• Treat Your Truck Staging and Turnarounds Like Pit Stops in a Race.
    Treat Your Truck Staging and Turnarounds Like Pit Stops in a Race.
    If you watch any NASCAR or Formula One racing series, you probably know the difference between winning and losing a race often boils down to just a few seconds of lost time in a pit stop. Earlier this year, Kyle Busch won the Toyota Owners 400...
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  • ProSales Conference: Lean Moderated Session
    ProSales Conference: Lean Moderated Session
    AGENDA: Examples of successful Lean projects • Planning process for projects•Keeping projects on track • What’s next on the journey? • Questions/Discussion...
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  • Here Are Key Terms in Lean Management That You Need to Know
    Here Are Key Terms in Lean Management That You Need to Know
    From ProSales. By Scott Morrison. Many Lean terms come from Japan, where Lean started as the Toyota Production System around 1950. Here are some key definitions. Lean: Eliminating sources of waste. Muda: Japanese for waste, which has eight sources. Overproduction: Producing more than is required. Processing:...
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  • Lean 201, Part 1: How to Make Lean Management Principles Stick
    Lean 201, Part 1: How to Make Lean Management Principles Stick
    From ProSales. By Scott Morrison. SLAM! My junior year high school English teacher, on the first day of class, would walk into the classroom after slamming the door as hard as he could. His purpose was to galvanize our attention and eliminate all distractions. This achieved,...
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  • Lean 201, Part 2: How Curtis Lumber Embraced Lean Principles to Boost Its Operations
    Lean 201, Part 2: How Curtis Lumber Embraced Lean Principles to Boost Its Operations
    From ProSales. By Scott Morrison. In part 1 of this series, I said making Lean principles stick requires you to promote two seemingly contradictory ideas at the same time: Promoting ideas and responsibility-taking from below while imposing principles and standards from above. Now let’s look at an example....
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  • Lean 201, Part 3: Using Lean Principles to Make Big Changes.
    Lean 201, Part 3: Using Lean Principles to Make Big Changes.
    From ProSales. By Scott Morrison. While part 1 of this series discussed the seemingly contradictory notion behind making Lean principles stick, part 2 explored how Curtis Lumber in New York State was able to implement those ideas to improve its performance. This part of the series looks at another Lean case...
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  • Lean 201, Part 4: Four Obstacles to Crossing the Finish Line
    Lean 201, Part 4: Four Obstacles to Crossing the Finish Line
    From ProSales. By Scott Morrison. Let’s recap: Part 1 of this series introduced key concepts for making Lean principles stick. Part 2 went to Curtis Lumber in New York State and showed how embracing Lean ideas boosted its performance. Then in part 3 we visited Mathew Hall Lumber to see how it handled “The...
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  • For the Love of a Business
    For the Love of a Business
    From the Central Penn Business Journal. Barbara Costik grew up with Middletown Lumber Co., a business that has been in her family since her late father, Edward, bought it in 1955. She’s not about to let it down. During the 2008 recession, which fell particularly...
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  • How and Why to Improve Your Business Using Lean Principles
    How and Why to Improve Your Business Using Lean Principles
    From ProSales Magazine. The LBM industry has been slower than some others to embrace a lean culture. Here’s why Scott Morrison says that should change, and how to make it happen. The last three winners of the ProSales Dealer of the Year (Jackson Lumber and...
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  • Shepley Wood Products Improves Yard Productivity by 30%
    Shepley Wood Products Improves Yard Productivity by 30%
    Lean principles can be applied to improving lumber yard productivity by significantly reducing fork truck travel time for staging delivery loads… Shepley Wood Products was founded in 1978 by Tony Shepley and is headquartered in Hyannis, MA.  Shepley serves all of Cape Cod and the...
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  • Jackson Lumber and ProSales Magazine: Dealer of the Year
    Jackson Lumber and ProSales Magazine: Dealer of the Year
    Congratulations to one of our clients, Jackson Lumber! Jackson Lumber and Millwork of Lawrence, MA, Raymond, NH, and Amesbury, MA was chosen from a field of 7,500 lumber and building materials dealers nationwide by ProSales Magazine as the 2014 Dealer of the Year. Jackson Lumber...
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