Some managers administer suggestion plans to dig up money saving ideas and increase production; awarding prizes equivalent to 10% of money saved for winning ideas.
Other managers hire consultants; the hours or work and thousands of dollars spent on these consultants usually leads to few money-saving ideas but Tight-Fisted Managing is a collection of proven ideas, at a micro-fraction of the costs.
I have many other money saving ideas for business which I can forward periodically if this initial offering is successful.
Tight-Fisted Managing
If your company does not have a suggestion plan, it is losing out on important cost saving ideas.
Every day, workers come across easier, faster, and less expensive ways of doing their jobs. However, because the workers feel they gain nothing from helping make the company more efficient and profitable, they usually let the ideas die.
In offices and shops where suggestion plans are active, workers write down their often innovative ideas and methods and present them to management. If accepted, they are rewarded with cash bonuses or prizes.
It costs practically nothing to start a suggestion plan. Costs come later in the form of prizes for award winning suggestions, but the value of prizes or cash bonuses should not amount to more than 10 per cent of your total savings in the first year. That leaves you with 90 per cent of the savings in the first year, and 100 per cent in every year thereafter.
Following Up Winning Suggestions
Prize winning suggestions are being left to die in many large companies across North America.
The apathetic disregard for accepted ideas usually develops after the suggester is awarded a percentage of the estimated savings. The suggester, for example, claims that the purchase of a certain gadget will save x dollars annually. The investigator agrees with the projection and a monetary award is presented to the suggester.
The problem arises when the gadget is not purchased nor acquired in insufficient quantities to achieve the projected savings, or bought on a one time only basis. Suggestion plan administrators rarely follow-up on the accepted ideas, and thus the award winning suggestions become victims of apathy.
The suggestion plan department should be organized so that the plan administrator sees that all suggestions are acted upon. He should receive periodic reports on the progress of each accepted suggestion until he is assured the ideas have achieved their full potential. He should also review his files and enquire about past award winning suggestions to ensure they did not die prematurely. Without this type of back-checking, savings through new ideas are limited and the time and money used by the company to look into new money-saving methods are wasted.
Re-Evaluating Old Suggestions
If your suggestion plan has been in operation for several years, you have a potential gold mine waiting to be explored. Many ideas deemed impractical at the time of submission may be potential money savers.
Ideas which seemed to be nonsense to suggestion plan investigators five years ago, may merit re-consideration. It is highly possible that some suggestions were rejected solely on the basis of emotional reaction.
In order to capitalize on the dead suggestion file, you should select a group of knowledgeable people and have them investigate the defunct suggestions. They should re-evaluate each one in an objective manner. However fruitless some ideas may appear, discussing them can stimulate others.
$10,000 Ice Cube
A Houston factory solved a serious supply problem for the cost of an ice cube, instead of tens of thousands of dollars, because it encouraged employees to submit ideas.
The factory was making storage tanks with material it received from across the U.S.A. One material was a special plastic that had to stay frozen until it was treated during the manufacturing of the storage tanks. Otherwise the tanks made from it would fall apart.
Engineers and chemists proposed complicated and expensive tests to check whether defrosting of the material had occurred in transit.
A factory worker suggested instead to stick an ice cube in a sealed plastic envelope and to attach it to the frozen material at the point of origin. If the ice cube melted, then the material would obviously have defrosted.
Miniature Bottles for $625,000 in Savings
Changing miniature liquor bottles from glass to plastic could certainly have been the last place anyone would look to try and save on fuel costs. First, one would ask what rapport is there between fuel costs and a glass liquor bottle. Second, comparing the size of a miniature liquor bottle to the size of a jumbo jet, who would even bother?
Well, the new idea managers at British Airways have realized that no matter how small an idea appears, do not bury it. It could be the million dollar idea you have been looking for.
