Monthly Archives: June 2013

Still Made in America

Posted on by

JUNE 30, 2013

paintbrushesChinese manufacturers long ago wreaked havoc on the U.S. textile, apparel, toy and electronics industries. But disruption has come more slowly to the brush business, writes The New York Times (June 18, 2013).  There are simply so many types of brushes for so many applications that many Chinese manufacturers thought the business wasn’t worth the hassle. Despite the recession, there are still more than 200 brush, broom and mop makers in the U.S. These companies have employed two strategies to stave off Chinese competition: 1) change everything all the time, or 2) don’t ever change a thing.

Kirschner Brushes hasn’t changed a thing. The Bronx, NY company makes brushes the very same way, employing many of the same machines it bought 50 years ago. Kirschner sticks with the old ways because, unlike with toys and T-shirts, a big chunk of the brush business caters to professionals who aren’t merely shopping for price but rather for quality.

At the other end of the business is Braun Brush, which is constantly creating innovative brushes so that it never has any competition. Bruan makes a beaver-hair brush that’s solely for putting a sheen on chocolate, an industrial croissant-buttering brush, a heat-resistant brush that can clean hot deep fryers, and a tiny brush that helped Mars rovers dust debris from drilling sites. When Braun sees other firms making one of it brushes, it often drops the product rather than enter a price war. Braun has grown at 15-20% annually for the past 5 years.

Despite all the doom-and-gloom US manufacturing stories, there are still more than 200,000 small factories, like Kirschner’s and Braun’s, that provide a solid, if rarely heralded, base line of American business. Very quickly though, the US is becoming a nation of Brauns–one in which a product faces extinction, or a rebooting, shortly after it is unveiled. This flexible economy has many advantages–and over time, it delivers more economic growth to the US.

This post provided courtesy of Jay and Barry’s OM Blog at www.heizerrenderom.wordpress.com. Professors Jay Heizer and Barry Render are authors of Operations Management , the world’s top selling textbook in its field, published by Pearson.

Cockpits Go Paperless

Posted on by

JUNE 29, 2013

United pilots use iPads in the cockpit

United pilots use iPads in the cockpit

Airline pilots, who fly some of the world’s most technologically advanced machines, have long relied on paper navigation charts and manuals, which clutter the cockpit and have to be lugged around in cases that can weigh as much as a small child. Now, however, airlines are catching up with the tablet era, reports The Wall Street Journal (June 27, 2013).

JetBlue Airways just received FAA clearance to provide its 2,500 pilots with Apple iPads that will store digital copies of the heavy paper manuals they refer to during flights. American Airlines said its 8,000 pilots had largely gone paperless now that the carrier has completed the rollout of its own iPad program. By storing manuals and navigation charts on iPads, American figures it has eliminated 3,000 pages of paper per pilot. In April, United started requiring its 10,000 pilots to carry iPads. Southwest started an iPad trial with 150 pilots this month and expects to expand it to an additional 550 pilots in the third quarter.

The volume of paper traditionally required by cockpit crews is almost overwhelming in the confines of a cockpit. American estimates that removing the bags from all its planes saves about 400,000 gallons of fuel annually, worth $1.2 million at current prices. One Alaska Airlines pilot said having the approach plates, arrival charts and runway diagrams available at the touch of a tablet is a lot quicker and more user-friendly. “It’s about information management, the human factors of managing charts,” he said. The change helps pilots be “safe and compliant” and helps the airline run a “better business.”

This post provided courtesy of Jay and Barry’s OM Blog at www.heizerrenderom.wordpress.com. Professors Jay Heizer and Barry Render are authors of Operations Management , the world’s top selling textbook in its field, published by Pearson.

Wal-Mart vs. Amazon Logistics

Posted on by

JUNE 25, 2013

This Wal-Mart hub sends supplies out to physical stores

This Wal-Mart hub sends supplies out to physical stores

Few have done better than Wal-Mart when it comes to retail logistics—the art of ordering, transporting, stocking and tracking merchandise, writes The Wall Street Journal (June 19, 2013).Wal-Mart pioneered a sophisticated hub-and-spoke distribution network which uses warehouses to service stores less than a day’s truck drive away so it could remove middlemen, quickly replenish shelves and reduce costs. At its distribution centers, scanning technology tracks merchandise as it flows at 6 miles per hour on 12 miles of conveyor belts onto trucks. Some items spend less than 45 minutes in warehouses.

Supply trucks crisscross the country and arrive daily at Wal-Mart’s more than 4,000 U.S. stores. Shipments are based on real-time data of shopper purchases, transmitted by the second as employees scan items at store checkouts. But with its e-commerce operations, which began in the late 1990s, Wal-Mart has been less exacting, instead relying on makeshift spaces carved out of store-serving warehouses and third-party operators to handle the load. Electronics ordered from Walmart.com are often delivered by companies like Ingram Micro which transport Apple tablets or Samsung phones to shoppers without ever going through Wal-Mart’s warehouses.

By contrast, Amazon has spent 15 years building its e-commerce network, with more than 40 U.S. warehouses within 35 miles of major cities. “As Amazon’s bets on infrastructure pay off, it can sell products at lower costs and puts even more pressure on other retailers,” says one industry expert. Wal-Mart now plans to spend roughly $430 million this year on e-commerce investments, including a logistics system tailored for Web orders. It is building distribution centers, but also will use stores as mini distribution centers. While logistics costs account for 3% of the price of an average “shopping basket” in stores, they make up 15% of the price of online orders.

This post provided courtesy of Jay and Barry’s OM Blog at www.heizerrenderom.wordpress.com. Professors Jay Heizer and Barry Render are authors of Operations Management , the world’s top selling textbook in its field, published by Pearson.