By keeping a lid on costs, setting appropriate prices, managing inventory prudently and analyzing sales trends, a manufacturer will have a healthier business.
For the past several months, manufacturing has been at a virtual standstill, teetering on the verge of growth or stagnation. Manufacturers should focus on these four areas to keep their businesses running strong through fat and lean times:
- Frugality
- Cost tracking
- Inventory tracking
- Sales monitoring.
Let’s discuss each of these in detail.
Frugality
It’s easy to say you should keep costs down, but it’s another matter entirely to make this happen. An example of a manufacturer that puts a major focus on frugality is Nutty Guys, a Salt Lake City, Utah-based manufacturer that produces and distributes more than 100 tons of dried fruit, nuts and candy each month.
In order to keep costs down, Nutty Guys constantly researches raw material pricing from multiple suppliers, manufactures in mass production, keeps equipment well maintained, minimizes the number of slow-moving products, and avoids tactics that don’t add value to their customers.
Nutty Guys has found creative ways to get their hands on an impressive array of manufacturing equipment at great prices. This allows them to be competitive in pricing and pass those savings along to their customers. Nutty Guys is more interested in using their facilities to manufacture high quality, fresh products for their customers. Rarely do products stay in the warehouse for more than a week or two.
By combining quick inventory turnover and thousands of square feet of refrigerated pallet racks and warehouse space, Nutty Guys prevents product from going bad and saves money.
