Manufacturers’ waste-reduction initiatives are rarely as effective as they could be. When reducing waste, inventory is often the main target. But how do you right-size inventory in an environment of constant variability? In a word: kanban.

If your company ships anything on a regular basis, you should know about freight invoice auditing. This is the method that shippers have used for 60 years to cut the costs charged by carriers and to make deliveries more efficiently to their end users.

In manufacturing facilities many employees view the quality personnel as cops. “Their whole job is to come out and beat us up when processes don’t produce quality products,” they complain. “We can’t help it. Why are they always on our backs?”