machine costs a good deal, the loss of time every time it breaks down, and the loss of money with every mechanic that has to work on it, weighs down your business. Get rid of it.

Evaluate Enticements

In tough times it is best to remember that your company has not always been in the red. Analyze your successes. How did you entice customers before? Take your successes and reverse engineer them to replicate the win. Overall, cost to return does not have to be high, it just has to work.

Order Your Work

Make a list of priorities for your factory. Arrange them by value, and then assess the potential to combine efforts on projects. For example, if you have to machine 10 roller cams of one size, and for another job you have 20 of the same cams, buy bulk rods of steel and allocate time to keep the cutter running till both orders are filled.

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