11Principles of Quick Response for Office Operations
I EMBARKED ON THE DESCRIPTION of QRM principles by discussing their application to the shop floor and materials flow. This was deliberate, since the factory is considered to be the core of a manufacturing enterprise; this is where products take on their physical shape and characteristics. However, a good deal of the lead time to serve a customer, and a substantial amount of the cost of operating a manufacturing enterprise, take place outside the shop floor. In fact, office operations represent a significant portion of both cost and lead time, and yet companies have largely neglected the office as a source of productivity improvement. This chapter begins Part Three of this book, which focuses ...
