And it’s no wonder, because with the first appearance of the speculoos cookies, which are now available on pallets in the aisles of the stores, they are a staple food for me. And the Advent season with its tasty temptations is still to come! At some point, the pinching is so annoying that I shift down a gear again to get back into my pants and shirts without too much effort. After all, I don’t want to spend a lot of money on new clothes just because I can’t resist the sweet temptation.
So you can discipline yourself through an external compulsion. The same happened to a company that I like to talk about in my seminars: only when the management reduced the warehouse space by 60% were ideas developed and measures taken to make do with the reduced capacity. In the end, there were very innovative solutions that were very successful!
Today, I have observed the same system in a modified form: despite business going well, management has decided to reduce staff in the administrative areas. Vacant positions were no longer filled, employees were reassigned until the pain among colleagues became so great that they are now looking for ways to streamline and simplify processes. Effort killers are identified, the necessity of certain activities is questioned and the possibilities of the IT systems are used more intensively. The MRP no longer has to run every 4 hours and keep the dispatchers busy with materials that they have already viewed in the morning. Routine tasks such as master data maintenance are automated and the ordering of C-parts is now handled by the system. It was a pleasure to see how creative and full of ideas the team became. There is still no end in sight to the ideas, the processes are still pinching at one point or another.
I wish you a pain-free Advent season with a constant dress size 🙂
With best regards
-Bernd Reineke-
