Socrates Says

The blog on variable lead times for each part number seems to have struck a chord so with that in mind I thought it appropriate to kick over another sacred cow in parts inventory management –  The Economic Order Quantity. The EOQ has been around since 1905 when Mr. Kerr and Mr. Norton developed the […]

In the 1990’s, three professors, Sasser, Hesketh and Schlesinger from Harvard Business School wrote a book called “The Service Profit Chain.” It was for me the definitive book on customer retention. They posited that in the Industrial Distribution world if you increased customer retention by 5% you would increase the profitability of the business by […]

If you had to choose between customer satisfaction and profitability, what would be your choice? I would take customer satisfaction as without satisfied customers the ability to make profit is going to have a short life.   How to measure customer satisfaction becomes the challenge. Some people define it as repeat business; others measure the […]

It is interesting watching two grown men argue about higher education. Santorum has called Obama a snob as he said that he wanted everyone to have a four year college education. The Obama backing off and saying he wanted more than just high school highlights a serious subject to consider. What should you do after […]

Preparation is one of the keys to good selling skills. Of course that is common sense for most or at least it should be if you want to succeed at selling. Imagine not know the customer? Not knowing what they want and need. What they own and how to make their operations more effective. The […]

With JIT (Just in Time) supply chains we really have come to a point where customer service is in jeopardy. The problem is our cavalier approach to the lead time component of order points. The lead time is the total elapsed time between when a part reaches the order point in the warehouse location and […]