OVERVIEW

Your operations run 24/7, generating millions in revenue every day. The markets are good, production is running flat out, and your customers are happy. You have some minor stoppages, but they are fixed quickly total loss of production is relatively minor. Then, late in the week, there is a major equipment outage. It takes several days to get a critical part and a few more days to fix the problem. Total downtime: 5 days. By now, customers are screaming for product. You resort to buying and repackaging a competitor's product for resale to satisfy your customers. Throughout this time, a good part of your production staff was idle. Your maintenance crews, already short-staffed because you haven't been able to find qualified tradesmen, worked around the clock at premium rates. You can't make up for the lost production. You're backed up and already running flat out. This one incident has reduced annual revenues, taking more than 2 percent from your bottom line.

Only a few hours or a few miles away, your competitors were able to ramp up production to help you make up for your lost production. They were happy to help your situation generated more revenue for them and at a premium price! They don't have a problem with outages and, although they compete for the same labor pool as you, they don't seem to be short-staffed. Their operations are similar to yours, their product is virtually identical, but they are more profitable. What's their secret?

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