Currently, the challenge for manufacturing organizations is how to achieve their expected profit by continuously improving productivity or reducing costs. Manufacturing organizations have been using different improvement approaches to achieving cost reduction and productivity improvement for years by eliminating various losses and waste structures, such as excess inventory, excessive workforce, excessive capacity, excessive utility consumption, and so on. But is the problem solved? Unfortunately, no! Often manufacturing companies focus on maximizing the flow and meeting customer needs but forget their real aim – to make a profit for their stakeholders. Too many organizations meet customer expectations by seeking to continuously synchronize the flow to market demand but forget to check that they are doing it profitably enough to ensure business continuity and prosperity. When the financial results show that they are not so profitable, it is already too late. Moreover, the strategic direction of systematic improvements according to the sales trend – depending on the current degree of production capacity utilization and its dynamic effects on cost structures – is deficient in many manufacturing companies. So, would the failure of strategic and profitable systematic improvements be an option? Of course not! If the ultimate goal of the organization is to create target profit for stakeholders, then the behavior and strategic systematic improvements must be directed to those scenarios, strategies, tasks, problems, and “production levers” that are best based on creating the target profit. That’s what Strategic Kaizen thinking does – the simultaneous and consistent achievement of systematic operational and financial improvements in a strategic and operational manner. It achieves both synchronous operations at market demand by fulfilling takt time and profitable operations in accordance with profit demand by fulfilling takt profit. In short, the Strategic Kaizen mission is striving for the fulfillment of the ideal state of operations called synchronous profitable operations. In this book, the author, while presenting in detail the seven processes of Strategic Kaizen methodology, exposes the answer to historically incomplete thinking of productivity improvements for target profitability. The uniqueness of the book is reinforced by the detailed presentation of the successful application of the Strategic Kaizen thinking over the years in two multinational manufacturing organizations operating in highly competitive markets, addressing the synchronous profitable operations for both the sales increase scenario and the sales decrease scenario. Moreover, it presents examples of the practical application of the “white-collar” Strategic Kaizen. Essentially, by adopting the Strategic Kaizen methodology presented in detail in this book to consistently achieve the ideal state of a manufacturing organization, organizations will enter a new paradigm of thinking of strategic improvements – Strategic Kaizen thinking – to meet annual and multiannual target profits in a unique and effective way that operates according to its own strategic and operational management system.

Essentially, by adopting the Strategic Kaizen methodology presented in detail in this book to consistently achieve the ideal state of a manufacturing organization, organizations will enter a new paradigm of thinking of strategic improvements.

Anyone who has been involved in a team building process knows that it takes time to bring people together to work in the most effective way. This book shows team leaders how to speed up this process and solve the problems of dysfunctional teams.

Updated for a post-Covid world, the second edition of this groundbreaking book explains why becoming a Humachine enterprise is the only way forward for a company to maintain a competitive advantage in the age of artificial intelligence (AI). The first edition of The Humachine offered a foundation for a new form of enterprise, integrating AI technology and human resources to optimize the unique advantages possessed by each. Now, in the face of the ‘Great Resignation’ and ‘botsourcing’—where an activity previously done by humans is replaced by technology—thought leaders Sanders and Wood present a more positive and promising scenario, where an enterprise recognizes human resources as an asset class that possesses skills that cannot be replaced by automation. Enlightened business leaders will look to create synergy between technology and people, enabling the organization to maximize its capabilities by elevating the basis of decision making with closer-to-perfect information and rationality. This book provides a roadmap for how to do this and achieve collective intelligence at the enterprise level: superintelligence. More specifically, it answers these questions, and more. Why must an enterprise achieve superintelligence as a competitive advantage in the age of AI? How can any organization achieve superintelligence by following the 4-I model? What is the step-by-step process an enterprise should follow in becoming a Humachine? What strategies can be used by enterprise leaders to ‘futureproof’ the Humachine against uncertainty? All business leaders, executives, and managers at companies wanting to use AI and technology to survive and thrive in this new age, and students of analytics and decision-making, will value this thought-provoking and practical book, rich with case studies.

A convenient and up-to-date reference tool for today's financial and nonfinancial managers in public practice and private industry If the very thought of budgets pushes your sanity over the limit, then this practical, easy-to-use guide is just what you need. Budgeting Basics and Beyond, Fourth Edition equips you with an all-in-one resource guaranteed to make the budgeting process easier, less stressful, and more effective. The new edition covers rolling budgets (forecasts), activity-based budgeting, life-cycle budgeting. Cloud computing, Balanced Scorecard, budgeting for nonprofit organizations, business simulations for executive and management training, and much more! Includes several new software packages, computer-based models and spreadsheet applications, including Value Chain Management software, Financial Planning and Performance software, Web 2.0, Cloud computing, and capital budgeting software Features case studies, illustrations, exhibits, forms, checklists, graphs, samples, and worked-out solutions to a wide variety of budgeting, planning, and control problems Offers financial planning and new types of financial modeling, variance analysis, Web-based budgeting, active budgeting illuminating "what-if" analyses throughout, spreadsheet applications, break-even analysis, project analysis, and capital budgeting Budgeting Basics and Beyond, Fourth Edition is a practical, easy-to-use problem-solver and up-to-date reference tool for today's financial and nonfinancial managers in public practice and private industry.

Lean production, which has radically benefited traditional manufacturing, can greatly improve the software industry with similar methods and results. This transformation is possible because the same overarching principles that apply in other industries work equally well in software development. The software industry follows the same industrial concepts of production as those applied in manufacturing; however, the software industry perceives itself as being fundamentally different and has largely ignored what other industries have gained through the application of lean techniques.

Providing a reasonable level of profitability through productivity is - and will remain - one of the fundamental tasks of the management teams of any production company. Manufacturing Cost Policy Deployment (MCPD) and Methods Design Concept (MDC): The Path to Competitiveness contains two new methodologies to improving the productivity and profitability of production systems that continuously increase competitiveness: Manufacturing Cost Policy Deployment (MCPD) and Methods Design Concept (MDC). Both MCPD and MDC are the result of long-time synthesis and distillation, being implemented successfully, totally or partially, in many companies. The MCPD system, developed by Alin Posteucă, is a manufacturing cost policy aimed at continuous cost improvement through a systemic and systematic approach. The MCPD is a methodology that improves the production flow driven by the need for Manufacturing Cost Improvement (MCI) for both existing and future products through setting targets and means to continuously improve production process productivity for each product family cost. The MDC, developed by Shigeyasu Sakamoto, design the effective manufacturing methods using a tool of engineering steps identifying ideas for increasing productivity called KAIZENSHIRO (improvable value as a target). The MDC results on production methods lead to effectiveness of work measurement for performance (P) and to knowledge and improvement of production control and planning as utilization (U), in order to achieve labor target costs. The combination of MCPD and MDC methodologies can provide a unique approach for the managers who are seeking new ways for increasing productivity and profitability to increase the competitive level of their manufacturing company.