Art Koch’s Profit Chain® Series
Volume 3 | Number 7 | July 2020
Black Swan Event
We have learned important lessons from the ongoing COVID-19 black swan event. Here is a quick recap of the most significant lessons learned:
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Art Koch’s Profit Chain® Series
Volume 3 | Number 6 | June 2020
The Elegance of Simplicity
It was just last year when Apple Inc. (AAPL) announced that the company had exceeded a market value of $1 Trillion. How did they become the first company with a trillion-dollar valuation? It is my opinion that it was Steve Jobs’, and now Tim Cook’s, relentless focus on simplicity. Both understood that it would not be easy and that it would take unwavering tenacity to achieve their vision.
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Art Koch’s Profit Chain® Series
Volume 3 | Number 5 | May 2020
One important lesson that COVID-19 has taught Executive Leaders is that their assumptions are misguided when assessing the Total Cost of Ownership, TOC.
Total Cost of Ownership (TCO): TCO includes all of the direct and indirect costs associated with an asset or acquisition over the entire life cycle of the product or service. TCO includes not just the purchase price, but also the cost of transportation, handling and storage, damage and shrinkage, taxes and insurance, and redistribution costs.
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In the last couple of months, we have gone to grocery stores and pharmacies only to find empty shelves where the toilet paper, paper towels, antibiotics, cleaning supplies and hand sanitizer used to be.
Let’s take a moment to discuss supply chain as it applies to the retail industry. For non-perishable goods, canned foods and dry-goods, the only use of JIT in the retail sector is from the distribution center to the store location. From manufacturing to distribution centers, is traditional “push”, manufacturing utilizing highly sophisticated forecasting / demand planning, or just-in-case inventories. When digging deeper into the outages occurring today, the demand variability of these items is extremely low; meaning their demand is highly predictable. What we are experiencing is a once in a 100-year event! No demand planning / forecasting system is capable of predicting this type of event or crisis. If demand planning processes were able to forecast this event, I guarantee that this kind of knowledge would not be wasted on toilet paper and paper towels! Someone would be using that information to make billions in the stock market or to accurately predict weather patterns. Additionally, push systems are not flexible, responsive or agile enough to quickly pivot for sudden demand changes.
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Art Koch’s Profit Chain® Series
Volume 3 | Number 4 | April 2020
Can you imagine the United States outsourcing 80-85% of our defense contracts to the lowest bidder?
And if we were to do this, would we be putting our national security and sovereignty in great jeopardy? Absolutely! This is exactly what the health care industry has done to the US!
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Most of my advisory work involves helping outline, reviewing or critiquing project plans, of one sort or another.
I routinely nudge or push the team to go faster, to be quicker, and to “Fail Fast…Learn Fast…Fix Fast…!
Too often people seek Perfection in what they do, and it is NOT attainable. This pursuit delays fixing critical processes that will increase customer loyalty, corporate culture and profits.
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As the reality and the shock of the Covid-19 crisis are starting to settle, business leaders and owners should be taking immediate action to protect business today and secondly mobilize their entrepreneurial skills to seize opportunities as they arise.
This global pandemic is already having a profound impact on small- and medium-sized businesses, but now is the time to prepare strategies for recovery. Listen to this podcast produced by Dan Weedin in Seattle where he interviews business experts from Seattle, Portland, Miami, Canada, and Australia on what business owners should be thinking about during the Covid-19 crisis. Recorded March 18, 2020.
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Art Koch’s Profit Chain® Series
Volume 3 | Number 3 | March 2020
The Call of a Generation – Navigating the Covid-19 Crisis
As our parents, grandparents, and great-grandparents before us, each generation was called on to make sacrifices for their country: whether it was during World Wars, The Great Depression, or similar pandemics such as the Spanish Flu. Today, WE are the generation who must make the sacrifices. We will get through this as stronger people, stronger nations and partnerships. Please remember, as bad as this feels, no one is dropping bombs on us or shooting at us!
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How are your teams at? Forming Norming Storming Performing How well your teams move through these steps will determine their impact, performance and conflict levels. https://youtu.be/XAQC_Am5ywU
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Volume 3 | Number 1 | January 2020
Scrapping the Notion of New Year’s Resolutions
We are now into the third full week of the New Year. If you made resolutions, how many are still in-place? Statistics show 90% are dropped within the first 30 days.
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