Job Shops: How GPS Can Help

You can control your job shop with management tools that work. GPS can assist you in setting up for profitability by helping you establish the following: sales and marketing tactics, operating controls, financial planning techniques, performance standards, inventory control strategies and administrative tools.

GPS can assist you in controlling operating expenses and reducing costs thereby yielding profits—if you take the time revise your operations, you can make it happen. GPS puts systems in place to assure profits. These systems include, but are not limited to, the following:

Sales/Marketing

  • Expanding your market by using SIC lists and marketing manuals
  • Targeting selling methods to produce consistent results
  • Critiquing your advertising design to capture the consumer
  • Evaluating your return on advertising costs

Operations Control

  • Evaluating machine layout and flow to reduce your “bottlenecks”
  • Reducing setup time and increasing running productivity through usage of ratio delay studies
  • Implementing quality control procedures and specifications
  • Using work cells to reduce labor and inventory costs

Financial Planning

  • Developing flexible budgets at various levels of sales and fixed costs
  • Determining breakeven levels and lowering through cost control
  • Calculating overhead costs by category type
  • Establishing a cash flow forecasting and cash flow management system

Performance Standards

  • Motivating shop personnel through performance standards
  • Developing group labor and spoilage incentive plans designed to reduce costs
  • Using “The Share Plan” to give key personnel a piece of the action
  • Using specific standards to control spoilage and yield costs

Inventory Control

  • Planning and establishing inventory levels for seasonal variations
  • Developing procedures to prevent capital tie-ups through accumulation of obsolete and slow-moving items
  • Evaluating space utilization to maximize storage capacity to use for more profitable operations

Administration

  • Clearly defining authority and responsibility of key people
  • Implementing management information systems to measure and control key operations
  • Establishing an accounts receivable collections procedure and computerized file tracking system
  • Using organizational charts to minimize line and staff head count