CHAPTER 19

Profiting from Returns, Defects, and Waste

There are many operational challenges that we think about as just the costs of doing business. When you sell products, sometimes customers are going to want to return them. When you manufacture products, sometimes you will make mistakes and build defective ones. Any time we need to hand off a product or information to someone else, we create waste. So why bother writing this chapter? Because in case you had not guessed by now, it is all about the way you approach these “costs of doing business.” Are they burdens or opportunities?

Finding the right balance between speed, cost-effectiveness, and quality is a lost art. We often see organizations chasing one or two without considering the others. ...

Get The Unified Theory of Profitability now with the O’Reilly learning platform.

O’Reilly members experience books, live events, courses curated by job role, and more from O’Reilly and nearly 200 top publishers.