Balancing Supply and Demand: Key to Business Performance

As someone who’s been helping businesses thrive for decades, I’ve learned that effective strategy development is all about finding the right balance between supply and demand. It’s a delicate dance that requires constant communication, data-driven decision-making, and the ability to adapt quickly to changing market conditions. The Universal Instrument Experience I’ll never forget the experience […]

Aligning Sales and Operations for Sustainable Growth

As a business leader, one of your key responsibilities is to ensure your organization can consistently meet customer demand while maintaining operational efficiency. This delicate balance is the core of sales and operations planning (S&OP)–a cross-functional process that aligns your sales forecasts with your production and inventory capabilities. Done right, S&OP creates a shared view […]

What to Do about Your Supply Chain Problems

In recent years, supply chain resiliency has become a critical focus for businesses across industries. As new challenges arise and existing ones persist, organizations are reevaluating their strategies to build resilience and mitigate potential risks. As CBS continues to work with the industry to mitigate the risk, here are some of the key trends currently […]

Navigating High Interest Rates: Strategies that Actually Work

Interest rates have always had a profound impact on the manufacturing sector. As an economic inevitability, their rise can take businesses by surprise, triggering a series of responses to mitigate the effects. While I’m not an economist, throughout my decades in the industry I’ve noticed several trends in the industry as businesses grapple with these […]

A Fresh Approach to Optimizing Supply Chain Efficiency

If the COVID-19 epidemic taught the manufacturing industry anything, it was the significance of an efficient and streamlined supply chain. When supply chain issues arise, businesses often tend to solely focus on external factors and fail to recognize the potential for improvement within their own internal processes. Let’s take a look at the importance of […]

Putting Certainty Back into Supply Chain Management

Supply chain management, traditionally, has been a complex negotiation process between customers, vendors, and suppliers. This intricate dance of agreeing on specifications, requirements, delivery, parts, and more results in a delivery schedule that customers rely on for their production needs. However, this system is not without its flaws. Last-minute disruptions can occur when vendors fail […]

SIOP: The Heartbeat of Success

Is your company facing challenges with …  Obsolete inventory.  Meeting customer demand.  Supply chain issues.  Cash flow.  Overstocked inventory.   and more?   You are not alone.      CBS Provides Timely, Proven Solutions  While these circumstances can feel overwhelming, there is help available with proven and timely solutions. Our consultants at Competitive Business Solutions regularly assist managers […]

Applying Lean Construction Methodology to Ship Repair Reduces Delays and Overages

Overview An executive, having previous success with Competitive Business Solutions (CBS), once again engaged our team to provide support for a repair shipyard. Before our arrival, a corporate team had conducted a large Root Cause Corrective Action (RCCA) event in response to the site’s poor performance of contracted repairs. This was evidenced by significant cost […]

Partnering with Suppliers to Bring Them Back to “Return to Green”

CBS worked with a Tier 2 client to help struggling suppliers and bring them “Return to Green”. One of CBS’s clients was struggling to meet customers’ expectations, which often leads to customer oversite and additional statusing requirements. CBS partnered with their
client to understand the root cause of the delinquent performance and went to work solving the two main issues, both tied to supplier performance.

Accelerating AS9100 Implementation Using Lean

Overview Agile Space Industries (ASI) entered a significant growth mode and was challenged to achieve AS9100 Quality Management System (QMS) certification within a 10-month period to gain access to several new opportunities. As a small business, where people wear many hats, resource availability added another layer of complexity to the implementation process. The result was […]