Insights from The Lab

Wholesale Distribution

Category: Wholesale Distribution


Auto Parts—Tire Manufacturing: Standardization and Digital Automation Increase Production, Slash Downtime, and Reduce Avoidable Waste

Project Background The company, a top-3 global tire manufacturer, was battling low-cost competitors who were overtaking the low-price end of the North American tire after-market. At the high-price end, effective marketing operations, high-quality product, and strong brand recognition kept these new entrants at bay. Even so, high-end customers pushed for lower pricing. Industry margins were …

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The Top 5 Robotic Process Automation Implementation Critical Roadblocks to Avoid

1. Information security (IS) blocks, delays the start of RPA development Excessive IS “over-caution” delays RPA development and launch—often by months. The IS reasoning is rarely disclosed, but The Lab suspects it may result from a lack of understanding by the IS organization of how RPA works at a detailed level. RPA bots simply automate …

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Industrial Products Services Operations: Process Discovery and Standardization to Enable Growth and Delivery Speed

Standardization and Automation Needed to Retain “One-Stop Shop” Advantage For two decades, the building products division of this company dominated its competitors by getting its premium quality products specified for new institutional construction projects. The initial sale was profitable; later replacement and maintenance service was even more lucrative. And the entire service offering was typically …

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How To Implement a Lean Supply Chain Transformation in Just Six Months

This case study focuses on a supply chain process improvement initiative that was implemented for a Fortune 500 company with lean transformation from The Lab Consulting. It zeroes in on the order management process in the supply chain. Specifically, it targets the lean transformation of the order-to-cash cycle in the wake of an ERP investment …

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Improvements from Start-to-Finish

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