StrategyDriven’s Resource Management forum provides materials focused on the leading practices of companies effectively managing their personnel, intellectual property, equipment, facility, and other assets in support of strategic planning and tactical business execution.

3 Safety Measures For Manufacturing Facilities

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StrategyDriven Resource Management Article |Manufacturing Facilities|3 Safety Measures For Manufacturing FacilitiesFeeling safe is an important aspect of life. Being safe at home, on the road or in a job, are factors that everyone desires to have. Since being safe and feeling safe are both highly sought after, society has developed procedures for almost everything that we do. Included in this is workplace safety.

Workplace safety is important. It ensures that all employees know how to work safely, avoid any accidents, and reduce the risk of coming into contact with any harm. Understandably, there are certain industries in which the workplace is more dangerous. They will also have a higher risk rate than others. In these environments, such as a manufacturing facility, the term “safety first” is more than just a well-used phrase.

These are a few safety measures to implement in a manufacturing facility that can help to protect the safety of all those involved.

Conducting Risk Assessments

To protect yourself and your employees, you need to be constantly aware of all the things that could potentially go wrong. You will also need to know what you can do, as an employer, to prevent a dangerous situation from occurring. For instance, avoid taking unnecessary risks and remain calm should you find yourself in a dangerous situation.

Every company should conduct a risk assessment as a way of identifying and preventing work hazards. Some companies go a step further and have a safety officer. The role of the safety officer is to recognize and analyze hazards within the workplace. Having a thorough investigation means that both you and your employees are aware of the risks and know how to avoid them.

Ensuring Electrical Safety

Handling electrics, whether it be circuit switches, reactors, breakers, or transformers, can be risky if not performed properly. If an issue were to occur, your workers need to perform maintenance safely. One of the best ways to do this is through a group operated disconnect switch.
With a group operated disconnect switch, it allows workers to confirm where there is an open-air gap exists within their electrical sources. Using a group operated disconnect switch, they can safely perform emergency maintenance or routine check-ups as and when needed.

Knowing How To Operate Heavy Machinery

Within a manufacturing facility, employees will more than likely be in contact with heavy machinery. Each piece of machinery should be in working condition. It should also have all of the manufacturer’s safety guards correctly installed. Whenever a defect or malfunction is detected, immediately contact the maintenance department, and review the instruction manual.

Despite being a common risk, hazardous manual handling remains an underrated risk in too many industries. A general rule is, if you have not undergone proper training in the technical aspects of operating a piece of machinery, do not use it.

Putting Safety First

Every company, regardless of the industry that they operate within, should ensure that their employees are well aware of the safety procedures in place. They should also ensure that the work environment is safe.

All employees should feel safe when entering work at a manufacturing facility. They should not need to worry about working in an unsafe environment. Ultimately, with factory work, the consequences have the potential to be severe.

Taking Another Look at Your Talent: Why Redeployment Might be Better Than Redundancy

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StrategyDriven Resource Management Article | Taking Another Look at Your Talent: Why Redeployment Might be Better Than RedundancyMany businesses have struggled since March 2020 and are only just returning to their pre-pandemic operations. During the coronavirus crisis, it was common practice for companies to furlough their staff, but this is now coming to an end as restrictions ease. However, this has left many organisations scrambling to cut costs and potentially scale down their operations.

Many are now considering redundancies as business requirements change in the post-Covid world. However, assessing the talent within your organisation and redeploying employees to other departments could prove more beneficial than redundancies. Here’s why.

It Can be Cheaper

Hiring, onboarding and training talent is a costly procedure. Add redundancy payments that you might have to fork out should you lay off an employee to this, and you have a hefty sum of money.

Filling an internal vacancy elsewhere in the business with an employee who already understands your company’s ethos and methods can be a far better option. It allows you to protect your investment in an employee during the hiring process and avoid further payments if you were laying them off. Overall, this can translate to significant savings, even when the training for the new role is factored in.

It Can Boost Morale

Downsizing your operations through redundancy is sometimes necessary. However, it can dramatically impact the morale of the staff members who retain their jobs. This common occurrence is often referred to as “survivor syndrome”. It is characterised by lower morale, engagement, motivation, dedication and productivity.

It is easy to see how this could impact your business as a whole, so it is likely something you will wish to avoid in your company. Redeployment can be an effective strategy to boost morale and motivation in your organisation.

While it is often driven by financial requirements, the practice offers an opportunity for growth for redeployed staff members. Additionally, it reduces the incidence of “survivor syndrome” that would otherwise be rampant with redundancies. Therefore, it can be an effective way to boost productivity and morale.

It Can Make Your Company More Adaptable

During the pandemic, businesses were forced to adapt to a changing climate. Many working practices had to be suspended, and other employees were forced to work remotely from home. For many businesses, this adaptation was a learning opportunity. Many companies sought to use the pandemic as an opportunity to cross-train their employees, bringing new skills into their workforce.

Rapid redeployment will allow your staff to grow and develop their skills and provide them with a better understanding of how other departments function. Ultimately, this can prepare them for additional opportunities that arise in your company and boost your workforce’s adaptability as a whole. This will allow your organisation to roll with the punches better whenever it faces adversity.

Conclusion

In many cases, it can often be a better option to retrain staff members for roles in other areas of your company. At present, many businesses are adapting their operations to a post-Covid world. For many, this means redundancy is a real possibility. However, for the reasons outlined above, it can often pay to redeploy staff instead.

3 Resource Management Tools for Streamlining Efficiency

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StrategyDriven Resource Management Article | 3 Resource Management Tools for Streamlining EfficiencyIt’s a hectic time to be managing a business. The stock market faces high volatility, set to continue throughout the year. Even if your business isn’t public, you’re feeling the ripples of changing trends.

Addressing new problems during the pandemic makes resource management for your business’ usual operations difficult. These issues are human resources nightmares and slow production, putting you off-schedule. If you can’t handle the avalanche of responsibilities and challenges, your business is at risk of failure no matter whether it’s established or starting out.

Thankfully, resource management tools are available to help you. If you’re short-staffed, this software can fill in. Keeping track of everybody remotely is easy with the right technology, too.

To learn more, take a look at this list of three popular resource management tools.

1. A Solution for Every Problem

As an up-and-coming business, it’s hard to keep track of all of your resources and responsibilities. Managing inventory, planning, sales, and human resources as the head of a small business is a lot to ask of one or a few people.

Epicor ERP is the perfect resource capacity planning software to take charge in all those areas. Its wide variety of tools takes a huge amount of pressure off of you.

Managing your business won’t be a disorganized headache anymore with Epicor ERP. Instead, you’ll have everything in one place and maximize productivity. Using this software, you’ll get more out of your workday.

2. Integrate All Your Apps

Many companies rely on a series of popular work apps to conduct business. Young startups at the highest risk for failure are most likely to use these tools. Yet, constantly moving between Google Calendar, Slack servers, Github, and other accounts are hard to manage.

Toggl Plan is a top resource management software that lets you integrate these apps and more. Communicating is easy with Toggl Plan, and your team will work like a well-oiled machine. Toggl is used by some large businesses like Netflix and Airbnb, proving its usefulness.

3. Resource Management in the Design World

Plenty of top resource planning apps work well for businesses in all industries. Communication and human resources needs are common between businesses, and most have some kind of schedule to manage.

Still, businesspeople in industries like architecture and marketing have particular needs.

10,000ft is popular in design fields like these. Its project and resource matching abilities streamline production processes. It has a tracking feature as well to make sure you stick to your timelines.

If you’re a fan of SmartSheet, you’ll probably like 10,000ft. They acquired the company and are planning on integrating it eventually. For right now, it’s a separate service with its own cost.

If you want to give it a go, they offer a free trial.

Maximize Efficiency and Your Success

Now that you know these seven vital resource management tools, you can implement them to optimize your company. Once you’re set up with this software, it’s time to look at improving other areas of your business.

Lucky for you, you’re already in the right place to learn everything you need to know. Click around the site and find the information you need to succeed.

How to Allocate Resources Effectively In a Business Enterprise

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Effective allocation of resources is what forms the crux of a business organisation. There is no way a business can thrive without having the right skills to manage whatever resources it has at its disposal. The scale of operation does not matter; however, what matters is how well you allocate each resource to put them to its best use. Some of the biggest business enterprises have faced catastrophic downfalls owing to their inability to handle the immense bulk of resources. On the other hand, the ones starting from scratch, with nothing but scraps have made it big only with their sheer skill of resource management and colossal intelligence. At the end of the day, there is no point cutting sizable profit if you do not know how to churn the cream to make something more out of it.

What Is an Efficient Allocation Of Resources?

Efficient allocation of resources, by definition, is the process of analysing all the available resources at any given point of time, and devising effective strategies to make the most out of them, keeping in mind short-term as well as long-term goals, in a way that there is minimal wastage and an optimal usage of all the resources.

StrategyDriven Resource Management Article | How to Allocate Resources Effectively In a Business Enterprise | Resource Allocation

There are different types of resources, and the knowledge of each one of them is crucial for a business to blossom. These resources could be related to something as complicated as finances or something very human as the workforce. Also, when we talk about allocating resources, it is not just the duty of the management to chalk out efficacious plans that would cater to the topic at hand. The onus of resource building, management and allocation is upon every individual working within the firm.

What Are the Most Important Resources?

It is difficult to place resources of an organisation into watertight compartments of classification because anything and everything really can be seen as a resource as per the requirements of the company. However, the most important ones, which are more like umbrella terms are- finance, time and workforce. Every business needs trustworthy financial advisors and a team that handles every aspect of it. You need to have the perfect knowledge of where and how your cash flows in the organisation. You need to have all your queries related to your accounts resolved, like what exactly Accounts Receivable Financing is, or how to deal with taxes. Only then can you understand where to allocate the money and how to do that efficiently. The same holds true for time and workforce. Time is precious, and every minute is supremely important. Therefore, you need to divide the work hours in such a way that every minute is utilised to its best. Coming to the workforce, they can easily be termed as one of the biggest assets of your business. Machines can do your job, but human beings are irreplaceable.

Therefore, hire the right team and use every individual’s talents the way they were meant to be used. You cannot use a legal advisor to pose as a psychologist and counsel them for better productivity. Everyone has their jobs cut out for themselves, and it is an inane allocation of the workforce to use people of the wrong profile for a particular task.

How Do You Allocate Resources?

There has been enough talk about what resource allocation is and why it is crucial for the future of a business organisation. We shall now move on to understanding how one could go about identifying their scope and using the same to their favour.

Gauge Your Situation

Everything starts with a holistic understanding of one’s situation and acknowledging it, no matter how arid your resource pool might look. Analyse what your scope is, where your resources come from and flip through the ways you have been utilising these resources for years or months. Once you have clarity of your situation, it is easier to act upon it.

Come Up With a Contingency Plan

An elaborate and extensive planning process is necessary for your business to score well and chart monumental heights of success. You need to plan everything-from hiring the right people for your job to handling finances; everything has to be hassle-free. However, one thing that several of these organisations miss out on is a sound and sensible contingency plan. There has to be a plan B. This might not look like a resource allocation strategy, but think about it before passing a verdict. Having a contingency plan is an assurance that your business will not perish at the face of adversities. You might plan your allocation since day zero, but if one those plans fail, you need a cushion that will absorb the shockwave. Also, discussing contingency plans is a way to segue into the next effective resource allocation strategy.

Be Wary Of Over Allocation

You might have this vast pool from where you draw all your resources, but that does not mean you have to place all of them in one project or person. Distribute them equally and in the amount necessary. Learn the art of making use of all that you have optimally and without overusing them. Saving up on resources will help you build a contingency resource reservoir from where you can draw if your principal plan fails.

Wield the Power of Technology

Technological mushrooming has made it so much easier to forecast your financial year or predict doldrums in sales. Use the power of technology to your benefit. There are tools and software available that can tell you the exact amount, quantity and time you need to allocate for a particular project. Therefore, it would do you good to be smart enough to seek refuge in the innovations of technology and use the same to predict your growth curve using the resources you have at hand.

StrategyDriven Resource Management Article | How to Allocate Resources Effectively In a Business Enterprise | Resource Allocation

There are hundreds and thousands of ways to use your resources effectively. The strategies you follow for a certain type of business might not sit well with a different kind of business. Your genius lies in understanding your situation and implementing ways that should work like a miracle for the growth of your business.

StrategyDriven Enterprises

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StrategyDriven Enterprises, LLC

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