MAREH announces its
expanded program of Resource Management, see details below.
Resource Management
Resource
Management
Resource Management is
about efficient industrial consumption and production in a sustainable manner.
Using proven standardized methodologies tailored to individual organization
resource management allows a business to maximize profits while ensuring that
the raw materials, equipment, staff, and other resources necessary to business
success are continually available when needed.
While energy efficiency
is often just thought of as just lower utility bills, it is much more than that,
as it is also an indicator of how efficient/profitable an organization is
operating overall. In the context of Resource Management, energy efficiency
practices are not just focused on utility energy they are also focused on human
energy. For example the human energy (labor hours) that are used in performing
rework on products/services due to process induced errors. Of course, this will
usually result in increased usage of utility energy such as electricity and/or
gas, thus lowering overall profitability, via increased labor and utility costs.
Let us look at some of
the areas MAREH can help manage your resources more efficiently and cost
effectively.
Quality
Management Systems:
We can think of a
Quality Management System (QMS) as representing the tool chest full of the
tools your business needs to complete its work, similar to the tool chest
of your favorite auto mechanic. And, just like your mechanic needing
the right tools able to perform their expected function reliably, your
organization's quality tool box must contain the right tools in the way of
business, production, and quality processes to be successful and
profitable.
Quality
Management Systems properly implemented in an organization should be
viewed as a profit center, rather than a cost center. A QMS will
literally add dollars to the profit sheet every month, dollars that are
easily tracked and attributed to specific QMS methods.
MAREH quality and
efficiency experts have over 100 years of combined expertise in quality
management system development, tailoring, and success verification to
bring to bear on your implementing and maintaining a Quality Management
System
ISO
9001 & 50001 Audits & Training:
The International
Standards Organization (ISO) has created an overall methodology of ensuring
higher productivity and profitability through using repeatable business and
production processes. Two of important pieces of this overall methodology are
the ISO 9001 (Quality Management Systems) and 50001 (Energy Management)
standards. Because all organizations that produce goods and services use some
form of energy
, be it artificial like electricity, or natural like human energy,
ISO 9001 and ISO 50001 activities are inherently interwoven together in
real-world practices. At MAREH, our efficiency and resource management experts
understand how poor staff performance can increase energy cost because of more
expensive rework activities and lower productivity levels per hour of
operations. Equally importantly, we understand that energy efficiency practices
can be critical to and underlay creating a more profit producing workspace
through upgrading the environment and equipment used in producing your goods and
services. Let us work with you and your staff to implement and verify ISO 9001
and ISO 50001 sustainable methods that will save you money now and for years to
come.The International
Standards Organization (ISO) has created an overall methodology of ensuring
higher productivity and profitability through using repeatable business and
production processes. Two of important pieces of this overall methodology are
the ISO 9001 (Quality Management Systems) and 50001 (Energy Management)
standards. Because all organizations that produce goods and services use some
form of energy, be it artificial like electricity, or natural like human energy,
ISO 9001 and ISO 50001 activities are inherently interwoven together in
real-world practices. At MAREH, our efficiency and resource management experts
understand how poor staff performance can increase energy cost because of more
expensive rework activities and lower productivity levels per hour of
operations. Equally importantly, we understand that energy efficiency practices
can be critical to and underlay creating a more profit producing workspace
through upgrading the environment and equipment used in producing your goods and
services. Let us work with you and your staff to implement and verify ISO 9001
and ISO 50001 sustainable methods that will save you money now and for years to
come.
Work Force Enhancement:
Governmental
units have been embracing the concepts of Work Force Enhancement to improving
their organizational efficiency for a number of years and now industrial
leaders are beginning to follow-suit and realize the productivity benefits of
Work Force Enhancement strategies.
While
government programs focus on community wide or government sector objectives,
programs within commercial organization are focused on smaller more concentrated
groups of staff members. Yet the objectives are the same give the front
line producers the skill sets, work environment, raw materials, and production
processes that define success in the work force will deliver that success for
the business organization.
Workforce
enhancement begins with the senior executive by developing a sustainable vision
of where the organization needs to be to meet established business goals and
then communicating that vision downward in with a systematic methodology of
insuring that organizational infrastructure is put in place to create a work environment
that maximizes sustainable production rates and retention of human
resources/skill sets.
ISO
9001:2015 section 7.1.4, incorporates these concepts into three areas of
concern. While seemingly separate issue areas on the surface they are interrelated
in multiple ways through the impacts of effective energy management, and each of
these areas directly impact the costs of energy to an organization. Lets
look at how work force enhancement is not just about happy employees it is about
significantly increasing productivity and profitability, while lowering direct
costs of energy and resources.
Social
Environment - The work
place environment should be socially aligned to the work being performed.
While common discrimination issues such as race, sex, religion are easily
identifiable and can be addressed and are fairly straightforward, there are many subtle
areas of discrimination that may go unnoticed and therefore fester causing
significant losses in productivity and profitability. Some of these areas
include:
Confrontation
- Many organizations have tried the failing practice of conflict avoidance,
which essentially means everyone agrees (openly anyway) with the first idea
proposed. Many organizations have have lost market share and/or gone
under following this practice.
Ideally you want conflict management and resolution not avoidance of issues
until they fester and blow up.
Discrimination
- Obviously mainstream discrimination practices involving issues like race,
sex, religion, etc. are not allowed, but there are other types of unintended
and technically legal areas of discrimination that may go unnoticed and
continue to adversely impact profitability without management's awareness.
For example something as simple as the differences between the way assembly
workers and professional staff are treated can be seen as discriminatory,
resulting in disgruntled employees that have significantly lower output
rates. Being treated exactly the same is not the same as being treated
equally, however, and not understanding these subtle differences can lower profitability significantly.
Calmness/Political
Correctness - While politeness and social environment conformity is
good business practice, over restrictive political correctness results in
insurmountable communications barriers and can lead to explosive confrontation
at some point. Creating an environment that is kept calm based on
rational decision making and policy setting, rather then unstable whimsical
popular opinion allows all workers to know and comply with reasonable
expectation in a calm manner.
Psychological
Environment - Without
question the most important and costly issue facing organizations around the
globe is based on one psychological issue, which is defined as the
"Uncertainty Principal". Uncertainty, is the number one fear, and many
organizations have more then their share. An example of
uncertainty which affects a majority of organizations is when employees are told
they are graded in work performance by one criteria, told to follow processes
outside that criteria, and then are actually evaluated by a set of criteria spontaneously
produced by a supervisor. The second most significant and most unacknowledged
psychological factor facing a workforce is unrecorded/reported labor
hours. Whether it is compensated for or not monetarily, supervisors
requiring employees to work without properly recording all the hours contributed
to a project or tasks is costly in terms of staff burnout and turnover, as well
as, lost revenue from underbidding future projects based on poor estimation
data. A key methodology for resolving many deficiencies in an organization's
psychological environment is establishing an effective organizational communications flow.
Effective communications in an organization requires bad news to flow only up to
a manager high enough to
apply all necessary resources/remove roadblocks, and good news to flow down to
the lowest level staff members.
Physical
Environment - Temperature,
humidity, light, air flow, noise, are some of the environmental variables found
in virtually all work environments. Each one of these variables has
parameters bounding an acceptable range of conditions, not only for the workers
but for the work process as well. Go beyond the parameters of the
acceptable range of any of these environmental variables and sustained
profitability and growth cannot be achieved. One or more of environmental
variables is almost always associated with increasing need for rework and losses
in customer satisfaction, both of which are detrimental to realizing projected
revenue streams. Almost all environmental variables are directly linked to
energy consumption and causal effect analysis can easily be demonstrated by
metrics that link production/sales environmental conditions to profitability.
But staff members are not the only ones directly impacted by environmental
conditions. Many modern high tolerance machines and computing equipment
can be also significantly impacted by unacceptable environmental conditions,
directly resulting in costly rework, and adding to problems in the social and
psychological environment of the organization, which will only compound losses
in productivity and profitability.
Continuous Improvement:
Continuous improvement in a management
context means a never-ending effort to expose and eliminate root causes of
problems. Continuous Improvement Methodology is often referred to by its
Japanese term Kaizen, which means change for the good.
While many organizational leaders feel
that continuous improvement is simply about getting better at what they do, and
they are good enough. The real power in continuous improvement is its ability to
keep an organization ahead of its competitors as technology and business
environments change over time.
While normal production and quality
strategies focus on replicating proven success to provide a known product of
predictable functionality, costs, and quality, the continuous improvement
process goes beyond this to provide a company a roadmap on how to stay
competitive as business processes transition and customer needs evolve to demand
new products and services in an ever changing economic environment.
Continuous improvement methodologies
provide a dynamic set of tools and processes to continually evaluate your
organizations total business environment for inefficient uses of resources,
staff, processes, and finances to identify inefficiencies and implement
sustainable improvements that keep you competitive in all your markets.
MAREH's continuous improvements experts
will show your organization how it can it improve profitability by reducing
direct costs of resources and production processes, and indirect costs
associated with inefficient energy usage.
We have documented performance in
industries involving:
Energy/Utilities
Software
Heavy Manufacturing
Telecommunications
Defense
Aerospace
Government
Academia
Sustainability:
Business sustainability
requires firms to adhere to the principles of sustainability in usage of
physical and financial resources, as well as, staff readiness. For
an organization to be sustainable, it must address important issues at the
macro level, such as; economic efficiency (innovation, prosperity,
productivity), social equity (staff training, diversity,
non-discrimination, uncertainty in the work place, health and safety
issues) and physical environment control (energy efficiency, resource
utilization, facilities management).
There are a number of
methodologies and best practices, which promote business sustainability,
to help organizations move along the path from followers into leaders.
These practices include:
Stakeholder engagement:
Organizations can learn from customers, employees, and their
customer/vendor community. Engagement is not only about pushing out
messages, but understanding opposition, finding common ground and
involving stakeholders in joint decision-making.This is method of management is known as an Integrated
Development Environment, in the product engineering and development
communities.
Energy and Environmental
management systems: These systems provide the structures and
processes that include productivity and profitability gains from
integrating energy and environmental efficiency into a firm’s
culture and risks mitigate strategies. The most widely recognized
standards worldwide are ISO 50001 (Energy) and ISO 14001 (Environment)
but numerous other industry-specific and country-specific standards
exist.
Measurements and Metrics
(reporting): Measurement and control are at the heart of instituting
sustainable practices. If you do not know where you are then how can
you hope to get to where you want to be? Measurements and Metrics is
like a map and compass for your organization’s management to use to
navigate along paths of increased productivity and profitability.
Life Cycle Analysis: A
Life Cycle Analysis is a methodology of exploring the acceptability of
costs and other impacts of a system or process from inception to final
retirement/disuse before you begin expending significant resources and
capital towards implementation. A
Life Cycle Analysis can help an organization control risks by giving
clearer financial insight into where to set control gates in a
product/process life cycle.It
is at these decision gates that senior management can make the
decision to continue funding viable projects, or cut losses by defunding
initiatives, which cannot provide a sufficient return on investment.
Earned Value Management:After organizations have established a management plan, for a
specific project or the overall organization, managers and other
stakeholders needs a way to gauge the organization’s performance
towards the plan.This is
where Earned Value Management methodologies can give advance warnings
of potential bottlenecks, cost issues, and schedule problems early
enough in the plan execution to effectively apply resources and
funding to prevent significant setbacks or complete failure.Earned Value Management methods can be thought of like the trip
computer in your car telling you how far you have gone, how far you
have to go to get to your planned destination, how much gas
(resources) you have used and need to get there, and if you will make
there on your scheduled time.
Firms that are sustainable,
have been shown to attract/retain properly skilled and reliable employees
more easily, experience less financial and reputation risk, and complete
projects on schedule and within planned budgets. These firms are also more
innovative and adaptive to their customer base, have higher customer
satisfaction and less wasted costs on rework and customer satisfaction
issues.
Governmental
units have been embracing the concepts of Work Force Enhancement to improving
their organizational efficiency for a number of years and now industrial
leaders are beginning to follow-suit and realize the productivity benefits of
Work Force Enhancement strategies. 
Continuous improvement in a management
context means a never-ending effort to expose and eliminate root causes of
problems. Continuous Improvement Methodology is often referred to by its
Japanese term Kaizen, which means change for the good.
