ROI

  • Is There Ever a Time ROI Shouldn’t be the Driving Force Behind Decisions?

    • August 21, 2019
    • Posted by: David Marshall
    • Category: Management, Measurement
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    A green ROI button on a laptop. There are times you need to put other factors before ROI.

    The return on investment (ROI) is a good benchmark for business decision making. Will your new piece of equipment achieve a positive ROI? Will expanding your sales territory? Will hiring a new employee? The problem is, ROI shouldn’t be the only deciding factor in making business decisions. In some cases, it shouldn’t even be the

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  • How Do You Determine the Value of an Employee?

    • October 4, 2017
    • Posted by: David Marshall
    • Category: Management, Measurement
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    Boeing's Everett factory near Seattle. It takes an astute operations manager to keep this all running.

    Many people don’t realize, but the left guard on an NFL team is often the second-highest paid player on the team, right after the quarterback. That’s because that player guards the back of a right-handed quarterback, his “blind” side. After Washington Redskins quarterback Joe Theismann had his femur snapped by Lawrence Taylor during a 1985

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  • The Importance of Measuring ROI in Manufacturing

    • July 5, 2017
    • Posted by: David Marshall
    • Category: Manufacturing, Measurement
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    You can measure the back office staff, like HR, on their performance too.

    For the last few weeks, I’ve been talking about important leadership qualities, and how being persistent and decisive was key in automating one of our oldest, dirtiest, and most hazardous manufacturing processes. (We were hand galvanizing certain pipes, and the galvanization chemical contained arsenic!) So we tore out all the hand-operated process and built up

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  • What’s the ROI of Fixing Your Downtime?

    • January 18, 2017
    • Posted by: David Marshall
    • Category: Business, Measurement
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    If you can measure your machine's downtime, you can determine the ROI of repairing versus replacing.

    In previous articles, I’ve discussed the importance of measuring and monitoring your plant workflow, in order to find any problem areas, whether it’s an associate, a machine, or a process. When you’re measuring plant workflow, you’re not only looking for productivity numbers to make sure you’re meeting your projections, you’re also looking for problem areas,

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