Structure provides movement with a framework within which to move without overreaching itself. Management grounds leadership by setting up and maintaining the systems which provide any organization with coherence, with continuity and sense, with the weight required to prevent it from drifting off into the heavens.

Management is the organization’s way of coping with the fact that leaderships head is always in the clouds. In The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, Covey refers to the idea that all things are created twice (1989).

The first creation is a mental one, the second physical. He provides as example the construction of a house.
The first creation is the mental one, the design itself. The second is the putting together of the bricks and mortar, the construction itself. Leadership, in this sense, is the design, while management is the building itself.

Leadership then, is the formative force, management the physical substance. Leadership is water; management is earth. Leadership is process, management is product.

It is incumbent on leadership to ensure that the organization is effective in what it does; that its strategies, and the way in which it gives effect to these, are appropriate and have impact.

It is incumbent on management to ensure that the organization is efficient in what it does; that its internal systems function logically and smoothly. To put it simplistically, it has been said that while leadership ensures that the organization does the right thing, managements responsibility is to ensure that things are done right.

Management then, is about giving substance to organizational direction, and form to organizational needs.
It is about setting up systems and procedures, controlling these systems and procedures so that they function optimally and are adhered to, and ensuring that the various systems and structures articulate coherently.
Systems and procedures facilitate the smooth running of the organization; they ensure that the organization is controlled and disciplined. They provide a structure within which people can operate, and provide a measure of equality in the sense that-everyone is equal before the law.

The attempt of many organizations to develop a democratic organizational form is often interpreted as the need to allow each person full freedom, without accountability. But experience has shown that freedom without accountability leads to the -law of the jungle- where the most powerful dominate all others.
Democracy is a fragile entity which demands the protection of systems and procedures if it is to work and not degenerate into anarchy and chaos.

At the same time, excessive structure and rules can lead to extreme forms of bureaucratic absurdity where peoples creativity and motivation are stifled under the weight of relentless systems and procedures. Balance is vital.
One of the main areas where the quest for balance is so important is around the question of discipline and accountability.

Management control, in this area, entails:
Establishment of performance standards; measurement of performance; evaluation of performance; and correction of performance. Systems and procedures need to be designed in order to ensure accountability and compliance.
At the same time, such systems, once in place, should not be taken for granted and applied by rote. There is always a need to balance organizational needs with individual needs.

Where this is ignored, conflict and tension result. The setting up and monitoring of the systems can be regarded as pure management.

The adjustments of the system to respond to the ebb and flow of organizational and individual fluctuations demands leadership skills on the part of the manager. Note that control does not mean some people controlling others, it means the organization is in control, the parts work together responsibly to create the desired results. This condition is known as accountability.

Change management was always an integral part of business management, but with emergence of Information technology it gathered seriousness. Information Technology Infrastructure management is one broad term which encompasses all the elements necessary to ensure smooth functioning of business processes which may be threatened due to technological problems or other incidents. It’s the “change is rule” attitude (as coined by some experts) that forced these businessmen to change their attitude towards change management.

Good change management techniques always help the businessmen to adapt and adopt new ways of doing business. Change management is not merely implementation of new techniques to cope up with a change within the organisation; rather it is a discipline of Information technology infrastructure managementwhere changes are managed with a more systematic, reliable, rigorous and disciplined approach. Changes are brought into system when the integrity of business organisation is challenged due to some incidents or customer requests or technological updates.

Process of change management unfolds through following steps:
1. Identifying the need for change in organisation.
2. Designing need specific changes to curb with the requirement of the organisation.
3. Making others understand why change is necessary for the proper functioning of the organisation.
4. Altering the organisational process like processes, technology and performance meters to incorporate the changes.
5. Managing the production and changes to ensure that customer and the stakeholder continues to be bonded with each other over the long run.

According to Wikipedia Change management involves management of process related to Hardware, communications equipment and software, system software, and all documentation and procedures associated with the running, support and maintenance of live systems.

Project management is another aspect of change management, which needs to incorporate its values for proper functioning. There are some touch points between project management and change management. Project management is all about handling change with elance. It is defined as the discipline of planning, organising and managing resources in order to ensure the successful completion of projects.

Aim of any project management endeavour is to attain the successful results despite of constraints like space, time, changes, quality, time and budget. Every project is developed around some permutation and combination methodology. Changes are made to the existing methodology in order to avoid potential failures.

Identifying, managing and controlling changes become important for the smooth functioning of the Project.  According to some experts “project is change and change is project”.  So it becomes difficult to differentiate or draw a line between the inter reliability of project management and change management. So change management holds utmost importance in the world of business where things are assessed on the basis of their perfection and capability to address the needs of customers and clients.

But how could a costly project turn out to be a total loss?  Post analysis revealed that a large number of best practices in project management involving budget and activity tracking, cross-team scheduling, and communications difficulties lead to significant shortfalls that ultimately lead to the demise of the entire project.  Had the FBI followed these best practices, many of these issues could have been avoided.  In this article we will explore a number of these best practices and explain how adherence to them can mean the difference between total failure and complete success in your next project, no matter how large or small it may be.

Challenges of Project Management

A project can be defined as a venture to create or overhaul a process, product or service.  It should have a clearly defined plan with timelines, budgets and measurable deliverables that are necessary to accomplish the project’s objective.  But, in order to attain this success, the correct combination of people, processes and tools must be put in place to recognize the source of both common and unique project challenges.  Examples of these challenges include:

When a project is poorly managed, a great opportunity exists for these challenges to prevent your organization from achieving its goals or for the entire project to become derailed, as seen with the FBI.  So how can your organization protect its investments and make sure that projects are completed with optimal results?

Keys to Project Success

“A classic problem…you find yourself at the “end” of a project, 90% done, but you will have already spent 100% of the budget.  And it’s going to take the second 100% of the budget to get that last 10% completed because, the truth is, you’re not really know where you are.” – Don Shafer, Author & CTO

A successful project achieves its goals within the timeline, budget and resources allocated.  But, in order to ensure the optimum level of success, a number of key factors must be considered managed.  The first of which is effective project planning.

It is imperative that all your projects be developed with an accurate and full understanding of the current and desired state of your business.  A detailed business analysis of the problem or issue to be addressed is required to understand and determine the necessary steps towards your desired outcome.  This analysis will determine the project objective, focus and the approach for resolution.  Without a clearly defined objective established through this analysis, your project can easily go off course, fall behind schedule, exceed the budget, or ultimately fail.

Another key factor impacting the success of a project is the project plan itself.  The project plan should include an overall estimate of the time to complete the project and a detailed evaluation of the resources required.  Included in the project plan should be resource responsibilities, accountabilities, deliverables and timelines.  Additionally, it should outline related project risks that need to be assessed, monitored, minimized and mitigated.

And, although a unified goal may be established in the minds of the project team, a major key to success is the project manager.  An experienced, people-oriented project manager will be able to manage all aspects of the project effectively.  The project manager must have a clear understanding of the day-to-day tasks and resources needed to achieve the desired goals and must do an effective job of delegating responsibilities and keeping staff on track.  Utilizing the right project management tools can help manage these tasks in an efficient manner while providing accurate methods to quantify and measure the project’s success in terms of its business value.

Project Managers are Band Leaders

“Project managers function as bandleaders who pull together their players, each a specialist with an individual score and internal rhythm.  Under the leader’s direction, they all respond to the same beat.” – L.R. Sayles

A project manager ensures that the individuals involved with the project have a clear understanding of their tasks and responsibilities, and that they have access to the resources and time required to execute their tasks efficiently.  Project managers must also communicate the needs and progress of the project to the stakeholders, and be aware of potential problems and risks that may occur during the project’s progress.  Successful project managers must have:

The implications of not having an effective project manager are endless.  Without clear guidance, employees may be stressed, confused, frustrated or working inefficiently.  This can cause a project to quickly fall off schedule or exceed its budget.  Project managers are vital in preventing these issues from occurring because they are not only drivers and enablers, but also controllers.  Effective project managers also need to be able to think ahead and be able to adjust a project plan to mitigate risks and potential problems that may occur along the way.

Summary

Successful project management requires a very specific set of skills.  Challenges and issues will always arise; but when you combine effective planning, analysis and objective building with detail oriented project managers maintaining effective team oversight you can ensure that all of your projects will be delivered successfully.

“The single best payoff in terms of project success comes from having good project definition early.” – Rand Corp.

For more information, visit our website at www.omnios.com.

If you want to be a good product manager, learn the difference between product management and project management. Despite the similar names, there are big differences between product management and project management. Confusing them is common, even among those experienced in product development.

Project managers are responsible for the successful delivery of a project — a one-time endeavor with a goal, scope, deadline, budget, and other constraints. A project manager will work to align resources, manage issues and risks, and basically coordinate all of the various elements necessary to complete the project. As they relate to products, projects can be undertaken to build a product, to add new features to a product, or create new versions or extensions of a product. When the project is complete, the project manager will usually move move to a new project, which may be related to a different product.

Product managers are responsible for the overall and ongoing success of a product. Once the project to build the product is complete and the project manager has moved on, the product manager remains to manage the product through the entire lifecycle. Other projects related to the product may be initiated, with the product manager being the one constant stream throughout, defining the project goals and guiding the team to accomplish the business objectives that have been defined.

One challenge of the two roles is that they can appear to be at odds with each other. A product manager may want to add a lot of features to meet observed customer needs, but the project manager may want to keep scope as small as possible so that the project is delivered on time and under budget. Traditional definitions (and probably those above, too) often mischaracterize the project manager as singularly focused on getting the project finished on time and under budget without any concern as to whether it meets the market or customer needs.

Good product managers and good project managers are able to create a balance of these conflicts. Good project managers know that the true success of a project is not whether it is on time and within budget, but whether it meets the defined goals and objectives. Good product managers know that all the features in the world will not matter if the project is continually delayed and never makes it to market or if it is too over budget to be completed.

Especially for web-based and technology products, the confusion between project and product management is common and potentially harmful to organizations who do not acknowledge the distinction. As Rob Grady writes in Are you a Web Project Manager or Web Product Manager? (Part I):

Today, as websites have become increasingly important in business, they are, unfortunately, still being managed as projects. This becomes a problem in meeting defined business objectives, prioritizing, having the right skills to manage what has now become a core business function. If the website has become or is a core business function there is a greater need than managing a project, it has become a product which will have a series of projects driven through business objectives.

Ranking Business and Project Management Priorities

When evaluating a project management software or a business software, it helps to have a thorough understanding of the day to day project management activities and needs. This helps identify whether or not and how the software is capable of solving  business and project management problems. Since every project and business has unique qualities, by studying current project management practices and theoretically applying them to the project management software in question one can almost identify one-for-one how each problem or project management need can be resolved using the software. Listing project management software features in order of priority is time well invested into the project management software selection process. By ranking business and software needs, a manager creates a clear picture on how to create a best-fit between project management activity and software.

Assessing Future Project Management Requirements

Although it may be difficult for a manager to predict exactly how project management software requirements may evolve over time, it is possible to understand the degree of flexibility that the software accommodates. Flexible project management software allows a company to grow and change over time. The more flexible the software, the more options project managers will have to accommodate project-specific situations that were not accounted for or expected during the project management software selection process. Project management software that is simple to use, may or may not have the ability to match evolving needs of a company as volume increases or decreases. The ability to change and adjust to as many situations as possible is of tremendous value to a company, and therefore a project manager.  All too often project management and business data is segregated across multiple different software applications that do not synch up with each other and often create additional, undue burden on the company. Yet, the company still needs a means of tracking abnormal situations. An effective project management software solution accommodates change and can be tailored to meet changing business demands without degrading former or existing projects management needs already set forth by existing projects.

Project Management  Software and Accounting Software Integration

It is a reality that there is no one single software that services every business need a company has. Therefore, the ability for one software to share data, import/export or otherwise synchronize business data with another software becomes an essential component to the software selection process. Software product vendors  may put forth “a one size fits all” attitude however the best way to ensure that a project management software can share data or synchronize with an accounting software is to understand the technical requirements of both software systems. This way, the software systems in place and the software being selected may be assessed as a set of integrated software systems that work together rather than single handedly, as how most businesses select software. In fact, software integration as a primary driver to the software selection process will dramatically reduce implementation costs, due to a reduction of data setup and a consistency of terms and language used across different business software systems.

Project Management Software Vendor/Customer Relationship

The project management software vendor and the customer should establish a mutually supportive relationship. When selecting a project management software to run and manage business data and for project management, the project manager should factor into consideration how responsive and competent the project management software vendor is in both the project management software itself and also the business industry that the project management software is intended to serve. The project manager should also observe how willing to help the project management software vendor is, and how promptly and accurately the project management software vendor follows up and follows through. These are all indications of how the project management software vendor will perform when supporting the customer.

Many project management software vendors offer support for project software-specific questions, however such questions often call for business-related questions on how to handle best project management practices, for example, using the project management software. Since a project software is to support projects for the business, there should be no separation between answering technical questions about how to use the project management software and questions on how to solve project-related questions within that project management software.

The vendor should become an active participant in supporting a project manager or company with it’s own project management processes, thereby having those project processes clearly defined and managed within the project management software. Once a business is invested into a project management software, the switch can be costly depending on whether or not the company wishes to migrate project management data from one software to another. Therefore, it is in the best interest of a project manager to, when selecting a project management software, to analyze how much effort it would take to switch to a new software, if the company reaches the limits of the current project management software.

Although it may be difficult to assess the cost of moving project management software data to a new project management software without knowing ahead of time what the new project software is, part of the project software selection process should identify how such a switch in systems will be addressed, should such steps be taken in the future.

It is in the best interest of both the customer and A1 Enterprise to provide a project management software that works for our customer and our customer’s specific industry. If, in the event, A1 Enterprise feels that the customer needs are better matched with any specific project software, A1 Enterprise makes suitable recommendations and provides assistance in the project management software selection process when needed by the customer. A1 Enterprise has a substantially diverse background in software development and customized software for small businesses and large companies.

Managers who possess brilliant technical skills have not lived to be efficient project managers. People with poor technical knowledge have been successful as project managers but their lack in technical skills pulled them back from advancing to higher level project management posts. In this world project management people who can extract the work from technically qualified people are very much in demand. A project manager should be technically sound and he/she needs to be an effective project manager so that project completes in time without any remark from the client.

Project management courseware is written by many different authors worldwide explaining the basic concepts to the higher level resources and tools which could be used for project management. These tools and software`s are a boon to project managers. Project management certification companies have their own courseware which could assist the candidate in gaining knowledge thereby making him ready for the certification exam. Many companies require project management personnel to manage projects so that the higher level management can concentrate in business dealings and efficient running of the company which could assist in the growth of company.

Often project managers reply to technical chief executives and higher authorities directly. For a particular company there might be many project managers handling teams of personnel. These personnel report and work under the supervision of the project manager. A project manager should know different software`s and needs to be updated with latest technology and project management knowledge techniques.

If we dig into the history of project management we remember two people responsible for evolving the concept of managing projects. Henry Gantt is known as father of planning and control techniques and Henri Fayol created six management functions which are regarded as the basis of project management. Project management institute was formed in the year 1969 to serve the needs of project management industry. Standards of project management can be found in the book “a guide to project management body of knowledge”. This book has standards and guidelines which form the basis for any project manager.

There are various phases of project management initiation, planning or development, execution, controlling and at the end closing. A project manager should take the product from planning to closing and to achieve these objectives a project manager should follow the standards and guidelines. A project can be closed by following various different methods.

by being certified by www.brainmeasures.com you have an extra edge over your competetors and certification by brainmeasures.com is respected and honoured by employers world wide.

Companies need efficient project managers who are capable of completing projects in time and take up new projects with limited number of resources. To take up this challenging position an ideal candidate needs to have thorough knowledge of project management. He or She should be able to demonstrate necessary skills through project management certifications. Certifications speak about the employee capabilities to his/her potential employer. If you are an employee and want to progress further then it is strongly recommended to have project management certification. If you are good in technical knowledge and want to progress further in your career ladder then it is strongly recommended to have a project management certification.

INTRODUCTION

There is an old joke whereby a new manager had been hired by a company to
take over an operation. As the new manager was moving into his office he happened
to bump into his predecessor who was preparing to leave. The new manager asked
if there was any advice the former manager could offer on assuming his duties. The
former manager said he had written down advice for his successor and placed them
in three envelopes in the desk marked “1,” “2,” and “3″, and that they should only be
opened in the event of an emergency. The new manager laughed, shrugged it off,
and went about his business thinking nothing about the envelopes.

The manager’s reign started off fine but inevitably ran into a problem for which
he had no solution. Desperate, he happened to remember the three envelopes
and opened Number 1 which offered the following advice: “Blame
your predecessor.” The manager thought this was a clever way to get
himself off the hook and used it to good effect.

Time went by until the manager was faced with another seemingly impossible
hurdle. Not knowing what to do, he turned to envelope Number 2 containing
a note that read simply: “Reorganize.” The manager thought this
was a sound idea and set about reorganizing his operation. Organization
charts were redrawn, job descriptions modified, and new office furniture and
equipment obtained.

The reorganization overcame the manager’s problem but he eventually
ran into a crisis taxing his abilities as a manager. At a total loss as to
what to do, the manager turned in desperation to envelope Number 3 which
included a note that read, “Prepare three envelopes.”

Laugh as we might to this anecdote, there is a bit of truth in it. Too often
people rise above their level of competency to take on the job of
manager. Let me give you an example; in the Information Technology
field, the first job a college graduate typically assumes in this area is that of
a programmer. As time progresses and the programmer excels in his
duties, he is promoted to senior programmer, to analyst, to supervisor, then
to manager. In this particular scenario, the manager is still a programmer in
sheep’s clothing. The point is, people are too often given the title of
manager without any knowledge or skills in how to do their job. Companies
are quick to spend a lot on the latest technological gizmo, but little on
management.

Consequently, this is a guide for those of you aspiring to become a
manager or have recently been promoted to a management position
and are at a loss as to how to implement your duties. This is not
necessarily a guide for someone with a fast-track mentality and only
see your job as nothing more than a mere steppingstone on your career path. Then
again, maybe this is for you after all. If you prove yourself to be a productive
manager, new opportunities will present themselves to you. But make no
mistake, the lessons inculcated herein are not suited for someone with a
“quick and dirty” mindset but, rather, for someone conscientious about
their job.

ASSUMING RESPONSIBILITY

There is more to management than a fancy new job title, a new office,
and all of the other perks accompanying it. These trappings may be nice, but
they are not being given to you just because you are a nice fellow, you are
expected to earn them. More than anything, management is about
responsibility. Whereas the individual worker is only concerned about himself,
the manager is responsible to his superiors to implement policy and get a job
done, and; to his subordinates who depend on his judgment and abilities. If you
do not have the mental acuity to accept responsibility, then being a manager
is not for you. Its better you recognize this now before it is too late. As an
example, I have a friend who is an expert craftsman working for a
machine-tool company in Cincinnati. His skill and workmanship caught the
eye of senior management who promoted him to manager in the hopes he could
properly guide the junior workers. Unfortunately, becoming a manager was
unnerving to him. Now, instead of just worrying about producing a quality
product himself, he had to worry about the work of employees under him. This
was more than he could handle and he developed an ulcer. The stress was
simply too much for him and he asked to return to the ranks of the
workmen. To his credit, he understood his limitations. Unfortunately,
many do not and try to bluff their way through their career. Sometimes
they get caught, many times they do not.

KNOW THE BUSINESS

The first thing you should know as a manager is the business of your company
and where you fit in its scheme. Years ago, my father was hired by the
Quaker Oats Company in Chicago as MIS Director. During his first few weeks,
he took a crash course in how Quaker’s business worked. He saw everything
from the manufacturing of cereals and cookies to the production of dog food
(Ken-L Ration). By going through this indoctrination, he came away with an
understanding of how the business worked and who his department would have
to serve.

Too often managers and employees lose sight of the company’s purpose and
overall direction. If the company’s mission is forgotten or misunderstood, then
there is a tendency for areas in the company to work at odds with the rest of the
company. This, of course, is counterproductive. For example, I have seen far too
many people in Information Technology departments who honestly believe the
business of their company was programming and not the delivery of the products
or services offered by the company. In order to adequately serve the company,
it is essential a manager expand his horizon and take a more global look
at the business.

To properly understand a business, a manager should know:

The Japanese refer to this broader perspective as thinking in “360 Degrees.” In
other words, in an age of specialization, it is wise to be aware of the total picture
of the business, thereby understanding the influential factors affecting you.

RUN YOUR DEPARTMENT LIKE A BUSINESS

Although the manager will have responsibility over only a portion of the business
(be it a division, department or a group) it is wise to think of your area as an
autonomous business. This is not to suggest developing a maverick attitude
in opposition to corporate objectives and culture, but for organizational purposes.
By assuming the role of a separate business entity, the manager is more inclined
to exercise good judgment, focus on the necessary work effort, consider risks,
and develop an entrepreneurial spirit.

Establishing your “business” begins with a thorough understanding of the
products and/or services your area is required to produce and the processes
needed to produce them. This will not necessarily be the same products and/or
services as commercially offered by the company, but rather components of
them. Regardless of their magnitude, think of them as the “finished goods”
your business is responsible for producing. From this viewpoint, we can begin
to measure production (your department’s own GNP).

Just as it is important to know the company’s business, it is important for
the manager to understand his department’s business in order to properly
operate within its scope. This includes:

To establish your “business” you need three things:

Defined Infrastructure – as represented by a simple organization
chart and associated job descriptions.

Financial operating budget. In this regard, the ability to use spreadsheets
should be considered a prerequisite for the job of manager. Devising a
budget is relatively easy, adhering to it is another matter altogether.

Take stock of your human and machine resources so you
know the availability and capability of your resources. A
Skills Inventory is invaluable for cataloging resources, along
with their skills and proficiencies. It can also highlight weaknesses
requiring training or supplemental resources. Also, a Project
Management (PM) system is useful for studying resource
allocations and monitoring activities.

For additional information, see:

Number 15 – Creating a Skills Inventory – Mar 14, 2005
http://www.phmainstreet.com/mba/ss050311.pdf

“PRIDE” Project Management
http://www.phmainstreet.com/mba/pride/pm.htm

A Human Resources department can also offer assistance in this regards.

These three items (Infrastructure, Budget, and Inventory) are useful
for establishing the scope and boundary of the department, as well as the
parameters you will be operating under.

Finally, understand the owners of your business and its board of directors as
represented by your superiors and perhaps lateral relationships. By thinking
in terms of an autonomous business you will become more self-sufficient
and become more conscious of serving your customers.

YOUR THREE PRIME DUTIES

As manager you have three prime duties to perform: Provide Leadership,
Establish the proper work Environment, and Produce/Deliver your
products or services.

As the field general for his department, the manager should be able to articulate
the objectives of his area, and the strategy for conquering them. In other words, he
has to have a vision and be able to effectively communicate it to his subordinates
in order to instill confidence and provide a sense of direction. People like to know
where they are going and appreciate some direction in their lives. As social creatures,
we take comfort in knowing we are working in a concerted manner towards common
objectives we deem important. As such, not only does a manager need a vision, he
must be able to convince his workers of its necessity. If the workers believe in
the manager’s vision and are confident in his ability to lead them, they will gladly
follow him.

Following this, the manager must be able to develop practical project plans
for the staff to follow (e.g., work breakdown structures and dependencies, and
priorities). These project plans should be explained to the staff along with their
rationale. By doing so, workers cannot claim they didn’t know the plan or what
their role was in it. Think of the game of football where plays are called for the
eleven players on the field; all are given assignments to perform towards a common
objective. If any one player doesn’t know the plan, in all likelihood he will make
a wrong move and cause the team to lose yardage. As my football coach was
fond of saying, “A team is as strong as its weakest player.” Planning requires
communications which ultimately leads to teamwork and harmony. To this
end, keep your project plans and calendars up-to-date and visible to everyone
in the department.

In any given area of a business you will find projects that are similar or repetitious
in nature. For example, processing an order, building a product, etc. All are based
on standard and accepted processes performed time and again. As such,
documenting standard methodologies for use as templates can materially assist in
expediting project planning. Further, consistent work effort leads to measurable
and uniform results, as well as providing a standard and consistent line of
communications between project personnel. The use of defined and reusable
methodologies is also encouraged by standards organizations, such as ISO-9000.

In order for the manager to instill a sense of confidence in the staff, he must not
only be able to demonstrate he knows what he is talking about, he must also express
a high level of moral conduct. The manager’s word should be considered his bond. If
he is caught in a lie, cheating, defrauding, back stabbing, or some other misconduct,
this will be noticed by the staff who will no longer trust him. A true manager is
a person of integrity.

Finally, beware of becoming a “reactionary” manager whereby you simply go
from one problem to another as they occur. Under this scenario, the manager is
not in control of his department’s destiny and has to dance to the tune of someone
else’s fiddle. Some reactionary management will inevitably be necessary, but
take control over your environment and practice more “proactive” management as
opposed to “reactive” management. Too often people are lulled into a reactive
mode of operation or as we refer to it, a “fire fighting mode” of operating. As a
manager, you are cautioned to beware of your chief firefighters, they are probably
your chief arsonists as well. Also remember the old adage, “If you don’t make the
decision, the decision will be made for you.” Control your destiny: take a proactive
approach to management.

The astute manager will appreciate the need for cultivating the proper work
environment. If a worker feels comfortable in his environment, he will feel
amenable to working and will take a more positive view of his job. But if a
“sweat shop” environment is provided, the worker will dread coming to work
and put forth minimal effort to accomplish his job.

There are two dimensions for creating a work environment: logical and physical. The
physical aspect is somewhat easier to explain and involves the facilities and equipment
used in the business, both of which impact morale and attitudes towards work. How
people behave in a clean and contemporary facility is noticeably different than those
working under dingy and antiquated conditions. Whereas the former supports a
professional attitude, the latter promotes a lackadaisical attitude. Basically, a clean
and contemporary work place is saying to the employees, “I care about you and am
willing to invest in you.” However, the economic reality may be you cannot
afford the latest “state-of-the-art” facilities or equipment. Nonetheless, you should make
an effort to keep your physical surroundings as clean and up-to-date as possible. As
an example, the military typically operates under a philosophy whereby you
either work on something, store it away, or dispose of it. This forces people to
be organized. There are those who would argue “a cluttered desk is the sign
of a brilliant mind.” Nothing could be further from the truth. A cluttered desk
represents laziness and disorganization. People, particularly customers, prefer
an orderly workplace. Think about it next time you go to a grocery store.

The point is, our physical surroundings affect our attitudes towards our work. For
example, I know of a print shop with a manager who insists on keeping it spotless. Their
paper products are packaged and shipped promptly, inventory is well stocked and
maintained, waste is disposed of immediately, and the machines are routinely cleaned
and kept in pristine form. Further, the printers are dressed in uniform jumpsuits to keep
ink and chemicals from soiling their clothes underneath. Contrast this with the typical
print shop that is often cluttered with debris and the machines are infrequently cleaned. The
printers of the “clean” shop have a much more positive and professional attitude regarding
their work than other printers working in “dirty” shops. Further, absenteeism is not
a problem in the “clean” shop and the printers are proud of the products they
produce. Basically, they see their workplace as an extension of their home and treat
it as such.

As a footnote, I asked the manager of the print shop why his printers kept the
facility so clean when others were so dirty. He jokingly confided in me, “They don’t
know any better.” In reality, the manager had set operating standards and routinely
inspected the premises to assure they were adhered to. Over time, it became a
natural part of the print shop’s culture and now he rarely has to inspect them. This,
of course, means discipline which leads us to the logical aspect of our work environment.

Whereas the physical aspects of the work environment are tangible and easy to
assimilate, the logical aspects are intangible and perhaps harder to manipulate
for it involves dealing with human perceptions, attitudes and emotions. Along these
lines, there are three considerations:

A. Corporate Culture

The corporate culture is expressed in terms of the accepted customs, morality,
and society of the institution.

Customs dictate the expected manner of conduct for the culture. It prescribes
the etiquette to be observed in dress, speech, courtesy and politics
(gamesmanship). Several companies, most notably IBM, have long
understood the power of customs. These norms are established to
project a particular image the company wishes to convey.

Morality is the basis for our values. It influences our judgment in terms
of what is ethical and what is not. Although uniform morality sounds
attractive to executives, it can be quite dangerous if unethical practices are
allowed to creep into the moral fiber of the company.

Society defines our interpersonal relationships. This
includes how we elect to govern and live our lives. Society
defines the class structure in an organization, from Chairman of
the Board to the hourly worker. It defines government, laws and
institutions which must be observed by its members.

A corporate policy manual is useful for explaining the official rules and
regulations of a business, but rarely will you find the corporate culture
expressed in print. Why? Because it changes with time as people
come and go from the organization. Typically, a new worker is taught
the corporate culture by either the manager, by other workers with more
tenure of service, or by personal observation. This brings up an important
point: Culture is learned. To illustrate, I know a baseball manager
who inherited a high school team with a long tradition of losing. To
overcome this problem, the coach had to break habits, change attitudes,
and impose new disciplines. By reshaping the culture of the team,
the coach eventually turned them into winners for several years. Even
after the coach retired, the team continued their winning ways because
the coach had succeeded in embedding the culture into the psyche
of the team. Concepts such as discipline, organization, workmanship,
and accountability are all derived from the corporate culture.

This brings up another point: changing the corporate culture is no
easy task. As creatures of habit, humans have a natural aversion to
change of any kind. Yet, in order for a manager to succeed he has
to be able to modify the corporate culture in his area to suit his needs. To
do so, the manager can either dictate the changes, have his subordinates
establish a new path, or a combination of both. Either way, it is necessary
to establish examples and set precedents, thereby establishing models for
others to assimilate. Understand this, if you do not teach the corporate
culture properly, the workers will learn it on their own.

Devising standards of conduct is the first step in instilling discipline
in your workers. This begins with standard and consistent terminology
in order to avoid a “Tower of Babel” effect during production. Once a
standard is established, enforce it. There is little point in enacting a
change if nobody is going to enforce it. To this end, the manager must
do more than inspect and enforce, he must lead by example. If the
manager is caught violating the norms of the corporate culture, it will
not go unnoticed by his subordinates who will in all likelihood assimilate
the indiscretion.

Finally, be wary of creating a subculture at odds with the overall
corporate culture. Senior management will allow some leeway in
your department’s behavior as long as it doesn’t seriously conflict
with corporate standards.

For more information on corporate culture, see:

No. 28 – “Understanding Corporate Culture” – June 13, 2005
http://www.phmainstreet.com/mba/ss050613.pdf

B. Management Style

In my last bulletin, I described the three theories of management,
X, Y, Z, each having a different philosophical basis than the others. See:

No. 50 – “How Do We Manage?” – November 14, 2005
http://www.phmainstreet.com/mba/ss051114.pdf

It now becomes necessary to determine your own personal style of
management, for example:

Will you take a dictatorial approach and try to “micromanage”
everything or will you allow group participation in the decision
making process?

Will you provide for additional training to cultivate the staff or
will this be left to their own discretion?

How much personal responsibility will you allow your workers to
assume, a little, a lot, or nothing at all?

How much discipline and organization do you require?

As mentioned in the “How Do We Manage?” article, managers will
use different elements of Theories X, Y and Z to suit their needs. It
is all ultimately based on the manager’s perceptions of the workers
in terms of their intelligence level, motivation, and attitudes towards
work. This is why it is important the manager studies and understands
his employees. If he is in tune with his workers, he will devise a suitable
management style that both the manager and the workers can
accept. Ultimately, the manager is seeking a uniform and consistent
management style that is fair and won’t show favoritism, thereby
affecting morale.

Keep in mind, management is most definitely NOT a democracy, it is a dictatorship,
be it autocratic or benevolent. How much freedom the workers are allowed
is based on what the manager allows.

But the manager should never be afraid to push the staff to
excel to a new level and affect his department’s culture (as seen
in the baseball manager example). Being a manager means that
you are not in the popularity business. Do not be afraid to exercise
your authority if the need arises. Your decisions will not always be
popular with the staff. Regardless, you have a job to do.

Understand this, in many situations people prefer to be told what to
do and will willingly go along with the manager’s orders if they believe
it to be for their own good. But beware of becoming overbearing and
stifling the freedom and creativity of your workers. Get them to work for
you as opposed to against you.

In order to promote morale, the manager should not only be fair and effective
in implementing change, he should be the primary cheerleader. If the
manager loses his faith in his department’s ability to perform, his workers
will lose faith in his ability to lead them.

As for me, I tend to believe what President Ronald Reagan said,
“Surround yourself with the best people you can find, delegate authority,
and don’t interfere as long as the policy you’ve decided upon is being carried out.”

I am very much a believer in empowering people as opposed to
trying to micromanage everyone. However, sometimes it is necessary to
micromanage the activities of others in order to obtain the precise results
you want when you want them, but realize this may result in having an
adverse affect on your staff. Its like saying, “Look, you’re not smart enough
to do this, so I will direct your activity.” As the old saying goes, “If something
is urgent, do it yourself. If you have time, delegate it. If you have forever,
form a committee.” The manager should be smart enough to stay a couple
of steps ahead of the staff and constantly review project plans so that
micromanagement is not necessary.

To assist in empowering people, I believe a manager should manage
bottom-up, as opposed to just top-down. Under this philosophy, the
manager assigns project plans and authority to perform work
(top-down) and the staff should participate in the project estimating
process and work according to their assignments (bottom-up). This is why
in “PRIDE” Project Management we do not make use of the concept
of “man hours,” but rather, “Direct Time” and “Indirect Time.” Direct
Time represents the time necessary to perform the necessary assignments
and is managed by the individual worker. Indirect Time represents
interferences or distractions from performing the work and is the
responsibility of the manager to control. For example, meetings,
training, reviewing periodicals, and breaks may fall under the
category of Indirect Time. If a worker is behind schedule on an
assignment, the manager may opt to minimize the distractions so
the worker can tend to their work. The ratio of Direct Time to
Indirect Time is referred to as “Effectiveness Rate.”

Effectiveness Rate = (Direct Time + Indirect Time) / 100

In most office work, employees are typically 70% effective, meaning
in an eight hour day they perform approximately five hours of direct
work. Effectiveness Rate should not be construed as an efficiency
rating. For example, a worker can have a high effectiveness rate
yet be your worst worker; it just means he knows how to manage his
time. Further, a worker could have a low effectiveness rate, yet be
your most productive worker. The concept of effectiveness rate is
useful for computing project schedules, but more importantly, it represents
worker empowerment. Again, the worker is responsible for their Direct Time,
and the manager is responsible for Indirect Time. For more information
on this subject, see:

No. 09 – “Managing from the Bottom-Up” – Jan 31, 2005
http://www.phmainstreet.com/mba/ss050131.pdf

The manager’s ultimate goal is to promote teamwork. Sure, you
will have individuals who can perform miracles, but they must either
become an intricate member of the team or get out. Remember,
teamwork can accomplish far more than individual effort.

C. Continuous Improvement

The manager should be intimate with all aspects of production in
his area. Further, he should be constantly looking for new and
imaginative ways for improving it. Before doing so, the manager
should understand this fundamental concept of productivity:

Productivity = Effectiveness X Efficiency

Too often people fallaciously equate productivity with efficiency.
This is simply not true. Efficiency simply represents how fast we
can perform a given task. For example, an industrial robot on an
assembly line can perform a task such as welding very precisely and
quickly. But if the weld is being performed at the wrong time or
wrong place, then it is counterproductive, regardless of how efficiently
it performs the task. Effectiveness, on the other hands, is concerned
with the necessity of the task itself or as we like to say, “Do the right
things.” Under this scenario, the manager should consider effectiveness
first, and efficiency second. Undoubtedly, the manager will meet
salesmen who will offer products promising improvements in
efficiency. But if they cannot meld into your operations effectively,
it will be counterproductive. By being conscious of both effectiveness
and efficiency, the manager can avoid the “Rearranging the Deck Chairs
on the Titanic” phenomenon whereby people work on the wrong
things at the wrong time.

The latest gizmo may be technologically enticing, but the manager
should be looking for pragmatic cost-effective solutions to adapt to his
environment. Consider this, even if you purchase the latest technological
marvel, will your people be sophisticated enough to use it? Further,
the new technology may require the development of a dependency on
a new vendor. To me, the simple solutions are the best. Be practical
and be wary of developing a “Keeping up with the Jones’” mentality. After
all, the Jones’ may be in more trouble than you are.

Whether the implementation of change is large or small, recognize
that people will resist it until it becomes a natural part of the corporate
culture. As creatures of habit, humans have a natural aversion to
change, even if it is for their own good. But if the manager is convinced
of the necessity of the change, he must persist in its implementation. Dealing
with change is a difficult challenge for the manager and the subject
of another article:

No. 24 – “Why We Resist Change” – May 16, 2005
http://www.phmainstreet.com/mba/ss050516.pdf

If there is anything constant in life, it is change. Both the manager and
his workers should understand this; it is a natural part of our lives. Don’t
fight it, adapt to it. But understand this, change simply for the sake of
change is ridiculous. There should always be a significant reason for
the implementation of change.

Understanding that change is an inherent part of life, the manager should
consider the need for ongoing training of his workers to enhance their
skills. Again, a Skills Inventory can assist in monitoring the staff’s
abilities and devising suitable training programs to suit your department’s
needs. Also encourage your staff to participate in trade groups and
subscribe to trade related publications to stay abreast of developments
and sharpen their skills.

The bottom-line on Environment: As manager, you want to create a workplace
people want to come to and think of as their home away from home; a place
they are proud of, loyal to, and take pride in workmanship. As noted British
economic historian Arnold Toynbee said, “The supreme accomplishment is
to blur the line between work and play.”

Equal to Leadership and creating the proper Environment, is the manager’s duty
of being able to Produce the products or services he is charged to deliver. Even
if you have the best plans and environment, if you fail to deliver your products
or services, you have failed as a manager. To illustrate, one of President Lincoln’s
first commanders of the Army of the Potomac during the American Civil War was
General George B. McClellan, an extraordinary engineer and organizer, but a
complete failure at execution. If you are convinced of a specific course of action,
do not procrastinate, act. An opportunity rarely presents itself twice.

Producing includes delivering quality goods on-time, on-schedule, and within
budget. Consequently, it is wise to establish a production control function within
your area; someone charged with monitoring activities and expediting problems
that might arise. This can take many forms depending on the size of your department
and available resources, be it a sharp secretary, a perceptive foreman or
supervisor, or a staff of people to oversee production. Here, tools like Project
Management (PM) systems and work measurement tools provide great
assistance in this regard. PM is used for reporting time, costs, and monitoring
schedules. Work measurement tools analyze trends and performance, be it
words typed per minute, number of keystrokes, compilations, machine cycles,
or time performing a given task versus mistakes or errors made. Not only are
such tools invaluable for troubleshooting production schedules but are also
useful for spotting inefficiencies in need of improvement.

In terms of delivering a quality product/service, the manager should understand
the relationship of quality to the time necessary to produce the goods.

http://www.phmainstreet.com/mba/blog/ss051121.jpg

The faster the product is produced, the more likely it will contain defects in
workmanship; conversely, the more time allowed in production, the greater the
chances for producing a high-quality product. Although everyone stresses the need
for quality, the reality is the manager must be able to balance development time
against defects in workmanship and that a suitable development time needs to
be devised to match the level of quality desired. This also means the level
of precision in production is proportional to the level of quality desired, all of
which will greatly influence a manager’s style of management. For example,
in a high pressure situation, the manager may exercise more supervision and a
little friendly bullying in order to get the job done. Under less pressure, the manager
will allow more worker freedom and participation in developing decisions.

Finally, the manager should keep an eye on the bottom-line and be smart
enough to know when he has hit a wall and know when to ask for help.
But please do not be driven by just numbers; consider risk as well as
opportunity. For additional info, see:

No. 48 – “The First Thing We Do, Let’s Kill all the Bean Counters” – Oct 31, 2005
http://www.phmainstreet.com/mba/ss051031.pdf

THE MANAGER’S PERSONAL DEVELOPMENT

As indicated in the introduction, people often inherit the job of manager
with little training or background. Since management primarily deals
with people, a manager should possess good interpersonal relations/communications
skills, including:

You should never lose sight of the fact that you work for, with, and get things
done through people.

Other than this, the manager should understand:

A. How to hire/fire people as well as how to do a performance appraisal.

Corporate policy manuals will undoubtedly have standards to be observed in
this regards. Nonetheless, be fair and objective. I always thought the best training
for learning honesty and fairness is by spending time as an umpire or referee in
sports. My years as a Little League umpire taught me a lot and allowed be to sleep
well at night. Even if you despise a person, do not stoop to their level; be fair and
impartial, the world will think better of you. Also, be smart enough admit when
you have made a mistake and remedy the situation.

When evaluating a worker’s job performance, be wary of the Peter Principle
whereby a person has been elevated to their level of incompetence. Keeping
people at such a level is a disservice not only to the company, but to the worker
as well. When a person has risen above their level of competency, it will become
obvious to others and may affect morale. Consequently, the manager’s ability
to be fair and equitable will begin to be questioned by the workers. Standard and
routine performance appraisals should help overcome this problem. But if they
are infrequently performed or done in an inconsistent manner, the Peter Principle
will inevitably kick in. However, if you, as manager, believe the person is worth
salvaging, work with the person and get him back on track.

For additional information on firing people, see:

No. 33 – “Firing Employees isn’t for Sissies” – July 18, 2005
http://www.phmainstreet.com/mba/ss050718.pdf

B. How to deal with corporate politics.

As social animals living in a competitive society, politics is a fact of life,
be it on a grand scale or a minor request for your consideration. Don’t
ignore it, address it. In Western culture, it is customary for people
to dig and scratch their way to the top, be it by merit or by politics
(predominantly the latter). In the Eastern culture, primarily Japan,
a class of workers are put on the same career path for ten years,
after which their performance is evaluated and rewarded accordingly. This
system promotes merit over politics. Interestingly, whereas the
Western system promotes individual achievement, the Eastern system
promotes teamwork. The corporate culture has a lot to do with
this. Regardless, office politics is a fact of life in all societies.

As a manager, it is wise to identify the various fiefdoms of the company,
who the Kings are, how their subcultures operate, and the general pecking
order. Learn to keep your distance, operate within your own realm and do
not try to usurp the authority of another thereby creating an enemy. Stay
focused on your own territory. When dealing with the other fiefdoms, a little
diplomacy can go a long way. Understand this, what people should do
logically is not necessarily what they will do emotionally. A person skilled
in tact and proper etiquette will survive a lot longer in the corporate
world than someone who does not. Your intention should be to develop
allies as opposed to enemies who will stab you in the back at an
opportune moment.

All corporate politics are based on human ego and the higher you
go up in the organization, the bigger the egos will inevitably be. People
will fight you over a variety of things, be it simple competition and
domination, jealousy, sheer spite, or because they simply don’t like how
you look today or something you said. This is where being “politically
correct” comes in handy. Understand corporate politics, but do not let it
consume your time or distract you from your mission.

If corporate politics turn ugly or vicious, be prepared to either turn the
other cheek or be prepared to fight back. Both are useful. Turning
the other cheek may win the admiration of your staff by not stooping
to the level of your opponent, but some may also see it as a sign of weakness
in your character. Fighting an issue will tell them you are a principled
man who is not afraid to stand up to adversity, but it also may say to
them you are a hothead. If you need direction, seek the advice of your
superiors or contemporaries and discuss the problem. Sometimes the
best solution is to sit down with your opponent and offer your hand in
peace. Even if this fails, your superiors and subordinates will know
you at least extended the olive branch and will not blame you for any
other action you might take.

Create a spirit of cooperation as opposed to competition. As noted quality
expert W. Edwards Deming liked to say, “Create Win-Win situations.” Instead
of a Win-Lose situation, where one party wins at the expense of another party’s
loss, why not establish partnering programs whereby both parties win? I remember
how Deming used to like to talk about “Nylon” which represented a successful
joint venture between two parties, one in New York (NY) and one in London
(LON). Remember, the only good business relationship is one where both parties
benefit. To this end, forge alliances within your company and support an
“Open Door” policy, not only to the workers of your department, but to
the rest of the company as well. Keep the lines of communications open.

Finally, be on the lookout for gossip pertaining to your department and
be prepared to do a little rumor control. Gossip and rumors can spread
like wildfire in your department and can have an adverse affect on morale To
nip it, you should have a standard and consistent line of communication with
your subordinates as well as lateral relationships. For example, daily/weekly
e-mails or memos discussing plans and developments in the department. If
your people are well informed, they will be less likely to fall prey to gossip.

C. Is image everything?

To a lot of people in Western society, image is much more important than
producing results. For example, I have a friend who serves as a
Systems Manager in New England who had an important project
requiring supplemental help in programming. Consequently, he began to
recruit programmers by offering very competitive salaries and generous
benefits packages. Interestingly, he had one applicant turn my friend down
simply because the applicant wanted the title of “Software Engineer” as
opposed to a mere “Programmer.”

Image is nice but lacks credibility if you cannot produce. Our job titles,
form of dress and physical appearance, speech, mannerisms, and political
moxie all affect human perceptions. Yes, image is important but do not
rely on it entirely. You must be able to back it up.

As manager, dress appropriately; dress for success. Create the proper
image you want your staff to emulate. But don’t put on false airs that
can be easily seen through by your workers. Otherwise, your credibility
will be shot.

Lead by example. Never ask someone to do something you aren’t prepared
to do yourself. And always remember to speak the right word at the
right time. As Benjamin Franklin said, “Remember not only to say the right
thing in the right place, but far more difficult still, to leave unsaid the wrong
thing at the tempting moment.”

LESSONS LEARNED

The following is a summary of the lessons inculcated herein:

Management = Responsibility

Know the business. Think in terms of “360 Degrees.”

Run your department like a business.

As manager you have three prime duties to perform: Provide Leadership,
Establish the proper working Environment, and Produce/Deliver your
products or services.

The manager’s word should be considered his bond.

A true manager is a person of integrity.

Beware of your chief firefighters, they are probably your chief arsonists as well.

Control your destiny. Be proactive as opposed to reactive.

Our physical surroundings affect our attitudes towards our work.

Culture is learned.

Insist on standard terminology; thereby avoiding a “Tower of Babel” effect.

Once a standard is established, enforce it. There is little point in enacting a
change if nobody is going to enforce it.

Changing the corporate culture is no easy task.

Be wary of creating a subculture at odds with the overall corporate culture.

The manager should be smart enough to stay a couple of steps ahead of the
staff and constantly revising project plans so that micromanagement is not necessary.

Management is most definitely NOT a democracy, it is a dictatorship,
be it autocratic or benevolent. How much freedom the workers are allowed
is based on what the manager allows.

Being a manager means that you are not in the popularity business.

Manage from the bottom-up, not just top-down. Empower people and hold them
accountable for their actions.

Effectiveness Rate = (Direct Time + Indirect Time) / 100

The worker is responsible for managing their Direct Time, and the manager is
responsible for controlling Indirect Time.

Teamwork can accomplish far more than individual effort.

Productivity = Effectiveness X Efficiency

If there is anything constant in life, it is change.

Whether the implementation of change is large or small, recognize
that people will resist it until it becomes a natural part of the corporate
culture. As creatures of habit, humans have a natural aversion to
change, even if it is for their own good.

The supreme accomplishment is to blur the line between work and play.

Even if you have the best plans and environment, if you fail to deliver your products
or services, you have failed as a manager.

If you are convinced of a specific course of action, do not procrastinate, act.
An opportunity rarely presents itself twice.

You should never lose sight of the fact that you work for, with, and get things
done through people.

Keeping people at a level of incompetence is a disservice not only to the company,
but to the worker as well.

If corporate politics turn ugly or viscous, be prepared to either turn the
other cheek or be prepared to fight back.

The only good business relationship is where both parties benefit.

Keep the lines of communications open.

Create “Win-Win” situations.

Image is nice but lacks credibility if you cannot produce.

CONCLUSION

The lessons listed above are based on 30 years of practice and observations
in hundreds of commercial and nonprofit enterprises around the world. They
are commonsense approaches that are universally applicable and transcend
company type.

There is more to management than saying, “Lead, follow, or get the hell out
of the way.” It is a people-oriented function requiring someone intimate
with the business of the enterprise and well versed in interpersonal
communications/relations. Someone who knows how to get what he
wants through people. Regardless of the management tools of the day, they
do not make the decisions, the human-being does. I encourage people to
use suitable management tools, but more importantly, I encourage them to
develop their people skills first. Consequently, a manager is one part visionary,
one part coach, and one part politician.

The ultimate measurement of a manager’s abilities is whether the department
can function successfully in his absence. By creating a well oiled machine,
the manager’s goal is to do himself out of a job and leave the department
better off than when he first took charge.

The business schools do not teach these lessons. I’m just filling in the
gaps. Hopefully these lessons will serve you well as manager. If not, you
can always prepare three envelopes.

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One company that offers excellent a sales lead management system that will be an invaluable asset to your sales lead management team is Avidian. The Prophet sales lead management system that Avidian offers will have a great affect on your sales lead management department and your entire company. Prophet sales lead management system is based on Microsoft Outlook and can be used in a variety of ways to help your company. Prophet sales lead management system is cost effective, easy to use, and it will help your sales lead management team to increase productivity. Avidian is dedicated to excellence and this company will stand behind their sales lead management system and offers a 30-day no questions asked guarantee. When purchasing a sales lead management system from Avidian you will be able to rest assured that this company is one that cares about the integrity of their product.

A sales lead management system is important to the success of a company.

An effective sales lead management system is important and sales lead management teams need to come up with quality leads. Technology can help companies today by offering new ways to organize leads such as a sales lead management system. If your sales lead management teams works together to help make your sales lead management system better and as they use a quality sales lead management system, you will find your company increasing the amount of sales made and the amount of profit generated. If your company uses the technology available to help your sales lead management system and teams then more quality leads will help to result in more sales. A sales lead management system is important to every company and when it is used correctly with modern technology your company will find long-term benefits and gain.

About Avidian Technologies:

Avidian Technologies is a software company specializing in creating software solutions for users of Outlook and Exchange. Prophet, developed by Avidian Technologies on the .NET platform, is the leading contact management and sales CRM software built in Outlook. The company is headquartered in Redmond, Washington. For more information, please visit http://www.avidian.com or call 1-800-860-5534.

One important role that property management has is to act as the middle person between the tenant and the property management landlord. Property management should provide the property management landlord with a sense of security, knowing that everyday needs from the renter can be resolved without involving said property management landlord unnecessarily. Hand and hand with that security, the tenant can be assured that the property will be maintained to some set of standards which can be reviewed with the property management team before an agreement is reached. Property management is a delicate balance between pleasing the property management landlord and keeping the renter happy as well. The task of property management can prove to be harder than it sounds. Maintaining an open line of communication in property management and being able to address the needs of both property management parties will make a successful property management business. Other duties for property management but are not limited to; collecting rent, posting and showing vacancies, maintenance issues, evictions, failure to pay rent issues, harassment, and background checks on the application forms. It is very important that a profitable property management staff or team be knowledgeable in the current laws of the city, state and county concerning tenant rights vs. landlord rights. Be sure your property management team is up to date on current property management codes, and other items that will benefit your property management business. Getting caught up in property management legal matters is no way to run a property management business.

The following is the definition of property managers/property management as posted by Wikipedia on their website. Property management is a person or firm responsible for the operation of a real estate property for a fee, when the owner of the property cannot or is not interested in managing the property themselves. The property manager or the property management company has a primary responsibility to the landlord and a secondary responsibility to the tenant. Relationships the property manager or property management team have with the landlord and with the tenant are crucial in forming the expectations of both parties to the lease since both parties will seek and expect certain rights and benefits out of it. Owner’s expectations from the property manager/ property management team are to carry out the owner’s instructions, control costs and maximize revenue to maintain a stabilized cash flow as a return on capital invested, exercise control over the building to safeguard the capital invested, provide a duty of care through proper maintenance of the building, to be professional and well informed, enhance the value of the property by making improvements that will increase its market value, retain and enhance pride of ownership. The tenant’s expectations from the property manager/ property management team are the “quiet enjoyment” ‘assurance of the use and enjoyment of the premises for the intended purposes without interference from the landlord, comforta living environment properly heated, cooled and ventilated with as many amenities as possible compatible with the rental level, security and safetyto live or work in a building in which there are no inherent defects or conditions that might be hazardous to health or to property, statusaccommodation and facilities that meet social-economic and cultural standards for the tenant’s and their guest.

Property management can be a very lucrative business when handled correctly. Property management takes an organized, well communicated, and dedicated individual or staff to be able to pull off a successful property management company. Typically property management companies will charge their landlords a percentage of the gross rent collected each month. This percentage for property management fees can range from 3 to 10% depending on the property management market. Sometimes a flat fee is more appropriate when the property is a condominium or a type of cooperative complex for property management. Some states might require that property managers have a property management license or a real estate license to be able to claim the title of property manager or property management business.

A cousin to property management is facility management. Facility management is like property management but the focus is the management of buildings and services. One definition from a large facility/property management association says, “A profession that encompasses multiple disciplines to ensure functionality of the built environment by integrating people, place, process and technology.” Australians prefer the term: Commercial Services to property management, this term replaces facilities management in some organizations. Besides keeping the property up to date, commercial services can also include duties such as waste disposal, parking, security, landscaping and more.

A homeowner may provide his or her own property management, but property management is not limited to the duties of house cleaning, lawn care and landscaping, building maintenance, trash and waste disposal and interior upkeep. Property management can be all of these, and can be hired out to a professional that can provide better property management services than the homeowner can or would provide themselves. These property management services come with a price and if the homeowner is willing to pay for outside property management, the sky is the limit on what they can have managed. Some property management companies even manage home owners associations (HOAs). In this instance the property management company is the middle person between the homeowners and the land developer. Once the developer has completed his contracted tasks, the neighborhood is then turned over to the HOA. The property management company may stay on board for a fee to help the HOA. A landlord may also provide property management services himself or have it hired out to a property management company. A large company or corporation might have internal structures in place to provide property management on site or they may choose to hire an outside property management company to provide the property management services that they would need on a day to day basis. Both of these operations are a reasonable and effective way to tackle the issue of property management on a large scale.

With the world of technology growing everyday, it makes perfect sense to have applicable property management software and property management computer systems that deal with property management in place to help with property management or facility management. You can have your home wired and programmed to turn the lights on and off when entering a room. Constant temperature and humidity levels can be monitored along with major appliance functions. Watering of lawns and security systems has become high tech and available to the everyday homeowner who wants property management. Some passenger vehicles now include a “remote” that when programmed can turn the lights on, turn the TV on your favorite station and more, all from the comforts of your car. Heaven forbid you will have to walk into your dark and quite home. Home builders, architects and engineers saw the potential for using large scale property management ideas in the home. Beyond the home, large commercial properties, computer aided facility management (CAFM) has been a natural progression of the marriage between technology and facility/ property management. In the late 1980’s CAFM evolved to allow larger properties to manage their property management sites more efficiently. Most often, CAFM systems track and maintain; floor plans, LAN and telecom information, business continuity and safety information, workplace assets, employee and occupancy data, building and property information and space characteristics and usage. Being able to supervise the goings on of your with a property management company in an efficient and well structured way will help your property management bottom line.

If you need information about property management, the internet is a great place to start.

Inventory is a list of goods and materials, or those goods and materials themselves, held available in stock by a business. Inventory are held in order to manage and hide from the customer the fact that manufacture/supply delay is longer than delivery delay, and also to ease the effect of imperfections in the manufacturing process that lower production efficiencies if production capacity stands idle for lack of materials.

The reasons for keeping stock

All these stock reasons can apply to any owner or product stage.

Buffer stock is held in individual workstations against the possibility that the upstream workstation may be a little delayed in providing the next item for processing. Whilst some processes carry very large buffer stocks, Toyota moved to one (or a few items) and has now moved to eliminate this stock type.

Safety stock is held against process or machine failure in the hope/belief that the failure can be repaired before the stock runs out. This type of stock can be eliminated by programmes like Total Productive Maintenance

Overproduction is held because the forecast and the actual sales did not match. Making to order and JIT eliminates this stock type.

Lot delay stock is held because a part of the process is designed to work on a batch basis whilst only processing items individually. Therefore each item of the lot must wait for the whole lot to be processed before moving to the next workstation. This can be eliminated by single piece working or a lot size of one. Demand fluctuation stock is held where production capacity is unable to flex with demand. Therefore a stock is built in times of lower utilisation to be supplied to customers when demand exceeds production capacity. This can be eliminated by increasing the flexibility and capacity of a production line or reduced by moving to item level load balancing. Line balance stock is held because different sub-processes in a line work at different rates. Therefore stock will accumulate after a fast sub-process or before a large lot size sub-process. Line balancing will eliminate this stock type.

Changeover stock is held after a sub-process that has a long setup or change-over time. This stock is then used while that change-over is happening. This stock can be eliminated by tools like SMED.

Where these stocks contain the same or similar items it is often the work practice to hold all these stocks mixed together before or after the sub-process to which they relate. This ‘reduces’ costs. Because they are mixed-up together there is no visual reminder to operators of the adjacent sub-processes or line management of the stock which is due to a particular cause and should be a particular individual’s responsibility with inevitable consequences. Some plants have centralized stock holding across sub-processes which makes the situation even more acute.

The basis of Inventory accounting

Inventory needs to be accounted where it is held across accounting period boundaries since generally expenses should be matched against the results of that expense within the same period. When processes were simple and short then inventories were small but with more complex processes then inventories became larger and significant valued items on the balance sheet. This need to value unsold and incomplete goods has driven many new behaviours into management practise. Perhaps most significant of these are the complexities of fixed cost recovery, transfer pricing, and the separation of direct from indirect costs. This, supposedly, precluded “anticipating income” or “declaring dividends out of capital”. It is one of the intangible benefits of Lean and the TPS that process times shorten and stock levels decline to the point where the importance of this activity is hugely reduced and therefore effort, especially managerial, to achieve it can be minimised.

LIFO V/S FIFO

When a dealer sells goods from inventory, the value of the inventory reduces by the cost of goods sold(CoG sold). This is simple where the CoG has not varied across those held in stock but where it has then an agreed method must be derived. For commodity items that one cannot track individually, accountants must choose a method that fits the nature of the sale. Two popular methods exist: FIFO and LIFO accounting (first in – first out, last in – first out). FIFO regards the first unit that arrived in inventory the first one sold. LIFO considers the last unit arriving in inventory as the first one sold. Which method an accountant selects can have a significant effect on net income and book value and, in turn, on taxation. Using LIFO accounting for inventory, a company generally reports lower net income and lower book value due to the effects of inflation. This generally results in lower taxation. Due to LIFO’s potential to skew inventory value, UK GAAP and IAS have effectively banned LIFO inventory accounting.

SUPPLY CHAIN MANAGEMENT

A supply chain is a network of facilities and distribution options that performs the functions of procurement of materials, transformation of these materials into intermediate and finished products, and the distribution of these finished products to customers. Supply chains exist in both service and manufacturing organizations, although the complexity of the chain may vary greatly from industry to industry and firm to firm. Supply chain management is typically viewed to lie between fully vertically integrated firms, where the entire material flow is owned by a single firm and those where each channel member operates independently. Therefore coordination between the various players in the chain is key in its effective management. Cooper and Ellram [1993] compare supply chain management to a well-balanced and well-practiced relay team. Such a team is more competitive when each player knows how to be positioned for the hand-off. The relationships are the strongest between players who directly pass the baton (stick), but the entire team needs to make a coordinated effort to win the race. Below is an example of a very simple supply chain for a single product, where raw material is procured from vendors, transformed into finished goods in a single step, and then transported to distribution centers, and ultimately, customers. Realistic supply chains have multiple end products with shared components, facilities and capacities. The flow of materials is not always along an arborescent network, various modes of transportation may be considered, and the bill of materials for the end items may be both deep and large. To simplify the concept, supply chain management can be defined as a loop: it starts with the customer and ends with the customer. All materials, finished products, information, and even all transactions flow through the loop. However, supply chain management can be a very difficult task because in the reality, the supply chain is a complex and dynamic network of facilities and organizations with different, conflicting objectives. Supply chains exist in both service and manufacturing organizations, although the complexity of the chain may vary greatly from industry to industry and firm to firm. Unlike commercial manufacturing supplies, services such as clinical supplies planning are very dynamic and can often have last minute changes. Availability of patient kit when patient arrives at investigator site is very important for clinical trial success. This results in overproduction of drug products to take care of last minute change in demand. R&D manufacturing is very expensive and overproduction of patient kits adds significant cost to the total cost of clinical trials. An integrated supply chain can reduce the overproduction of drug products by efficient demand management, planning, and inventory management. Traditionally, marketing, distribution, planning, manufacturing, and the purchasing organizations along the supply chain operated independently. These organizations have their own objectives and these are often conflicting. Marketing’s objective of high customer service and maximum sales dollars conflict with manufacturing and distribution goals. Many manufacturing operations are designed to maximize throughput and lower costs with little consideration for the impact on inventory levels and distribution capabilities. Purchasing contracts are often negotiated with very little information beyond historical buying patterns. The result of these factors is that there is not a single, integrated plan for the organization—there were as many plans as businesses. Clearly, there is a need for a mechanism through which these different functions can be integrated together. Supply chain management is a strategy through which such integration can be achieved. Supply Chain Management (SCM) is the process of planning, implementing, and controlling the operations of the supply chain with the purpose to satisfy customer requirements as efficiently as possible. Supply chain management spans all movement and storage of raw materials, work-in-process inventory, and finished goods from point-of-origin to point-of-consumption.According to the Council of Supply Chain Management Professionals (CSCMP),A professional association that developed a definition in 2004, Supply Chain Management “encompasses the planning and management of all activities involved in sourcing and procurement, conversion, and all logistics management activities”. Importantly, it also includes coordination and collaboration with channel partners, which can be suppliers, intermediaries, third-party service providers, and customers. In essence, Supply Chain Management integrates supply and demand management within and across companies.According to Cohen & Lee (1988)Supply Chain Management is “The network of organizations that are having linkages, both upstream and downstream, in different processes and activities that produces and delivers the value in form of products and services in the hands of ultimate consumer.” Thus a shirt manufacturer is a part of supply chain that extends up stream through the weaves of fabrics to the spinners and the manufacturers of fibers, and down stream through distributions and retailers to the final consumer. Though each of these organizations are dependent on each other yet traditionally do not closely cooperate with each other. An integrated supply chain management streamlines processes and increases profitability by delivering the right product to the right place, at the right time, and at the lowest possible cost. According to Ganeshan & Harrison (2001)Supply Chain Management is a “systems approach to managing the entire flow of information, materials, and services from raw materials suppliers through factories and warehouses to the end customer.”Supply chain event management (abbreviated as SCEM) is a consideration of all possible occurring events and factors that can cause a disruption in a supply chain. With SCEM possible scenarios can be created and solutions can be planned. Some experts distinguish supply chain management and logistics management, while others consider the terms to be interchangeable. From the point of view of an enterprise, the scope of supply chain management is usually bounded on the supply side by your supplier’s suppliers and on the customer side by your customer’s customers.Supply chain management is also a category of software products.2. SIEMENS

SIEMENS is one of the world’s largest companies and Europe’s largest engineering firm. Siemens has six major business divisions: Communication and Information; Automation and Control; Power; Transportation; Medical; and Lighting. Siemens’ international headquarters are located in Berlin and Munich, Germany. Siemens AG is listed on the Frankfurt Stock Exchange, and has been listed on the New York Stock Exchange since March 12, 2001. Worldwide, Siemens and its subsidiaries employ 480,000 people in 190 countries and reported global sales of €87.325 billion in fiscal year 2006

HISTORY

Siemens was founded by Werner von Siemens on October 1, 1847, based on the telegraph he had invented that used a needle to point to the sequence of letters, instead of using Morse code. The company – then called Telegraphen-Bauanstalt von Siemens & Halske – opened its first workshop on October 12.

In 1848, the company built the first long-distance telegraph line in Europe; 500 km from Berlin to Frankfurt am Main. In 1850 the founder’s younger brother, Sir William Siemens (born Carl Wilhelm Siemens), started to represent the company in London. In the 1850s, the company was involved in building long distance telegraph networks in Russia. In 1855, a company branch headed by another brother, Carl von Siemens, opened in St Petersburg. In 1867, Siemens completed the monumental Indo-European (Calcutta to London) telegraph line.

In 1881, a Siemens AC Alternator driven by a watermill was used to power the world’s first electric street lighting in the town of Godalming, United Kingdom. The company continued to grow and diversified into electric trains and light bulbs. In 1890, the founder retired and left the company to his brother Carl and sons Arnold and Wilhelm. Siemens & Halske (S&H) was incorporated in 1897.

In 1919, S&H and two other companies jointly formed the Osram lightbulb company. A Japanese subsidiary was established in 1923.

During the 1920s and 1930s, S&H started to manufacture radios, television sets, and electron microscopes.

Before World War II Siemens was involved in the secret rearmament of Germany. During the Second World War, like most big companies in Germany at the time, Siemens supported the Hitler regime, contributed to the war effort and participated in the “Nazification” of the economy. Siemens had many factories in and around famous extermination camps such as Auschwitz and used slave labor from concentration camps to build electric switches for military uses. In one example, almost 100,000 men and women from Auschwitz worked in a Siemens factory inside the extermination camp, supplying the electricity to the camp.

In the 1950s and from their new base in Bavaria, S&H started to manufacture computers, semiconductor devices, laundry machines, and pacemakers. Siemens AG was incorporated in 1966. The company’s first digital telephone exchange was produced in 1980. In 1988 Siemens and GEC acquired the UK defense and technology company Plessey. Plessey’s holdings were split, and Siemens took over the avionics, radar and traffic control businesses — as Siemens Plessey.

In 1991, Siemens acquired Nixdorf Computer AG and renamed it Siemens Nixdorf Informationssysteme AG. In 1997 Siemens introduced the first GSM cellular phone with colour display. Also in 1997 Siemens agreed to sell the defence arm of Siemens Plessey to British Aerospace (BAe) and a UK government agency, the Defence Analytical Services Agency (DASA). BAe and DASA acquired the British and German divisions of the operation respectively.

In 1999, Siemens’ semiconductor operations were spun off into a new company known as Infineon Technologies. Also, Siemens Nixdorf Informationssysteme AG formed part of Fujitsu Siemens Computers AG in that year. The retail banking technology group became Wincor Nixdorf.

In February 2003, Siemens reopened its office in Kabul.[3]In 2004, Siemens took over the mantle of official Formula One timekeeper, replacing TAG Heuer.

In November, 2005, Siemens signed a 12 year agreement with the Walt Disney Company to sponsor attractions in its Florida and California parks.

In 2006, Siemens announced the purchase of Bayer Diagnostics, which was incorporated into the Medical Solutions Diagnostics division officially on 1 January 2007.

In March 2007 a Siemens board member was temporarily arrested and accused of illegally financing a business-friendly labour association which competes against the union IG Metall. He has been released on bail. Offices of the labour union and of Siemens have been searched. Siemens denies any wrongdoing.

In April 2007, the Fixed Networks, Mobile Networks and Carrier Services divisions of Siemens merged with Nokia’s Network Business Group in a 50/50 joint venture, creating a fixed and mobile network company called Nokia Siemens Networks. Nokia delayed the merger due to bribery investigations against Siemens.

Through an American sub-organisation known as the Siemens Foundation, Siemens also devotes funds to rewarding students and AP teachers. One of its main programs is the Siemens Westinghouse Competition in maths, science, and technology, which annually grants scholarships up to US$100,000 to both individual and team entrants. According to the foundation website, Siemens awards a total of nearly US$2 million in scholarship money every year.MAJOR CLIENTS OF SIEMENS

-KCR -Novartis -Edmonton Transit System -Calgary Transit -Deutsche Bahn AG ( German rail transport company) -METRORail (Houston, Texas) -Sacramento Regional Transit District -Regional Transportation District TheRide (Denver, Colorado) -LACMTA (Los Angeles County, California) -Pittsburgh Light Rail -San Diego Trolley -MAX Light Rail (Portland, Oregon) -Nederlandse Spoorwegen (the Dutch railways) (The Netherlands) -Port of Rotterdam (Rotterdam, The Netherlands) -Balkim Muh. Elk. Ltd. Sti. -BBC -Indian Railways -Airtel -Powergrid Corporation of India

Products

-Industrial Instrumentation (Sensors and Controls) -Telecommunication Service Platform, the TSP 7000 -Combino, ULF, and Avanto trams -Siemens-Duwag U2 LRV -ER20 locomotive – MTR -LHB/Siemens M1/M2/M3 Metro Mar. Pair -Siemens-Adtranz LRV -Duewag/Siemens 1435 mm Combino Low Flr LRV -MX3000 Metro car for Oslo (SGP Wien works) -S4000 metro -Schindler/Siemens ABB Be 4/8 Low Floor LRV -Metro 5001 -SWBSiemensr NGT 6D LRV -Eurosprinter locomotive -Desiro, ICE, and Transrapid trains -Gigaset, Home entertainment products, including Gigaset M740 AV, a set-top box to receive -TDT and integrate it in a domestic network (using WLAN or cable), i.e. for home streaming media. -Hicom Trading E -Hicom 300 -HiPath -HiQ 8000 Softswitch -MSR32R -EWSD telephone exchanges -SPX 2000 small digital telephone exchange (rural) -Siemens Gigaset cordless telephones -Siemens Mobile Phones – divested to BenQ in 2005 -Siemens SPPA-T2000 Control System (formerly Teleperm XP) -Siemens SPPA-T3000 Control System (For Electrical Power Generation Control) -SIMATIC PCS 7 Process Automation System for Process and Hybrid industries -Radio and core products for 2G and 3G Mobile Networks (GSM, UMTS, …) -Gas & Steam Turbines -Industrial programmable controls (including Simatic PLC, and Logo! microcontrollers) -The Siemens Servo life support ventilator line -MAGNETOM(TM) Espree -SOMATOM(R) Definition CT -SOMATOM(R) Sensation CT -SOMATOM(R) Emotion CT -AXIOM Artis -AXIOM Sensis -E.Cam Signature Series Gamma Camera -Symbia TruePoint SPECT-CT -Biograph TruePoint PET.CT -Magnetom C!, a low field open MRI -Magnetom Avanto, a Tim system MRI -Magnetom Espree, a Tim system, open bore MRI -Magnetom Trio, A Tim System, ultra high field MRI -Windturbines, 1.3 MW, 2.3 MW, 3.6 MW -Sinorix(TM) -Sistore(TM)

Main competitors of Siemens are:

-ABB -Alcatel-Lucent -Alstom -Automated Logic -Bombardier -Cisco Systems -Computrols -Eaton -Ericsson -General Electric -Honeywell -Johnson Controls -Lantronix -Nortel -Philips -Reliable Controls -Rockwell Automation -Samsung -Schneider Electric3. OBJECTIVES AND NEED OF SUPPLY CHAIN MANAGEMENT

Traditionally, marketing, distribution, planning, manufacturing, and the purchasing organizations along the supply chain operated independently. These organizations have their own objectives and these are often conflicting. Marketing’s objective of high customer service and maximum sales dollars conflict with manufacturing and distribution goals. Many manufacturing operations are designed to maximize throughput and lower costs with little consideration for the impact on inventory levels and distribution capabilities. Purchasing contracts are often negotiated with very little information beyond historical buying patterns. The result of these factors is that there is not a single, integrated plan for the organization—there were as many plans as businesses. Clearly, there is a need for a mechanism through which these different functions can be integrated together. Supply chain management is a strategy through which such integration can be achieved. Moreover, shortened product life cycles, increased competition, and heightened expectations of customers have forced many leading edge companies to move from physical logistic management towards more advanced supply chain management. Additionally, in recent years it has become clear that many companies have reduced their manufacturing costs as much as it is practically possible. Therefore, in many cases, the only possible way to further reduce costs and lead times is with effective supply chain management.In addition to cost reduction, the supply chain management approach also facilitates customer service improvements. It enables the management of:- inventories, – transportation systems and – whole distribution networks so that organizations are able to meet or even exceed their customers’ expectations. The major objective of supply chain management is to reduce or eliminate the buffers of inventory that exists between originations in chain through the sharing of information on demand and current stock levels. Broadly, an organization needs an efficient and proper supply chain management system so that the following strategic and competitive areas can be used to their full advantage if a supply chain management system is properly implemented.1. Fulfillment of raw materials: Ensuring the right quantity of parts for production or products for sale arrive at the right time. This is enabled through efficient communication, ensuring that orders are placed with the appropriate amount of time available to be filled. The supply chain management system also allows a company to constantly see what is on stock and making sure that the right quantities are ordered to replace stock. 2. Logistics: The cost of transporting materials as low as possible consistent with safe and reliable delivery. Here the supply chain management system enables a company to have constant contact with its distribution team, which could consist of trucks, trains, or any other mode of transportation. The system can allow the company to track where the required materials are at all times. As well, it may be cost effective to share transportation costs with a partner company if shipments are not large enough to fill a whole truck and this again, allows the company to make this decision.3. Smooth Production: Ensuring production lines function smoothly because high-quality parts are available when needed. Production can run smoothly as a result of fulfillment and logistics being implemented correctly. If the correct quantity is not ordered and delivered at the requested time, production will be halted, but having an effective supply chain management system in place will ensure that production can always run smoothly without delays due to ordering and transportation. 4. Increase in Revenue & profit: Ensuring no sales is lost because shelves are empty. Managing the supply chain improves a company flexibility to respond to unforeseen changes in demand and supply. Because of this, a company has the ability to produce goods at lower prices and distribute them to consumers quicker then companies without supply chain management thus increasing the overall profit. 5. Reduction in Costs: Keeping the cost of purchased parts and products at acceptable levels. Supply chain management reduces costs by increasing inventory turnover on the shop floor and in the warehouse controlling the quality of goods thus reducing internal and external failure costs and working with suppliers to produce the most cost efficient means of manufacturing a product. 6. Mutual Success: Among supply chain partners ensures mutual success. Collaborative planning, forecasting and replenishment (CPFR) is a longer-term commitment, joint work on quality, and support by the buyer of the supplier’s managerial, technological, and capacity development. This relationship allows a company to have access to current, reliable information, obtain lower inventory levels, cut lead times, enhance product quality, improve forecasting accuracy and ultimately improve customer service and overall profits. The suppliers also benefit from the cooperative relationship through increased buyer input from suggestions on improving the quality and costs and though shared savings. Consumers can benefit as well through higher quality goods provided at a lower cost.4. ACTIVITIES/FUNCTIONS OF SCM IN SIEMENS Supply chain management is a cross-functional approach to managing the movement of raw materials into an organization and the movement of finished goods out of the organization toward the end-consumer. As corporations strive to focus on core competencies and become more flexible, they have reduced their ownership of raw materials sources and distribution channels. These functions are increasingly being outsourced to other corporations that can perform the activities better or more cost effectively. The effect has been to increase the number of companies involved in satisfying consumer demand, while reducing management control of daily logistics operations. Less control and more supply chain partners led to the creation of supply chain management concepts. The purpose of supply chain management is to improve trust and collaboration among supply chain partners, thus improving inventory visibility and improving inventory velocity. Several models have been proposed for understanding the activities required managing material movements across organizational and functional boundaries. SCOR is a supply chain management model promoted by the Supply-Chain Council. Another model is the SCM Model proposed by the Global Supply Chain Forum (GSCF). Supply chain activities can be grouped into strategic, tactical, and operational levels of activities. (a) Strategic:-

-Strategic network optimization, including the number, location, and size of warehouses, distribution centers and facilities.-Strategic partnership with suppliers, distributors, and customers, creating communication channels for critical information and operational improvements such as cross docking, direct shipping, and third-party logistics.

-Products design coordination, so that new and existing products can be optimally integrated into the supply chain. -Information Technology infrastructure, to support supply chain operations. -Where to make and what to make or buy decisions.(b) Tactical:-

-Sourcing contracts and other purchasing decisions. -Production decisions, including contracting, locations, scheduling, and planning process definition. -Inventory decisions, including quantity, location, and quality of inventory. Transportation strategy, including frequency, routes, and contracting.

-Benchmarking of all operations against competitors and implementation of best practices throughout the enterprise. (c) Operational:-

-Daily production and distribution planning, including all nodes in the supply chain.-Production scheduling for each manufacturing facility in the supply chain (minute by minute). -Demand planning and forecasting, coordinating the demand forecast of all customers and sharing the forecast with all suppliers. -Sourcing planning, including current inventory and forecast demand, in collaboration with all suppliers. Inbound operations, including transportation from suppliers and receiving inventory.-Production operations, including the consumption of materials and flow of finished goods. -Outbound operations, including all fulfillment activities and transportation to customers. -Order promising, accounting for all constraints in the supply chain, including all suppliers, manufacturing facilities, distribution centers, and other customers. Performance tracking of all activities.INTEGRATED SUPPLY CHAIN MANAGEMENT An integrated supply chain management streamlines processes and increases profitability by delivering the right product to the right place, at the right time, and at the lowest possible cost. Unlike commercial manufacturing supplies, clinical supplies planning is very dynamic and can often have last minute changes. Availability of patient kit when patient arrives at investigator site is very important for clinical trial success. This results in overproduction of drug products to take care of last minute change in demand. R&D manufacturing is very expensive and overproduction of patient kits adds significant cost to the total cost of clinical trials. An integrated supply chain can reduce the overproduction of drug products by efficient demand management, planning, and inventory management. Implementation of ERP system (such as SAP) in R&D can have major ROI by an efficient supply and inventory management system and also by reducing overproduction.-How Integration Is Achieved In Supply Chain?Stage 1:

Complete functional independence where each business function such as production or purchasing does its own thing in complete isolation from other business function. For instance, production function seeking to optimize its unit cost of manufacture by long production runs with out regard for build up of finished goods inventory and advance impact it will have on the warehousing as well as working capital. Stage 2:

Companies recognize the need of limited integration between adjacent functions such as distribution and inventory management or purchasing and material control.Stage 3:

A natural extension of stage two, leading to establishment and implementation of end- to-end integration. A concept of linkage and coordination is achieved.STAGE 4:

The linkage achieved in stage three is extended upstream to suppliers and down stream to customers. It represents true supply chain integration. This concept is also called ‘co-managed inventory’ (CMI).Force of supply chain management is on trust and cooperation and the recognition that is properly managed ‘the whole cane be greater then the sum of its part’.Inventory Decisions: These refer to means by which inventories are managed. Inventories exist at every stage of the supply chain as either raw material, semi-finished or finished goods. They can also be in-process between locations. Their primary purpose to buffer against any uncertainty that might exist in the supply chain. Since holding of inventories can cost anywhere between 20 to 40 percent of their value, their efficient management is critical in supply chain operations. It is long term in the sense that top management sets goals. However, most researchers have approached the management of inventory from short term perspective. These include deployment strategies (push versus pull), control policies — the determination of the optimal levels of order quantities and reorder points, and setting safety stock levels, at each stocking location. These levels are critical, since they are primary determinants of customer service levels.5. INVENTORY CONTROL MANAGEMENT

Inventory database

An important component of inventory planning involves access to an inventory database. It is a structured framework that contains the information needed to effectively manage all items of inventory, from raw materials to finished goods. This information includes the classification and amount of inventories, demand for the items, cost to the firm for each item, ordering costs, carrying costs and other data.

The task of inventory planning can be highly complex. At the same time it rests on fundamental principles. In doing so we must understand and determine the optimal lot size that has to be ordered. The EOQ (economic order quantity) refers to the optimal order size that will result in the lowest total of order and carrying costs and ordering costs. By calculating the economic order quantity the firm attempts to determine the order size that will minimize the total inventory costs. In examination of the two curves reveals that the carrying cost curve is linear i.e. more the inventory held in any period, greater will be the cost of holding it. Ordering cost curve on the other hand is different. The ordering costs decrease with an increase in order sizes. The point where the holding cost curve i.e. the carrying cost curve and the ordering cost curve meet, represent the least total cost which is incidentally the economic order quantity or optimum quantity.PRODUCTIVITY

In the industries there will be a competitor who will be a low cost producer and will have greater sales volume in that sector. This is partly due to economies of scale, which enable fixed costs to spread over a greater volume but more particularly to the impact of the experience curve.It is possible to identify and predict improvements in the rate of output of workers as they become more skilled in the processes and tasks on which they work. Bruce Henderson extended this concept by demonstrating that all costs, not just production costs, would decline at a given rate as volume increased. This cost decline applies only to value added, i.e. costs other than bought in supplies. Traditionally it has been suggested that the main route to cost reduction was by gaining greater sales volume and there can be no doubt about the close linkage between relative market share and relative costs. However it must also be recognized that logistics management can provide a multitude of ways to increase efficiency and productivity and hence contribute significantly to reduced unit costs.In today’s more turbulent environment there is no longer any possibility of manufacturing and marketing acting independently of each other. It is now generally accepted that the need to understand and meet customer requirements is a prerequisite for survival. At the same time, in the search for improved cost competitiveness, manufacturing management has been the subject of massive renaissance. The last decade has seen the rapid introduction of flexible manufacturing systems, of new approaches to inventory based on materials requirement planning (MRP) and just in time (JIT) methods, a sustained emphasis on quality. Equally there has been a growing recognition of the critical role that procurement plays in creating and sustaining competitive advantage as part of an integrated logistics process.In this scheme of things, logistics is therefore essentially an integrative concept that seeks to develop a system wide view of the firm. It is fundamentally a planning concept that seeks to create a framework through which the needs of the manufacturing strategy and plan, which in turn link into a strategy and plan for procurement.Inventory Flow:The management of logistics is concerned with the movement and storage of materials and finished products. Logistical operations start with the initial shipment of a material or component part from a supplier and are finalized when a manufactured or processed product is delivered to a customer. From the initial purchase of a material or component, the logistical process adds value. By moving inventory when and where needed. Thus the material gains value at each step. For a large manufacturer, logistical operations may consist of thousands of movements, which ultimately culminate in the delivery of the product to an industrial user, wholesaler, dealer or customer. Similarly for a retailer, logistical operations may commence with the procurement of products for resale and may terminate with consumer pickup or delivery.

The significant point is that regardless of the size or type of the enterprise, logistics is useful and requires continuous management attention.INVENTORY- related costsInventory carrying cost (ICC):

-Tax-Storage-Capital-Insurance-Obsolescence-Ordering:-Communication-Processing, including material -handling and packaging-Update activities, including -receiving and date-processingBasic Inventory Decisions There are two basic decisions that must be made for every item that is maintained in inventory. These decisions have to do with the timing of orders for the item and the size of orders for the item.RELEVANT INVENTORY COSTSItem Costs, Holding Costs, Ordering Costs, Shortage Costs,Direct cost for getting an item. Purchase cost for outside orders, manufacturing cost for internal orders. Costs associated with carrying items in inventory. Storage and other related costs. Fixed costs associated with placing an order (either a purchase cost for outside orders, or a setup cost for internal orders). Costs associated with not having enough inventory to meet demand.EOQ:The EOQ can be calculated with the help of a mathematical formula. Following assumptions are implied in the calculation:1. Constant or uniform demand- although the EOQ model assumes constant demand, demand may vary from day to day. If demand is not known in advance- the model must be modified through the inclusion of safe stock. 2. Constant unit price- the EOQ model assumes that the purchase price per unit of material will remain unaltered irrespective of the order offered by the suppliers to include variable costs resulting from quantity discounts, the total costs in the EOQ model can be redefined.3. Constant carrying costs- unit carrying costs may very substantially as the size of the inventory rises, perhaps decreasing because of economies of scale or storage efficiency or increasing as storage space runs out and new warehouses have to be rented.4. Constant ordering cost- this assumption is generally valid. However any violation in this respect can be accommodated by modifying the EOQ model in a manner similar to the one used for variable unit price.5. Instantaneous delivery- if delivery is not instantaneous, which is generally the case; the original EOQ model must be modified through the inclusion of a safe stock.6. Independent orders- if multiple orders result in cost saving by reducing paper work and the transportation cost, the original EOQ model must be further modified. While this modification is somewhat complicated, special EOQ models have been developed to deal with it. These assumptions have been pointed out to illustrate the limitations of the basic EOQ model and the ways in which it can be easily modified to compensate for them.The formula for the EOQ model is:2 M CoS Cc Where M = is the annual demandCo is the cost of ordering Cc is the inventory carrying costS = is the unit price of an item.Limitations of the EOQ formula-1. Erratic changes usages- the formula presumes the usage of materials is both predictable and evenly distributed. When this is not the case, the formula becomes useless.2. Faulty basic information- order cost varies from commodity to commodity and the carrying cost can vary with the company’s opportunity cost of capital. Thus the assumption that the ordering cost and the carrying cost remains constant is faulty and hence EOQ calculations are not correct.3. Costly calculations: the calculation required to find out EOQ is extremely time consuming. More elaborate formulae are even more expensive. In many cases, the cost of estimating the cost of possession and acquisition and calculating EOQ exceeds the savings made by buying that quantity.4. No formula is a substitute for common sense- sometimes the EOQ may suggest that we order a particular commodity every week (six-year supply) based on the assumption that we need it at the same rate for the next six years. However we have to order it in the quantities according to our judgment. Some items can be ordered every week; some can be ordered monthly, depends on how feasible it is for the firm.5. EOQ ordering must be tempered with judgment- Sometimes guidelines provide a conflict in ordering. Where an order strategy conflicts with an operational goal, order strategy restrictions should be developed to permit honoring the goal.Quantity discounts: In the EOQ analysis, it has been assumed that material prices and transportation costs were constant factors for the range of order quantities considered. In practice, some situations occur in which the delivered unit cost of a material decreases significantly if a slightly larger quantity than the originally computed EOQ is purchased. Quantity discounts, freight rate schedules and price increases may create such situations. These additional variables can also be included in the formula.

Cost of carrying inventory:

Carrying material in inventory is expensive. A number of studies indicated that the annual cost of carrying a production inventory averaged approximately 25% of the value of the inventory. The escalating and volatile cost of money has escalated the annual inventory carrying cost to a figure between 25% – 35% of the value of the inventory. The following five elements make up this cost:1) Opportunity cost (12% -20%)2) Insurance cost (2% – 4%)3) Property taxes (1% – 3%)4) Storage costs (1%- 3%)5) Obsolescence and deterioration (4% – 10%)Total carrying cost (20% – 40%)

Let us briefly look into these costs:

Opportunity cost of invested funds

When a firm uses money to buy production material and keeps it in the inventory, it simply has this much less cash to spend for other purposes. Money invested in external securities or in productive equipment earns a return for the company. Thus it is logical to charge all money invested in inventory an amount equal to that it could earn elsewhere in the company. This is the opportunity cost associated with inventory investment.Insurance cost

Most firms insure the assets against possible losses from fire and other forms of damage.Property taxes

This is levied on the assessed value of a firm’s assets, the greater the inventory value, the greater the asset value and consequently the higher the firm’s tax bill.Storage costs

The warehouse is depreciated every year over the length of its life. This cost can be charged against the inventory occupying the space.Obsolescence and deterioration

In most inventory operations, a certain percentage of the stock spoils, is damaged, is pilfered, or eventually becomes obsolete. A certain number always takes place even if they are handled with utmost care.Generally speaking, this group of carrying costs rises and falls nearly proportionately to the rise and fall of the inventory level.The ABC Classification:

Indicators that classifies a material as an A,B or C part according to its consumption value .The classification process is known as the ABC analysis.The three indictors have the following meanings:A-important part , high consumption value B-less important , medium consumption value C-relatively unimportant part , low consumption value

The ABC classification system is to grouping items according to annual sales volume, in an attempt to identify the small number of items that will account for most of the sales volume and that are the most important ones to control for effective inventory management.

Reorder Point: The inventory level R in which an order is placed where R = D.L, D = demand rate (demand rate period (day, week, etc), and L = lead time.

Safety Stock: Remaining inventory between the times that an order is placed and when new stock is received. If there are not enough inventories then a shortage may occur. Safety stock is a hedge against running out of inventory. It is an extra inventory to take care on unexpected events. It is often called buffer stock. The absence of inventory is called a shortage. ABC Inventory ClassificationThe ABC classification process is an analysis of a range of items, such as finished products or customers into three categories: A – outstandingly important; B – of average importance; C – relatively unimportant as a basis for a control scheme. Each category can and sometimes should be handled in a different way, with more attention being devoted to category A, less to B, and less to C.

Inventory Control Application: The ABC classification system is to grouping items according to annual sales volume, in an attempt to identify the small number of items that will account for most of the sales volume and that are the most important ones to control for effective inventory management.

Break-even analysis depends on the following variables:1. Selling Price per Unit: The amount of money charged to the customer for each unit of a product or service. 2. Total Fixed Costs: The sum of all costs required to produce the first unit of a product. This amount does not vary as production increases or decreases, until new capital expenditures are needed. 3. Variable Unit Cost: Costs that vary directly with the production of one additional unit.Total Variable Cost The product of expected unit sales and variable unit cost, i.e., expected unit sales times the variable unit cost.4. Forecasted Net Profit: Total revenue minus total cost. Enter Zero (0) if you wish to find out the number of units that must be sold in order to produce a profit of zero (but will recover all associated costs)

Break-Even Point in siemens: Number of units that must be sold in order to produce a profit of zero (but will recover all associated costs). In other words, the break-even point is the point at which your product stops costing you money to produce and sell, and starts to generate a profit for your company.where: Q = Break-even Point, i.e., Units of production (Q),FC = Fixed Costs, VC = Variable Costs per Unit UP = Unit PriceTherefore, Break-Even Point Q = Fixed Cost / (Unit Price – Variable Unit Cost) Stock control and inventory

Stock control, otherwise known as inventory control, is used to show how much stock you have at any one time, and how you keep track of it.It applies to every item you use to produce a product or service, from raw materials to finished goods. It covers stock at every stage of the production process, from purchase and delivery to using and re-ordering the stock.

Efficient stock control allows you to have the right amount of stock in the right place at the right time. It ensures that capital is not tied up unnecessarily, and protects production if problems arise with the supply chain.

Supply chain vendor management inventory:

Allows supply chain partners to share critical order, demand and inventory information in real-time and uses both integrated and web based applications to reduce administration costs, shortening cycle times and help lower inventory levels. Our unique, managed supply hub requires little upfront investment, yet quickly starts delivering high performance in real time Inventory Control Overview Normal Inventory

As it sounds, this type of inventory item will be used for the majority of your parts. It will correctly track the inventory received and sold on a first in first out basis, will handle cost of sales, and will warn you when you’re out of stock.Non-Inventory Type

This is used for selling things that are not really inventory items. For example, you could be selling warranty, but because you don’t have warranty in a box to sell, and you’ll never run out of stock, you won’t need to keep inventory control on it. As well, there is no cost of sale adjustments with non-stock items. The system will not calculate how much you paid for the item, and therefore will not try to remove that value from inventory in the general ledger. If you are selling something that does cost you money, you will have to handle these details manually.

Labor PartsYou (probably) don’t have technicians hanging from hooks in your back room, so like non-inventory items, the system will not try to remove them from inventory when you sell a labor item. The two differences between Non-Inventory items an Labor items are that you can optionally have the system ask you for the technician code that did the work so that you can print reports showing who did what work. As well, the system will optionally ask for a comment to explain what was done so that the description of the service work can be printed on the invoice.Note too that you can optionally keep track of how much time was spent and how much time was billed for on a per job basis. At the end of the month, you can then print technician productivity reports to compare total time spent compared to billable hours. In the automotive industry, some mechanics can do the work faster than is what is billed because the billing is based on industry standards.Consignment Items

Consignments can be used to keep track of inventory that you don’t own, but at the time you sell it, you must pay for it. You’ll be able to generate several reports, including a list of inventory that is on consignment but not sold and a list of inventory sold on consignment, but not yet paid for.Floor Plan InventoryFloor planning is very similar to consignment, except that you take possession and own the inventory when you receive it, but you don’t have to pay for it until it’s sold, or until it’s been in the store for a negotiated period of time. However, you do own the inventory and do have to pay for it sometime.Some floor planning companies want the ability to check the inventory serial number by serial number for the larger items, and others may just want to count the number of each model number on hand. Regardless, Windward System Five can handle it.On the accounts payable side, you will be able to keep track of who you owe the money too (Floor Planning Company) and who you actually bought the inventory from (Supplier) and generate proper histories of each.Tire Inventory

Windward System Five has the ability to sort and categorize tires by their size, aspect ratio and rim size. In addition, you will also be able to search for the tires by just entering in some of the search criteria and having the system bring up a window of all matches.When the list brings up a list of tires that can all fit the vehicle, the system can sort the list to show the items with the highest quantity in stock at the top of the list and the items that are out of stock at the bottom of the list. This will help you sell what you actually have to sell instead of creating special orders.Product Inventory

Products are items such as vehicles that you might service or repair after selling them to the customer. That is, they are an item in the database that can be sold, and when sold, are automatically added to the customer’s list of products that can be worked on.Examples are vehicles, trucks, recreational vehicles, fridges, air conditioners, and chainsaws. The system will let you keep additional information on these products, such as make, model, year, and other comments, and will also be able to list all the work or repairs performed between two dates.Windward System Five can also track whole goods such as recreational vehicles by keeping track of the cost of the item before the sale, add ones and pre-delivery inspection items. In addition, the system can generate a “wash out” report one level deep to show the costs and income associated with the trade in.Serialized Inventory

Those items that need to be tracked by their serial numbers can be marked as serialized inventory. For example, fridges, stoves, computers, and chainsaws might all be serialized. Note that if you plan on servicing these items in the future and keeping track of all work you do on them, they should be entered as products instead of serial numbers.TYPES OF INVENTORY Several different types of inventories are conducted, depending upon the type of materiel involved and type of information needed. Bulkhead-to-Bulkhead Inventory A bulkhead-to-bulkhead inventory is a physical count of all stock materiel within the ship or within a specific storeroom.A bulkhead-to-bulkhead inventory of a specific storeroom is taken when a random sampling inventory of that storeroom fails to meet the inventory accuracy rate of 90 percent when directed as a result of a supply management inspection (SMI). It is also taken when directed by the commanding officer or when circumstances clearly indicate that it is essential to effective inventory control. Specific Commodity Inventory

The specific commodity inventory is a physical count of all items under the same cognizance symbol, FSC, or that support the same operational function, such as- boat spares, electron tubes, boiler tubes, or fire brick. This inventory is taken under the same conditions as a bulkhead- to-bulkhead inventory; however, prior knowledge of specific stock numbers and item location is required to conduct a specific commodity inventorySpecial Materiel Inventory A special materiel inventory requires the physical count of all items that, because of their physical characteristics, costs, mission essentiality, and criticality, are specifically designated for separate identification and inventory control. Special materiel inventories include, but are not limited to, stocked items designated as classified or hazardous. Special materiel inventories also include controlled equipage and presentation silverAdvantage Inventory Control

The Inventory Control gives you the ability to handle your inventory your way. As one of the most flexible and comprehensive modules in the Advantage, you can choose the level of control that best suits your specific business needs. Your inventory can be valued on a LIFO, FIFO or Average cost basis. You can choose to use parts explosions, serialized inventory, parts allocations, vendors, warehouses and an audit trail. The system can also track the quantity sold for each item for the last 12 months and, using this data, provides a sales analysis report to help you better manage your stock. Financing is aided by the serialized aged report that shows which serialized items have been in your inventory the longest and how much you have outstanding. Pricing can be standardized by rounding to a given factor or by being set to a specific suffix. With the Below Minimum report, reordering stock is automatic and accurate. Inventory Control is a stand–alone module that can also be integrated with Purchase Orders, Point of Sale, Billing/Order Entry, Job Cost, Time Billing and Quick Sale.21–character alphanumeric item number field Lookup on item number, item description (21 characters) and group (15 character) fields Tracks serialized items Allows for superseded, preceded and substitute items Unlimited additional descriptions can be added to items Handles markup and gross profit cost basis Can automatically update item pricing and discounts Handles core pricing Produces a re–order report based on minimum stock quantities Tracks unlimited vendors per item and recommends a ‘best’ vendor Tracks allocations including explosion allocations Up to 254 discounts per item, including quantity break discounts Unit conversions can be defined for each item for both buying and selling quantities Allows for warehouse transfers and other quantity adjustments Set up special sale dates for item discounting Produces physical inventory forms Imports physical inventory and received quantities from data collected with hand-held computers Provides up to 255 levels of parts explosion to allow you to identify all components of your assembled stockAutomatically updates cost and price on explosion items based on subassembly changes • Reports the best and worst selling items in each of eight different categories • Tracks items by location or quantity in multiple warehouses • Can automatically generate items based on a template item • Utilizes Rapid Entry to facilitate entry of item data

Disadvantages: • conveyor needs to be slightly declined for carton movement (one way);• may require addition of powered booster units in some applications;• cannot be used for inter-floor movement except for down travel;• goods need to be manually pushed when horizontal;• no positive control over moving carton;• produces line pressure when accumulating.• Require efficiency of landWe propose a method for valuing new, recoverable, and recovered assemblies (products, components, parts, etc.) in production systems with reverse logistics. Values of assemblies influence their opportunity holding cost rates and are hence essential for comparing inventory strategies in average cost models. We argue that the proposed method is ‘correct’ from a discounted cash flow (DCF) point of view. We refer to some previous results on valuing assemblies in systems without disassembly of returned products that seem to confirm this. Furthermore, we test the method for a specific example with disassembly of returned products. The simulation results indicate that the method indeed leads to (nearly) DCF optimal inventory strategies. PackagingIn siemens, with its large product volumes, low margins and fierce competition, is constantly seeking efficiency improvements in its supply chain. The grocery retail industry uses an immense amount of packaging and is directly affected by packaging logistics activities. There is, therefore, a potential for efficiency improvements in the grocery retail supply chain through the integration and development of new systems of packaging and logistics. Packaging handling is identified as one of the main activities that has a strong impact on the overall logistical cost of chain. This research article investigates packaging handling evaluation methods and discusses how these are employed to benefit the industry from the industry, have been used to evaluate packaging and logistics activities. This work, together with a literature review, was used to identify the need for evaluative methods and the present availability of such methods. The results indicated a lack of sufficient and usable packaging handling evaluation methods in today’s grocery and packaging industry especially from a logistical point of view. The paper also highlights the lack of systematization among the few methods used and discusses how these can be used to build a systematic and multifunctional evaluation model in order to utilize the information from different studies to build a knowledge base for the futureVendor-Managed Inventory

Siemens is a leading global manufacturer, focused on delivering operational services to high-tech companies, needed to take advantage of vendor-managed inventory (VMI) postponement and optimal fulfillment solutions to stay competitive in its low-margin manufacturing marketplace. Its objective was to find ways to reduce inventory redundancy, improve customer responsiveness by reduced cycle times and simplify supplier management and procurement administration. The manufacturer also needed to augment existing infrastructure, while reducing investments in additional personnel, facilities and systems

Vendor Managed Inventory (VMI) Vendor Managed Inventory supports the efficient flow of materials into the market. Working closely with you and your suppliers, we automate the forecast management process with Web-based software that enables the flow of supply to more accurately mirror store – and even shelf-level – demand.Move your inventory in and out of our distribution centers and manage demand planning. We can store and stage product for replenishment at our often freeing or limited store rooms. We provide forecast visibility, comparing actual demand against DC-on-hand, store-on-hand and in-transit inventory. When store or inventory falls below pre-determined levels, auto alerts are sent to you and your supplier to prompt replenishment. Advanced Shipping Notices (ASNs) provide detail on in-transit inventory from suppliers so you have visibility to inventory deeper into the supply chain. This allows for confident commitment to orders based on this inbound flow. Postpone inventory ownership until shipment to your site. Once your inventory is moved to the we work with your suppliers to transition inventory ownership until demand occurs. Perform value-added services, allowing you to more efficiently manage the flow of goods into manufacturing or directly to market.Vendor Managed Inventory (VMI) Vendor Managed Inventory by Kuehne + Nagel supports the efficient flow of materials into the market. Working closely with you and your suppliers, we automate the forecast management process with Web-based software that enables the flow of supply to more accurately mirror store – and even shelf-level – demand.Move your inventory in and out of our distribution centers and manage demand planning with Web-based applications. We can store and stage prod