Staying Ahead of the Curve
Ron Althaus
Althaus Educational Services

Several years ago the XYZ Company burst on the market with a great new product. Times were good and profits were high. The only problem was making enough product to satisfy demand. The company grew and expanded their facility twice to keep pace with customer needs. Then things started to change. Slowly at first, but ever so certainly the company began to lose it’s grip on where things were going.

Two competitors entered the market and began nibbling away at XYZ’s market share. The production process that had served them so well in the first year was straining at the seams to keep up and quality problems began to appear. Even the customers began to be a problem as they demanded  more and more variations to their products. Forecasting became a nightmare and everyone was blaming everyone else for why there was not enough of what the customer actually wanted. Overhead was growing and margins were shrinking as facilities continued to expand. People in key positions were stressed to the max and felt "out of control."

This scenario is repeated over and over again in businesses. The solution is not to just call someone in to put a patch on this or that problem, but to educate employees with the tools necessary to not just respond to changing conditions, but to be proactive and anticipate the necessary changes to “stay ahead of the curve” and on top of your business.

The class offered through the Chamber University “ Introduction to Supply Chain Management” is designed to give business leaders an operations overview on many of the issues described above and others.