Can You Limit Rising Healthcare Costs?

The price of health insurance continues to climb. Though the rate of increase has slowed, manufacturers and distributors can still face double-digit annual hikes.

Consumer-Driven Healthcare Accounts

RFID: Do Just What You Must

RFID! Radio frequency identification is coming, with enormous promise, and more companies will see their key customers requiring it.

Strong Process Lets People Excel

Every workplace has people who seem to rely on knowledge and sticky notes alone. Every day, without a glance at procedures, they smoothly ship coal, replicate data or write precise RFPs. Companies thrive on such competence until it’s disrupted by vacation or unplanned absence, and then chaos reigns.

The Value of Your Company

Several events can signal the need for a comprehensive or partial business valuation: succession or estate planning, the death of a partner or shareholder, borrowing or debt restructuring, decisions on employee stock ownership plans, to name a few.

How High Can You Outsource?

Outsourcing is typically used to reduce costs or manage hourly labor. But some companies gain advantages by outsourcing high-end management and even executive functions.

Inventory Surprise!

The unwelcome event might arrive with a crash, with the discovery of one big variance that defies explanation. But inventory surprises can also be smaller and more insidious, like continual mismatches that resist every effort at solution.

Perpetual Inventory Relies on People

A perpetual inventory system, in which material movements are tracked in real time, brings efficiency and cost savings when it’s properly used. But since the system is only as good as the data, some systems just record a perpetual series of errors.

Is LIFO Right For Your Company?

As long as inflation has been generally at bay, few manufacturers or distributors have paid much attention to the last-in, first-out method of inventory valuation known as LIFO.

Open-Book Management Changes Attitudes

Working the press brakes on swing shift, Dewey misreads the gauge and overbends a dozen side panels. He should tell the night supervisor, who’ll know if the parts can be fixed. If so, the company can salvage most of their value. If not — well, the rate for scrap stainless was up a few cents today, somewhere.

OBM: Four Key Steps

Finding the Warehouse Edge

Most warehouses support either a shop floor or a retailer — that is, a cash register. So warehouse choices can contribute significant competitive advantages.

The Domestic Production Deduction Is Here

A broad range of U.S. taxpayers will see an important change this year, as one set of incentives starts phasing out and another begins to take effect.

DPD: What and When

Reward for the Long Haul

Compensation plays an obvious role in motivating employees — but to do what? That largely depends on how it’s structured.

The High Costs of Poor Communication

When a company puts effort into its internal communications, it can achieve improvements in safety performance, advances in productivity and a strengthening of morale up and down the line.

Should You Offer Drop-Ship Service?

Many distributors and some manufacturers are gaining experience in direct-to-customer shipping, in which orders are filled directly from the source without recourse to a middleman. The Internet has accelerated this trend, and Dell Computer, with its phenomenal sales of $13 billion, provides the most successful example.