Article content courtesy of allbusiness.com
1.2010
Finalizing & Executing Your Plan
This is the sixth and final article focused on market
diversification strategies & selected tools for manufacturers
to use to achieve profitable growth. Now is the time to put it all
together and finalize your plan for 2010. The emphasis should be on
successfully executing your plan, otherwise what's the point in
developing a plan in the first place. Don't let this one fade away
perhaps like some in the past, focus on successful execution from
the beginning.
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12.2009
Integrating Marketing & Sales Efforts
When you integrate your internal marketing and sales efforts,
you improve your company's ability to measure the results of
marketing campaigns and develop tactics focused on increasing sales
and improving profits. No strategy to drive growth and success will
increase sales and market share without a successful marketing and
sales plan.
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11.2009
Finding New Customers in New Markets
Finding new customers in new markets is a major element of
any profitable business growth strategy. However, many companies
struggle with how to do this successfully and as a result they keep
mining the same markets and the same customers, even if neither are
profitable anymore.
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11.2009
Using Demand Innovation to Find New Growth
Many companies have been stuck in a no growth zone
for the last decade or more because their businesses have moved
from a past characterized by strong growth into a future state of
low or no growth. Very few companies have figured out how to break
this cycle and move beyond this no growth zone.
More>>
10.2009
The Customer Analysis
This is the second of a six-part series of articles on market
diversification strategies for US manufacturers of all sizes. The
main message of this series is: Your business can grow profitably
even in difficult times by finding new markets and new customers.
Market Diversification strategies all have risk associated with
them as well as reward.
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10.2009
Why Now is the Time to Diversify Markets and
Customers
Some might think that the worst time to evaluate and pursue
new markets is during a severe recession, such as businesses
world-wide are currently experiencing. After all, your sales and
profitability are probably down at least 25% during the last year,
cash is tight, you're doing more with less and hunkering down
trying to survive until this is over. However, forward-looking
companies of all sizes are using this time to get Leaner, stronger
and develop new products and services that will allow them to
penetrate new market segments and find new customers.
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10.2009
How Wellness Initiatives Pay Off
There are two kinds of businesses: businesses that try to
constantly be on the cutting edge of best practices and businesses
that merely pay lip service to the idea. If you count
yourself among the former, or are looking to upgrade, wellness
initiatives are the mark of a true 21st century business.
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10.2009
On Quality: Certification is Only the Beginning
Quality management is a main focus in the
manufacturing industry, and certification programs set standards of
quality that teach companies an effective quality management
system. Standardization and certification further the goals of
quality management. Each industry has formal, codified quality
standards for manufacturers and businesses to follow. These
standards have evolved over time and reflect the various aspects of
industry.
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9.2009
Top Five Ways Inventory Management Can Rescue Small &
Midsize Businesses
Large corporate bailouts and a trillion dollars in economic
stimulus might offer a lifeline to the largest banks and
corporations in the country, but small and midsize businesses
(SMBs) are in between a rock and a hard place right now.
Collectively, the largest employer in the country, small and
midsize businesses have some tough choices to make, and before
conducting layoffs or shutting the doors, there are five ways
inventory management can help SMBs hunker down and weather the
storm.
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9.2009
Lessons from the Auto Industry Collapse
As the shockwave of the Chrysler and GM bankruptcies
reverberates through the second, third and fourth tier of
suppliers, there are important lessons to be learned - particularly
concerning what sort of economic bets make the most sense for
twenty-first century manufacturing companies.
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9.2009
Marketing Green Products
Green manufacturing has become a powerful marketing
tool. Consumers increasingly have begun buying green products that
are more cost effective, healthier, and leave less of a carbon
footprint on our planet. As a result, manufacturers are developing
products that fit this need. At the same time they are implementing
supply chains that are greener.
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5.2009
Avoiding Single Customer Syndrome
The current challenges with the US and global economies have
affected most manufacturing firms of all sizes in a variety of
ways, some positive and some negative. On the positive side,
well-run and diversified companies have been able to survive and
even grow because they have not been overly reliant on any single
market sector. These companies have also had the opportunity to
take market share and customers from their competitors,
particularly if their competitors are struggling.
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5.2009
Digital Manufacturing Breaks the Mold
Manufacturers around the world are putting aside
their molds and tooling to take advantage of direct digital
manufacturing (DDM) solutions for a wide variety of projects.
Also known as additive manufacturing, additive freeform
fabrication, rapid prototyping, layered manufacturing and 3D
printing, these solutions allow the manufacturers to go directly
from a digital representation of an object on a computer screen to
the manufacturing of the object. The digital representation is
transformed with materials, including plastic, composite or metal
in powder, sheet or liquid form, and a choice of many DDM
technologies. Ranging in price from under $5,000 to hundreds of
thousands of dollars, these manufacturing technologies employ
diverse methods, including selectively fusing, sintering or
polymerizing materials into an object.
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1.2009
Five Places to Seek Help when Entering the Export
Market
You are a small or midsize manufacturing company. You want to
expand your marketing overseas. You are at a disadvantage because
you do not have the budget necessary to hire consultants to do the
heavy lifting. You don't know where to begin.
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1.2009
What Carbon Credits Mean to U.S. Manufacturers
The concept of carbon credits for manufacturers
originated with the Kyoto Agreement of 1997. As a means of
combating global warming, signers of the agreement consented to
limiting their carbon emissions to a predetermined amount. When
businesses reach or surpass these reduction goals, the Kyoto
Agreement awards them carbon credits that can be sold to other
companies who do not meet their goals. In this way, carbon credits
can be like money in the bank for manufacturers willing to
participate in the program.
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10.2008
Lean Sparks the Return of Training within Industry
(TWI)
In an era of global competition, American manufacturers have
looked to the principles of Lean Manufacturing - eliminating waste
in the manufacturing process and doing more with less - as a way to
stay competitive. Yet in their attempt to go Lean, many
manufacturers have hit a ceiling.
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10.2008
All in the Family: Succession Planning for Family
Businesses
When families debate over Grandpa's semi-antique
rocker, it can be uncomfortable, but that's nothing compared to the
warfare that can ensue over ownership of a prospering precision
valve business where a son, two nephews and a niece have worked for
the past five years. A struggle among relatives for possession of a
family business is not uncommon.
More>>
10.2008
Six Sigma a Methodology - Lean a Way of Life
If you run a manufacturing operation, you probably
hear a lot about Lean Manufacturing and Six Sigma. Often they are
used in conjunction with each other, but they are in fact vastly
different things.
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10.2008
Can Smaller Companies Outsource Strategically?
Both large and small companies are going beyond outsourcing
commodities to outsourcing core/strategic parts. It makes sense for
smaller firms with scarce resources to outsource commodities.
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