Many companies are looking to weather the current economic downturn.  We’ve all heard the politicians talk about creating jobs, or giving stimulus.  We’ve heard about the countless number of reasons as to why we’re in this mess.  What we haven’t heard is what can companies and people do right now to help the economy get back on it’s feet. 

We here at Teraeon don’t see the economic situation as a problem, we look at it, instead, as an opportunity to present solid solutions to some of the problems that have been plaguing companies for years now.  Many companies run “fat,” meaning their operations are not running as efficiently as they can be.  Managers usually know this but don’t really know what to do about it.  And contrary to popular belief, this happens not only in the manufacturing arena, but also around the office. 

Many times employees will do repetitive work over and over again when things can be automated through the use of technology.  These types of fixes are called “soft saves,” meaning the company will essentially be saving money, but the cost reduction can be tracked only on the theoretical level rather than with an actual number.

Too many times companies focus on “hard saves,”  which means either 1. a reduction in inventory or 2.  a reduction in employees.  However they fail to see the true value in soft saves as in many cases the soft saves can actually save the company more money in terms of time-value, than a hard save necessarily would.

So what are the principals that you take into consideration when attempting to run a more lean operation?  First, take steps to see where work is repetitive.  In the majority of those cases you can reduce work-load by automating those processes.  Don’t look at your operation from 2000 miles up, work on each area of operation separately and then work on the overlapping areas after.

USE TECHNOLOGY… we cannot stress than enough.  Although you will have resistance at first, the deployment of new technology will make your employees lives easier in the long run!! Complaints will go away, and workers will have a better overall atmosphere to work in. At Teraeon we focus on helping companies use web technology to reduce costs in total operations. This will not only make your company run more lean, but it will also help weather the economic storm and help you run even better when the economy is back on track.

Tags: Business Process Improvement, Business Process Management, economic downturn, Internet Consulting, IT Consulting, Lean, saving money, Six Sigma., technology

This entry was posted on Wednesday, February 4th, 2009 at 11:09 am and is filed under Business Process Improvement, Business Technology. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.