SM Thacker & Associates

Highlights of our full range of training courses / Workshops:

Lean & Agile Supply Chain / Inventory Modelling

Lean & Agile Manufacturing Planning & Control

Operations Management / Team Leader Training

Step Change Management / Business Process  Reengineering

Continuous Improvement

Procurement (Purchasing & Supplier Management)

IS / IT / e-commerce

Product Management / New Product Introduction  / Quality  Management

Background to these Tools:

These aids to development are designed to provide unbiased expert advice.

They represent over 25 man-years research and development effort in collaboration with a number of universities and many experts in these topics. They have been exhaustively tested for accuracy in a large number of businesses.

They are therefore based not only on sound academic, peer reviewed, research, but also are grounded in considerable practical experience. As such they represent a unique set of rapid and  inexpensive development aids which we use to guide some of our consultancy and training, but also as a resource available to your business.

Expert Systems

(On-line consultancy)

Background

Control Systems Reference Model

From the range of:

• Materials Management & Stock Control
• Capacity Management & Scheduling
• Cost Management
• Quality Management

processes available, these 13 expert systems are designed to answer four vital questions:

1. What Manufacturing & Supply Chain Control Systems do you need? (highlighting development needs)
2. Which methods are not suitable in your environment?
3. How difficult will it be to develop this process in your business environment?
4. What are the prerequisites?

Scope of these expert systems

These expert systems provide expert advice on 13 different aspects of manufacturing & supply chain structure and development:

1. Inventory management
2. Capacity Management
3. Master Production Scheduling
4. Materials Requirements Planning
5. Purchasing
6. Shop floor control
7. Finite Capacity Planning
8. Pull systems
9. Max-Min / Reorder Point (ROP) stock control systems
10. Quality Planning
11. Quality Control
12. Cost Planning
13. Cost Control

Development Tools

Background

A. Permanently Maintained Website Articles:

Computer Operations (Disaster recovery / Business continuity):

25 questions to ask IT

 

Manufacturing / Supply Chain:

Achievable benchmarks

Diagnosing Manufacturing Control Problems

Solving the diagnosed problems

 

Enterprise Resources Planning (ERP) Implementation:

Conference Room Pilot starter pack

 

B. Available on request:

Agility Self Diagnosis

If you think you are lean, you should also consider if you are agile. The world record for this diagnostic is 62% from a business with near-zero lead-time! At this point being lean & agile is likely to start to win you business. Topics available in this series include:

1. Are your Products / Services Agile?
2. Is your New Product Introduction process Agile?
3. Is your Culture Agile?
4. Is your Organisation Agile?
5. Are your internal Processes, Procedures, Logistics, and Communications, Agile?
6. Is your Environment & Environmental Control Agile?
7. Are your People Agile?
8. Are your Resources (Facilities / Operations Processes / Equipment / Technology) Agile?
9. Is your Supply Chain Agile?

Functional checklists

What functions might help you to become world class?

22 functional checklists are available covering many business processes; plus report writers etc. Clearly priorities will vary from business to business, but nevertheless these checklists help you identify processes and facilities which may be needed. As an example we have partially turned checklist 19 (below) into the best practice article Sales & Customer Relationship Management.

These checklists can be used in four ways:

1. To identify development needs to help ensure that that you adequately consider the functions necessary or advantageous to achieve your critical success factors in any development process or to develop your required / conceptual future state process in Business Process Re-engineering projects

   E.g. Checklist 18: Procurement / Purchasing (below) includes one function (amongst many) "quotation management" the purpose of which is to ensure that you renegotiate renewable contracts in a timely way, so you always have time to buy well & never run out of order cover.

2. To act as outsourcing selection criteria to help ensure that a potential supplier can do what you need and incorporate that in your service level agreements
3. To act as software selection criteria to help ensure:
   1. Any software you are buying includes this function & / or that a supplier is committed to provide it
   2. Avoid the acquisition of software which is clearly unsuited to your business
   3. Add structure and evaluation criteria to your invitation to tender.
4. To ensure that you know what is possible!

Business functions available include:

1. General Ledger
2. Purchase Ledger / Accounts Payable
3. Sales Ledger / Accounts Receivable
4. Product Costing / Cost Estimating
5. Inventory Accounting
6. Productivity data
7. Marketing data
8. Despatch and Transport Management
9. Maintenance
10. Personnel Records, recruitment and training
11. Quality Planning
12. Quality Control / Product recall
13. Product Data / Bill of material
14. Routing
15. Capacity planning
16. Inventory Tracking & Control
17. Materials Planning
18. Procurement / Purchasing
19. Sales and Customer Relationship Management
20. Payroll
21. IT Aspects
22. Report Writer

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