Response-ability

Are you responsable?

That’s no typo.

“Responsable” is a word I use to describe one of the most important criteria for success in manufacturing today. Are you able to respond to your customer’s wants? The respons-able manufacturer can, and it is the respons-able manufacturer that is likely to be the market leader.

There’s always a customer. If you are a contract packager your customer may be external. A Walmart or Del Monte for example. If your company is the brand owner, your customer is marketing or product development. Whoever your customer is, they want what they want and they want it now. Can you do it?

First, can you make the product? This comes down to capacity and equipment. Is your equipment flexible enough to go from filling anti-freeze gallons to battery water pints? Are you effectively utilizing your capacity or do you lose a lot of it to changeovers, equipment breakdowns and other problems when you should be running?

Then how quickly can you make the product? If you get an order today, how long does it take before you ship the first product? Is it days or is it weeks? One national commodity manufacturer offered 2 day shipping on 800+ SKUs and gained 8% market share as a result.

If it is a new product or package, instead of days or weeks, you may be talking months to the first product. How long will your customer wait?

The “responsable” company will have responsiveness baked into their business model. The most important factor? Culture. There must be a company culture that focuses like a diamond on the customer — giving them a quality product in the shortest possible time. That’s job #1. This culture has to start at the very top and flow down. Absent the culture, nothing else a company does will make it responsive.

Facilities and machinery must be designed and selected to allow maximization of responsiveness. This may mean multiple lines or multiple machines that can be quickly organized as needed.

We assume that your company is responsible. Now you need to focus on making it responsable.

Frain Industries can help. Our inventory of over 8,000 certified pre-owned machines available for sale, lease or rental let us mean it when we say:

“When time matters, we make it work for you.”