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The SMOKE SIGNAL

Friday, February 27, 2004 The Cumberland Group Featured Partner Page    
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Financial Management
Management's Corner
People & Processes
Manufacturing Enhancement
CONTENTS
Cumberland Overview
1st Card Visa Case Study: Value-Stream mapping
Business Process Redesign - White Paper
Overhead allocation - does it make sense?
Bottom-Line Facilitation Skills for Business Leaders
Auto-Pilot For Better, Faster, Cheaper
Elkay Manufacturing Kaizen Case Study
Customer & Product profitability from a Lean Perspective
Key Performance Indicators - Using performance metrics to grow and guide the organization
The One-Page Strategic Growth Model - A Best Practice
Value Stream Mapping
Lean Accounting
KPI's and Continual Improvement (CI). "What Gets Measured Gets Done" for Competitive Advantage
Why you should care about Key Performance Indicators!
Team-Based Business Success – An Enterprise View
How does Lean Manufacturing differ from other improvement initiatives?
Never Give Up!...An "Unfair Advantage" From An Industry Leader
BREAK THROUGHS, Every Day - Enabling Business Teams To Solve Their Toughest Problems
Best Practice: Critical Process Redesign Blitz
Lean Process Overview
Become Lean in the Office - A Best Practice for Mid-Market Business
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Archived Articles
January 1, 2004
Vol. 1 Issue 12
Management's Corner
The One-Page Strategic Growth Model - A Best Practice
Transform Annual Planning into something valuable!
by The Cumberland Group

Dear Reader,

 

 

One of my favorite clichés is…. “everything has a cost”.   This is especially true for mid-market businesses in regards to business planning.

 

Do you invest the time and energy to perform effective strategic planning – or do you pay the cost of not planning and being totally reactive to market conditions?  Those firms that go through the motions each year to prepare annual plans that sit on the shelf actually pay a greater cost than not wasting the time preparing something that serves little purpose!

 

Effective planning for mid-market organizations is complicated by the “Lean & Mean” staffing that defines mid-market business.

 

The attached article from long-time Rainmakers Strategic Partner – The Cumberland Group, provides a Best Practice for simplifying the annual planning process and substantially enhancing the impact of business planning on your profits.

 

They elaborate a “fact-based decision making process based on clear cause & effect market dynamics”.  Your company will benefit by incorporating these ideas into your annual planning process.  This is definitely worth investigating.

 

Give me a call to discuss how Rainmakers can be of service. Thanks for your time.

 

Jon C. Liberman

Rainmakers

847/251-3327

jon@rainmkrs.com

www.rainmakers.us


[FULL STORY]
 
Value Stream Mapping
The Cumberland Group
by Michael Bremer

Value Stream Mapping
 
Recent research has shown that there is little correlation between the well-known corporate improvement programs and long-term, sustained high-performance results. An especially good example is in Jim Collins’ new book, "Good to Great." Collins stresses two attributes that distinguish the companies that grew from just “good” to long-term “great.”  First, having good, bright people in the right positions, and second, engaging the workforce in “thousands of little pushes on the flywheel,” the metaphor Collins uses.
 
Value Stream Mapping methods are an excellent way to display the flywheel in a way that is understandable to everyone.  A Value-Stream Map  (VSM) creates a visual picture of business processes that increase understanding and improve management decision-making.  A VSM equips a management team with the methods and data needed to analyze complex process relationships and to determine optimum solutions for process designs, and the value-adding components of a process. 
 
For an example of a value stream map and additional information on Value Stream Mapping and Lean or Flow manufacturing please click the following link.
 
For additional information contact Rainmakers at 847/251-3327 or click here: jon@rainmkrs.com
 

[FULL STORY]
 
KPI's and Continual Improvement (CI). "What Gets Measured Gets Done" for Competitive Advantage
by The Cumberland Group

Dear Reader,

Successfully incorporating the business culture of “Continual Improvement” into your business is one of the most difficult and rewarding challenges facing mid-market management today!  The Cumberland Group has been a Featured Partner of Rainmakers for many years. They have often provided insights and best practices for our clients in the SMOKE SIGNAL articles they author and consulting engagements they have delivered.

This article, KPI’s & Continual improvement (CI) describes how Key Performance Indicators (KPI’s) play a critical role in Continual Improvement success.  Please share some of their insights with others at your company.

You will learn where measurements fits in CI, get ideas on how to develop KPI’s for CI and get some insights on tying metrics and KPI’s into your company overall business Strategies.   Very practical advice is gained by reading this article.  Click here or on the Full Story below.

Thanks for your time.

Comments are welcome.

Jon C. Liberman
Rainmakers
847/251-3327
jon@rainmkrs.com
www.rainmakers.us


 


[FULL STORY]
 
Why you should care about Key Performance Indicators!
How KPIs are a foundation for broad-based business improvement
by The Cumberland Group

Dear reader,

It is well-known that computers can create all sorts of volumes of information for use in making decisions.  The problem is this overabundance of information makes intelligent decision making even more difficult!   Managing a business in today’s world-wind requires a little help! I know this sound’s like a pitch to sell some wonderful technology or software service…. but in fact it’s not!

It’s all about following best practices that help you accomplish specific results more consistently, and with less headaches and cost. The attached article, Why you should care about Key Performance Indicators!  provides real insight on how to use KPI’s to focus a business and accomplish meaningful results.  The Cumberland Group has been a Featured Partner of Rainmakers for over 5 years. These guys know their stuff, consider this quote from the article….

Fortunately, the answers to those questions do not need more systems expenditures.  In fact, they’re easily answered with fundamental business process measures.  Measures that some companies have refined into Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) that provide direction, a roadmap of sorts, for all their performance improvement efforts. “

Learn about how effective use of KPI’s in your company can deliver these results:

ü       Establish a common, focused Business Goal for everyone in your organization

ü       Triggers for Quantum-Leap Business Improvements

ü       Substantially support Continual Improvement efforts in your firm

ü       Have tremendous impact on the Quality of Work Life

ü       Review a Case Study of Cutting inventories to increase shipping Fill Rates

Click on The Full Story below – You’re going to want to tell a friend about this one…

Thanks for your time. My door is open if you want to discuss how Rainmakers can be of service.

Jon C. Liberman
Rainmakers
847/251-3327
jon@rainmkrs.com
www.rainmakers.us


[FULL STORY]
 
Team-Based Business Success – An Enterprise View
(Questions to Assess Your Effectiveness)
by The Cumberland Group

Dear Reader,

 

Certain clichés seem just so relevant!

 

“Everything follows the beginning”

 

“People buy from people”

 

“The sum (teamwork) is greater than its parts (individuals)”

 

Teamwork is a core competency of successful businesses and organizations.  In fact the people part of managing something is always the greatest challenge and the source of greatest competitive advantage to those firms that understand how to master this process.

 

This article discusses how to establish a process that instills team work and develops people-based business differentiators.  A Team Effectiveness Assessment is also included for you to evaluate your firm. 

 

Rainmakers SMOKE SIGNAL provides Ideas you can use.  The author of Team Based Business-Success – An Enterprise View, has been a Strategic Partner of Rainmakers for over 6 years – The Cumberland Group delivers some of the best value I have seen in my 23+years of working with mid-market businesses like your firm.

 

Anyone (management) serious about prospering in the coming decade will benefit from making the Best Practices described in this article their “Modus Operandi”.  Click on the Full Story below to read the details.

 

Thanks for your time and the opportunity to be of service.  Give me a call to discuss how we can help.

 

Jon C. Liberman

Rainmakers

847/251-3327

jon@rainmkrs.com

www.rainmakers.us


[FULL STORY]
 
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Published by Jon C. Liberman
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