Speed to Market—An important competitive advantage

Reviewed by Gary Jugenheimer, Sales Engineer, 
EVCO Plastics, Deforest, WI.

Speed to Market is an Injection Molding Magazine book club selection.

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.

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