From the category archives:

click-to-ship

Maintain Forward Tension

by Pete Abilla July 20, 2008

One principle in Wing Chun is the maintaining of forward tension.  To explain, I’ll draw the distinction between Tension and Energy and show how this principle in Wing Chun can be applied to Change Management. Tension is a type of Energy A Wing Chun maxim goes as follows: soft and relaxed strength will put your [...]

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After the “Place Order” Button

by Pete Abilla April 25, 2008

What happens after the customer clicks the “Place Order Button”?  For some customers, this is a large black hole.  But, wise companies understand that customers need to be informed and aware of the steps after the “Place Order Button” is clicked.  In fact, customers want to be involved in the end-to-end transaction.  In this article, [...]

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The Basics Perfect or Engendering Loyalty? or Both?

by Pete Abilla October 30, 2007

Bijan shared this great, real-world experience of how getting the basics perfect is, in fact, a loyalty driver: his experience? — with Amazon.com Customer Service. In his words, Two weeks ago I bought an item on Amazon. It was a toaster oven. In my haste I shipped it to my brother instead of my home [...]

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Toyota Factory in Ontario, Canada

by Pete Abilla January 28, 2007

The guys at Gemba Research pointed me to this great video on the Toyota factory in Cambridge, Ontario, Canada. This is the opening of the Toyota Ontario Canada plant. “We don’t lay people off. There hasn’t been a layoff worldwide since 1950.” What is the Toyota culture? One of the senior managers interviews says: “We [...]

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Analyzing LicketyShip

by Pete Abilla January 15, 2007

I’ll be providing a take-home quiz to my students tomorrow. I want to provide thoughtful dialogue and inquiry, rather than the typical, boring, uninspiring material that some classes provide. I’ll be asking my students to consider LicketyShip as a case and ask them to discuss LicketyShip in the framework of the four performance dimension: Time, [...]

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Amazon.com’s 2006 Holiday Performance

by Pete Abilla January 11, 2007

Peak Season at Amazon is crazy, fun, and exciting. That is a time when “all hands on deck” really comes into play and everybody is pitching in to help. It’s also a time that really tests the amazon click-to-ship system and overall Operations, to make sure that product flows from warehouses to the customer in [...]

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Toyota Motor Corporation: Company History

by Pete Abilla January 5, 2007

Since some of your are familiar, practitioners, or die-hard fans of the Toyota Production System, I thought this history would be a nice reminder of how the company came to be the leader that it is. The data is from 2001 — so it’s a outdated, but it provides a decent history on the company. [...]

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Variation for Dummies

by Pete Abilla January 3, 2007

Most organizations collect and report on metrics that are not descriptive of their processes. Some of you may have noticed that most metrics that are reported are the “average” and some organization also use the “median”. Most people do not understand elementary statistics and their application to business. Here is the truth of the matter: [...]

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Traceability, Visibility, & Order Pipeline of Events

by Pete Abilla December 14, 2006

It’s critically important in any transaction to be able to answer the question “where’s my stuff” or “where are we in the process?” This requirement is often referred to as Traceability and Visibility; sometimes, people refer to this overall process as Click-to-Ship. Almost all transactions have Traceability and Visibility as a requirement. From the customer’s [...]

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