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Good Article by Tim's brother

3/15/16       
Pat Gilbert

Good Article

Good Article

3/16/16       #2: Good Article by Tim's brother ...
Cabmaker

That was an interesting article Pat.
It's been a long time since I've read anything by Ed Shultz. He's always had something useful to say.

I am curious, however, about one part of his blog. He wrote: "No matter how you go to market; make sure your distribution channel is precisely aimed at your target customer."

He also wrote: "There are a number of ways in which industry companies bring their products to market........Some sell through third parties like general contractors........."

So who is the customer in this transaction? Do you do everything you can to protect the interests of the contractor or do you consider instead the interests of the end user. Sometimes these are not the same interests.

We sell all of our work directly to the end user because it's easier to understand what motivates them. For the most part they want to get the job wrapped up so they can move back out of the basement. The contractor sometimes is a bit ambivalent about how much the project costs or how long it takes.

3/16/16       #3: Good Article by Tim's brother ...
Pat Gilbert

I don't know, I was just interested in the point about selling.

3/17/16       #4: Good Article by Tim's brother ...
Jerry Cunningham

You would definitely be most interested in the needs of the end customer, the actual user of your finished product. The contractor is just a middle-man and will dump you like a high school girl with acne the moment he finds someone to underbid you. I'm not saying contractors are bad, but their agenda is not to make you money or help build your brand.

3/18/16       #5: Good Article by Tim's brother ...
Anonymous

It depends on whether your company is wholesale oriented or retail oriented. "Cabinetmaker" is retail oriented, and markets himself as such. Therefore, the end user is the customer. Their perception of your performance is important because they talk to their friends, who are also your potential customers.

My company is wholesale oriented. The end user in my case is a 1 time customer, perhaps 2 time over a 20 year span. Pleasing them is emotionally satisfying for me but is only important in as much as it makes the contractors life easier. They want happy customers which means I need to make the customer happy. But more importantly, I want to make MY customer happy, which is the contractor. He's the one who is going to give me job after job after job for year after year after year. Whatever his agenda is my agenda.

3/20/16       #6: Good Article by Tim's brother ...
Larry

We rarely see the end user. Making him happy helps the middle man make more sales and therefore us too. There are different things that drive to two.

3/20/16       #7: Good Article by Tim's brother ...
Pat Gilbert

Tangent to the OP, I have noticed that the people who seem to benefit from Paul Akers Lean tenets do repetitive work. This does not get mentioned but is, seemingly the most obvious thing, that one can do about efficiency is to make a repetitive product.

Paul has a video of a guy who makes store fixtures. I thought ok cool I can see how Lean applies to a store fixture shop. But the guy appears to make stock items.

IOW Lean does not apply as much to custom.

Paul or others would say I'm being negative but I say I'm thinking critically.

I don't see that Lean resonates as much with somebody like Larry or Alan because of this.

IOW it is something that gets assumed but is not openly stated similar to Paul stating that you don't let everyone on the bus.

Video of store fixture company.

3/20/16       #8: Good Article by Tim's brother ...
Cabmaker

It never ceases to amaze me how cathartic videos like this seem to be. Under the guise of Lean they spent 17 minutes covering one minute of nutrition.

I would have like to seen a bit more on those Andon boards or maybe how the color was used in task management. There was also some kind of a Gantt chart looking deal on a video display that looked useful. Would like to see more discussion about things like that.

3/20/16       #9: Good Article by Tim's brother ...
Cabmaker

Let me offer something constructive for these videos. Rather than spending the all bandwidth on the rah-rah part how about maybe delving more into the mechanics of how the baton was passed?

What is the mechanism that's used to limit work in process? How do they signal when to start the next phase or update the world about how far they got? It seems to me that 100% of strategy is based on status. How do they update status?

The use of color for establishing priority or assigning tasks was touched on but not a minute was spent showing how this worked. These videos seem to consist of the boss walking around asking "How does this make you feel?" Color is the management tool we use to drive down the freeway six feet away from total strangers at sixty miles an hour. How about some video minutes on that topic?

As I understand Lean it's about adding value. The first step in adding value is to free up some resources by eliminating waste.

3/22/16       #10: Good Article by Tim's brother ...
Pat Gilbert

This article, from Shultz just came out.

"Shipments per Establishment, Shipments per Employee and Shipments per $ of Payroll moved the other way. Shipments per Employee are the most conspicuous gain, improving by nearly 34% to $195,168 in annual revenue per employee, indicating significant productivity gains. This is the best I’ve seen in nearly 20 years of watching this particular measurement."

New Article

3/28/16       #11: Good Article by Tim's brother ...
David Waldmann  Member

Website: vermonthardwoods.com

"The contractor is just a middle-man and will dump you like a high school girl with acne the moment he finds someone to underbid you."

I would suggest maybe you aren't
1. Finding the right customer.
2. Treating them right.

Sure, anyone will get into the situation where price is the only object. If you allow yourself to be sucked into that hole be sure you are able to keep up with the never ending downward spiral.

We have two entirely different markets - picture frames and flooring.

In picture frames we only sell wholesale. Our customers are extremely loyal. Very rarely will we have one of our customers talk about price. Most of them, when needing something new, just order it without even asking for a price. This is because from experience they know that we are in it together for the long haul. They know that they will get the quality they expect, when we tell them it will arrive, and the price will be fair.

Our flooring business is maybe half and half retail and wholesale. Again, with our wholesale customers, they are mostly loyal. Once in a while they will go outside the fold because their customer is very budget conscious. But we court our wholesale customers carefully, only putting lots of effort into the ones that themselves tend to find customers who care more about quality than price.

While it's not quite as simple as the old adage "Quality, service or price - pick two", in a general way it is. We've chosen to leave out price. Not that we ignore it (we're not irresponsible about costs and we don't deliberately gouge* just because we can), we just don't let it make the decisions for us.

*in fact, if a job comes out much better than expected I will give the customer a break.


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