Several years ago, a Pennsylvania manufacturer of industrial sensors — we’ll call it Caspian Corp. — launched an ambitious effort to become a lean enterprise in hopes of achieving higher quality, lower costs and better customer service. Management’s goal was to eliminate all unnecessary expenses and surpass its leading competitors in terms of productivity and efficiency. During the first six months, Caspian, whose total annual revenues were about $225 million, achieved significant operating improvements. Product lead times to customers and on-time delivery performance were up sharply. Over the next six months, operational performance continued to show impressive gains, and the vice president of operations was pleased. Meanwhile, customer service was making significant strides as well, and with greater efficiencies the company was able to reduce the number of direct labor employees involved in production. Payroll savings in a single value stream alone amounted to more than $40,000 per month — around 20%.
However, the CFO saw a radically different picture. During the same initial months, she saw no financial improvement at all: Sales were flat, and costs didn’t decline. During the second half of the year, Caspian’s revenues actually fell by 17%, and profits declined by an even bigger percentage. The CFO was baffled: The sales forecasts had looked encouraging, and the operations people had talked about significant savings. What happened? Unfortunately, she was at... To read the complete article, login or sign-up using the form below.
Subscribe today to read this article, or Buy a PDF.
More Info.
Buy this article. Purchase one or more copies of this article as a PDF.
Subscribe today to read the most recent articles and the current issue of MIT Sloan Management Review.
Already registered or subscribed? Login below.
Current Subscribers: Do you subscribe to MIT Sloan Management Review? Register for online access.
- Register for free access to recent articles and the current issue of MIT Sloan Management Review.
- Subscribe and read articles from the past three years online.
- Premium subscription—access to the entire archive of articles.
