. Revealing counter-productive performance measures
. Identifying the operational objectives that will realize the greatest profits
. Managing with optimization techniques
. Reassessing the make-or-buy decision
. Incorporating lean manufacturing activities into the aggregate plan
. Rethinking traditional capital project ranking techniques
. Measuring the financial impact of multiplant operations.
Employing a hypothetical company case study, based on the author's actual experiences, Maximizing Profit guides you through a series of common manufacturing decisions such as product mix, process improvement, make-or-buy, and capital investment. A CD with an interactive Excel Solver spreadsheet tool — an optimization algorithm — is included that allows you to follow the team in the case study step-by-step as they shed prior assumptions and use optimization techniques to inform decisions.
Maximizing Profit's practical information on the major decisions that will increase cash flow make it a "must read" and "must have" book for managers in manufacturing entities, specifically, general managers, manufacturing/operations managers, controllers, manufacturing/industrial engineers, and purchasing managers, as well as students of industrial business management.
Acknowledgments
Foreword
Preface
Introduction
Section 1 : Manufacturing Activities are Ultimately Expressed in Financial Terms
Chapter 1 : Operational Improvements Don’t Necessarily Translate to Financial Success
Section 2 : Exposing the Existing Counter-Productive Performance Measures
Chapter 2 : The Standard Cost System : Manufacturing’s Millstone
Chapter 3 : Maximizing Gross Profit : Introduction to Optimization Techniques
Section 3 : Maximizing Return on Investment (R.O.I.) is the Ultimate Objective : How to Get There is the Great Challenge
Chapter 4 : Which Operational Objective will Produce the Most Profit?
Section 4 : Getting the Most from What You Have : Learning How to Manage with Optimization Techniques
Chapter 5 : Measuring the Financial Benefits of Manufacturing Process Improvements
Chapter 6 : A New Look at the Make-or-Buy Decision
Chapter 7 : How to Evaluate New Business with Optimization Techniques
Chapter 8. : Should We Be a Subcontractor?
Section 5 : Selective Growth and System Expansion Using Optimization Techniques
Chapter 9 : Optimizing the Capital Budget with Better Measurement of the Financial Benefits from Proposed Equipment Additions
Chapter 10 : Rethinking Traditional Capital Project Ranking Techniques
Section 6 : Illustrating the Aggregate Planning Process
Chapter 11 : Developing the Aggregate Plan Using Optimization Techniques
Chapter 12 : Incorporating Lean Manufacturing Activities (and Other Operational Improvements) into the Aggregate Plan
Chapter 13 : Capital Budgeting is Just One Step in the Seamless Process
Chapter 14 : Finalizing the Aggregate Planning Process
Section 7 : Evaluating Multiple Plant Operations Using Optimization Techniques
Chapter 15 : Measuring the Real Financial Impact of Multiplant Operations
Section 8 : Summary—Retracing the Steps to Becoming a User of Optimization Techniques
Chapter 16 : Summarizing OpTek’s Journey from Traditional Activities to Optimization Techniques
Section 9 : Appendices
Appendix A : Activity-Based Costing (ABC) : Determination of ABC Rates Presented in Chapter 2
Appendix B : Using Excel Solver to Execute the OpTek Algorithm
Appendix C : West Coast Processors : A Case Study
Appendix D : Other Proponents and Applications of Optimization Techniques
Glossary
Index