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To fully appreciate this book, we need to understand what "job shops" are and the role they play in our economy. A job shop is a kind of custom manufacturing business that specializes in a "make-to-order" product, usually for other manufacturers rather than directly for the consumer. Job shops make almost every kind of product, ranging from plastic injected molded parts to clothing.

While there are many different types of job shops, they share a few characteristics other than those mentioned above:

• Produce on an order-by-order basis
• Secure work through a bidding process
• Are highly specialized.

In Speed to Market, job shops are defined as "service companies" that also manufacture. The author tells us that those job shops that understand this concept will be in a better position to use speed as a competitive advantage. Job shops have seen a strong resurgence in the US manufacturing economy as more and more major manufacturers cut inventory and outsource in order to optimize their own business processes. They make the work of the larger manufacturers possible.

Most job shops tend to be small businesses – 50 people or less- with annual revenues of less than $10,000,000. Since most manufacturers must maintain lean inventories, the most critical success factor for job shops, once quality is competitive, is speed to market. Many do not have the resources and expertise to meet these demands, and will likely fold. For the same reasons, there is very little written about them since they usually can’t afford to spend money or time on consultants.

Vince Bozzone has written this book specifically for the owners of job jobs and bases it on the following proposition "…an organized company-wide approach for reducing lead time is the single most effective strategy you can follow to strengthen your company’s competitive position, improve profits, and secure the future of your business." (Author’s introduction). In so doing, the author looks at the entire business process, not only the manufacturing component, identifying efficiency and effectiveness opportunities in administration, supply acquisition, manufacturing, and distribution that may not be apparent to small and medium-sized business owners.

The first chapter is a discussion of "horizontal management" and the importance of the process revolution that has changed business practices world-wide. Of course, Vince is referring to management of processes across functions and lines, derived from intense focus on the customer shepherded in by the Quality Movement. He describes the major processes of custom manufacturing as being: sales, estimating, bidding, order-entry, materials management, engineering, production scheduling, production, shipping and billing. He walks us through these processes, addressing each in a similar fashion. He analyzes the process component (e.g. estimating and bidding), describes its sub-components, and provides a flowchart showing us how we can cut lead time in each process area. He frequently clusters components that can be addressed with the same tools and analysis.

Each chapter in Speed to Market has a similar structure, starting with a description of the process component under discussion, common lead-time problems in each area, actions that can be taken, wrapped up by key points for managing that process component. A particularly useful process analysis occurs in the Estimating and Bidding Chapter, where he covers sales and administration along with estimating and bidding. In the chapter most focused on structure, (chapter 4 – Tools for the Shop Floor), he address both simple and complex manufacturing processes with case examples.

Once the author has completed his walk-through of each business process, he highlights the importance of management information, particularly the ability to compare actual costs against the estimates for each order. He provides us with ways to measure productivity in a way that is simple and accessible to everyone. In particular, he includes tools and methods for optimizing cash flow, another thing that sets Speed to Market apart from other process improvement how-to books. One nifty tool is something called the "Weekly Management Report"- a one-page overview of the critical measures for each job shop process component. He recommends that this be used as a basis for organization-level and team-level performance management, reminding us that productivity involves people, not just process.

The last chapter of the book gets us to a case study of a real client, described here under the fictional name of Integrated Fabrication Technology, Inc. While this chapter is a bit of an advertisement for the author’s workshop, it shows how profit improvement is reflected in a company’s income statement. The four Appendices are loaded with information and provide full descriptions of each tool and its application.

Bottom-line, this book is not for theorists. Rather, it assumes theory and takes practice down to its most usable level. It is loaded with useful information on every page, getting us into the day-to-day work of the job shop business. And, it’s not just for job-shop owners. Larger companies would find it profitable to distribute this book to their job shop suppliers as one strategy for strengthening their supplier base and improving their own performance. Those of us who do organization design and process improvement will find this book quite useful for its ideas and its tools. It’s easy to read and straightforward, very different from other popular books on organization design.

What didn’t I like about Speed to Market? While I would have appreciated more theoretical context, the primary market for this book- job shop owners and managers – probably would not. However, Vince might have included more information about how job shops can be most effectively structured, in addition to improving process, as a way to cut lead time. How do job shop structures differ, and why? Are there optimal structures and staffing models for such businesses? Does it matter, or does process matter most? While he touches on structure in one chapter, he does not address it head-on. Answers to these questions could help many of us address the design needs of other manufacturers, service and knowledge organizations. This is a small omission, considering the value provided by Speed to Market for job shop owners and managers.

Browsing the business management section of any bookstore is not a task for anyone with a working mind and weak stomach. For every Goldratt, there are countless former coaches who think supervising precocious millionaire athletes is comparable to motivating modestly paid factory workers. For every Juran or Drucker, there are dozens of self-proclaimed experts drawing on the purported management wisdom of Atilla the Hun, Jon Luc Picard and even Jabba the Hut.

There are, however, gems in this literary slag heap, and Speed to Market: How to Cut Lead Time and Increase Profits in Job Shops and Custom Manufacturing Environments, by Vincent Bozzone, is one of them. A guidebook to the most effective methods of getting products or services delivered before the customer turns to competitors, Speed to Market speaks to any assembly plant and many service industries as well.

Although Bozzone, president of the Association for the Management of Organization Design, is new to book publishing, he has long been a respected leader in organizational design circles. And, though he may be a literary newcomer, he writes with a professional’s polish and a refreshing absence of jargon. More importantly, Bozzone obviously has first-hand experience in running assembly plants and knows his subject intimately.

For example, conventional wisdom applauds the supplier that, finding itself short of the material specified in a contract, substitutes higher grade—and higher cost—material to meet the delivery deadline. Bozzone, however, argues that although the order was delivered on time, the supplier operated poorly. The supplier cannot justify inefficiency simply because a better product was delivered to the customer. Effective planning would have ensured that the required materials were on hand in time to meet the delivery date.

I may be attracted to this example because it exposes the often overlooked costs of Just-in-Time inventory management. In business, quality is what the contract calls for and there is no future for companies that exceed the agreement unless they can do so at no cost.

As a corollary, Bozzone points out that maintaining a sensible inventory of parts and material—the ultimate sin according to inventory management gurus—allows the job shop to accept last-minute rush orders. Punctuality counts for as much as price and quality today, but on-time delivery is the most glaring weakness in American industry. Yet, very few books have addressed the planning and execution requirements for achieving rapid delivery in a cost-effective manner. And, last but not least, the higher profit margin on a rush order more than covers the additional inventory costs.

Although Bozzone doesn’t employ the Socratic method and fictional set pieces favored by Eli Goldratt, both provide profound yet simple answers to complex problems we all face every day. Goldratt taught us the basis for judging a company in The Goal, and how to work through bottlenecks in Theory of Constraints. Bozzone teaches the practical planning and execution required to stay one step ahead of delivery requirements without going broke.

If your local bookstore doesn’t have Speed to Market you can order online through Barnes & Noble or email Bozzone at ddilink@aol.com. The price tag for the slim 136-page paperback is $44.95—steep if you judge a book’s value by word count rather than substance. If you appreciate a writer who can get the job done with an economy of words, the content is well worth the money.

Forget Jabba the Hut. It’s all about winning the race to market, and Bozzone offers the real goods.

The plastics business, the metals business, the machining business—in fact any business demands a sound strategy to make the business a success. Vincent Bozzone has taken one important aspect of running a business, speed to market, as the underlying theme for his book. In the wrap-up section of the book entitled A Note to the Reader, Bozzone states: "an organized, company-wide approach for reducing lead time is the single most effective strategy you can follow to strengthen your company’s competitive position, improve profits and secure the future of your business."

Reading the book left me with a strong belief that the author truly understands business and what measures one should take to make a business successful and then continue that success.

• Chapter 1, Horizontal Management defines a job shop and explains how cutting lead time improves performance and profitability in so doing examining a typical custom manufacturing business process.

• Chapter 2 and 3 show how to compress time in estimating, bidding and preproduction areas.

• Chapters 4 and 5 identify tools for the shop floor and closing the loop, the latter covering the important topics of listening to your customers and accelerating cash flow.

• Chapter 6, entitled Accelerating Performance Reporting, gives what is without question the cornerstone of any methodology used in running a business. The author’s presentation is very understandable and may easily be put into action by following the author’s direction. The chapter contains information on how to construct and implement a weekly management reporting system for a business, and a step-by-step discussion to ensure that the system works as expected.

• Chapter 7 pulls all these elements together and shows how to implement a lead time reduction program in your company, providing an actual case study.

While the book is of particular interest to job shops, it presents many ways to improve the operation of any type of business. If the reader is looking for a magic bullet to solve every problem within his organization, he will not find it in this book. As we all know, there are no guarantees and there is little success without risk. What the author does well is to point out pitfalls and present opportunities. He suggests actions a business owner can take to be better organized and shorten the customer’s lead time.

I am excited about this book because I know the ideas presented work. I have seen them succeed in my work. As noted in the description of Chapter 6, to make a business run successfully, you need a plan and a way to measure results. Mr. Bozzone knows the way to drive continuous improvement and so will you by applying the information found in his book.

The four appendices offer the reader an opportunity to self-examine the various aspects of his or her business that could improve its speed to market. Appendix I is a questionnaire entitled Is This Your Shop? Appendix II presents a detail of a job shop process. Appendix III shows how to conduct a process-step analysis, while Appendix IV explains how to conduct a business systems review.

Review by Larry Olson, Editor

Despite the thousand’s of titles that appear each year that ostensibly offer "new and improved" methods of improving business practices, a conscientious manager is hard pressed to find one or two books that speak to the key issues that can make or break a company. Speed to Market, Vince Bozzone’s first effort in this genre, is one of those books.

Subtitled, How to Cut Lead Time and Increase Profits in Job Shops and Custom Manufacturing Environments, the focus of the book is indeed on how cutting lead times will increase profits. Mr. Bozzone addresses the issues around his topic with clear and direct prose that reflect his even more clear and direct thinking. He examines, among other issues, estimating and bidding, pre-production, a process-step value analysis, and "closing the loop." Most important, he not only identifies the every day problems a job shop manager faces, but details how to overcome these problems with effective straightforward solutions. Any job shop manager who has a sincere interest in speeding his products to market with an eye on increased profits is well served by Speed to Market.

Over the last 14 years as a management consultant, I have found myself addressing the same problems over and over again for client after client. In his book Speed To Market, Vince has described in detail the most common deficiencies I have found in my client’s processes and straight forward strategies to address those deficiencies.

In chapter two he discusses what I believe to be the most important and often the most poorly executed part of the job shopping process, namely estimating and bidding. Orders are lost because shops lack the ability to produce accurate, well organized, and timely bids. Vince presents strategies to compress the estimating and bidding process by increasing the quantity and quality of information available to the estimators, improving communications between estimating, customers, and other functional areas and by eliminating unnecessary steps in the process. Vince outlines specific actions that any job shop can take to bring this process under control and compress it by 50% or more.

In chapter three he addresses pre-production. This process is often one of the most difficult to manage because it involves so many functional areas such as scheduling, engineering, materials management, and purchasing. Because so many things have to happen before a job is released to the shop floor, it is not uncommon for the pre-production process to consume more time than the manufacturing process. Vince identifies several common mistakes that many shops make. They include releasing jobs to the shop floor prematurely, overloading the shop floor, failure to communicate anticipated ship dates to customers, lack of materials requirements forecasting, substituting materials to reduce inventories, and over engineering the product. Chapter three presents a logical strategy to organize and control pre-production processes and eliminate lost time on the shop floor.

The process-step value analysis detailed in chapter four is a valuable tool to eliminate unnecessary process steps and paper work and can be applied to any process. Vince provides a step by step guide to organizing a task group, gathering data, and analyzing the group’s findings.  In chapter five Vince discusses "closing the loop". This is the ability to compare actual with estimated costs. It is an ability that many shops don’t have. He addresses the design and use of a shop router. In my experience the use of a well designed shop router is one of the simplest and most effective ways of "closing the loop".

Speed To Market is straight forward, well organized, and easy to read. I would best describe it as job shopping 101 and recommend it to any owner, executive, or manager of a job shop. If you are serious about reducing lead time and increasing profitability, Speed to Market is required reading.

It’s a pleasure reading a book that uses everyday language and minimizes the use of trendy buzz-words. The seven chapters are divided logically and go from the general to the specific. This allows the reader to capture the essence of the message without reading long passages before getting to a point. The reader can visualize his own job shop and pick and choose which solutions are pertinent.

Mr. Bozzone’s experience and knowledge are evident throughout the book. His viewpoint brings a dimension and a dynamic quality which allows the reader to benefit from the many "real-life" examples peppered throughout the pages. The many models and illustrations help the reader understand the concepts and operational strategies that improve job shop performance.

From a training perspective, Speed to Market provides a sound basis for developing programs that would help people at all levels to understand the intricacies of managing a job shop. The book is an excellent tool for constructing a curriculum that would benefit experienced managers who need to re-think their current situation, as well as people who are new to the job shop environment. It is clear that owner-operators and managers of job shops would be well served by having their people understand and use the concepts and information presented in this book.

Speed to Market is a "must-read". Speed to Market is an "easy read". Speed to Market should be on your bookshelf!