More Reviews

Review by Donald A, Keal, Principal, Joshua-Jordan Associates

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.

Review by Mark Winger, The Pride Team

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.

Review by Richard B. Mroczek, 
Infoactive Training Group, Montreal, Canada

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!

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