Take a new look

Take a new look

Whether you are a front-line worker or the president of a contracting firm, there are parts of your job that are quite simply a pain.

Every job has its downside. It’s the part of the job that is most arduous. It’s also likely the part of the job where you see the most re-work. It’s no fun and if you did a cost-based accounting analysis of the process, it’s probably one of the most expensive.

For you non-number crunchers, cost-based accounting takes a task apart and assigns true cost to each and every step.

Once you identify the true cost of a process, it’s easier to go in and look at each step and ask, “Does this step add value to the process, or only add cost?” If it doesn’t add value, it should be removed from the process.

This isn’t as easy as it sounds. While some in the manufacturing sector have done this almost to the point of anal retentiveness, contractors have a long way to go.

It’s popular to argue that construction is different than manufacturing, but if you look at the big picture, there is more that is the same than there is different.

Manufacturing does not move from site to site and once the process is established, the product going out the door looks very much the same. In construction, the end result usually looks different, but the processes –– from site prep to finish work — take the same sequence.

That’s why many of the lean manufacturing techniques used by manufacturing in the ’90s could help contractors this decade.

Our cover story about Quarra Stone shares how one company took the lean manufacturing concept and improved its way of doing things. Could it have done it alone? Not likely. That’s why it employed experts from the Wisconsin Manufacturing Extension Partnership, a non-profit group that aims to help small- to medium-based manufacturers improve their processes and their bottom lines.

Every state has an organization of this type, and experts there say the concepts used to streamline manufacturing can easily translate to construction. Involvement with one of these groups yields a payback of 20:1. That’s a great return by any standard.

Now is the time to take a new look at how you get your job done. With some thought and even outside guidance, you may very well be able to make your job more profitable and, as important, more enjoyable.

Published in the September/October 2001 issue of Contractor Tools and Supplies magazine.