On a flight to London before the holidays, I decided to use the time to write about managing people. I thought it would be timely, since many of us are writing performance appraisals and/or doing year-end organization reviews at this time of year. Over my career I’ve seen the whole […]

Over the years, I’ve had the honor of having the Trade function report to me, and I’ve gained immense respect for the people in this profession. From my perspective, they’re always the most diligent, conscientious, no nonsense people. They are underappreciated, global in their mindset and are just trying to […]

Building a productivity machine and improving cycle time isn’t difficult, but it does take time, energy and collaboration from the entire enterprise. Everyone within the organization needs to be fully engaged and in agreement. This starts in the boardroom and flows down through all People, Processes and Tools. Assembling the […]

I was once asked by my CEO — literally, in an elevator: “Jay, what is logistics?” My answer was, “Sir, you put lots of dots on the map. Suppliers, dealers, customers. Our job is to connect those dots in the most efficient, effective manner.” Logistics is the marriage of the […]

A company performing SIOP properly, can keep the reigns on working capital and operating expenses while still being able to grow. Conversely, if this process is performed poorly, a business can hemorrhage, draining valuable resources from other parts of the business. I was once a new hire who’d inherited the […]