Heriot Watt University
Riccarton Campus
Edinburgh, EDH EH14 4AS
United Kingdom
Morning: Operational Excellence
We'd all like to think we're fairly good at what we do and often see words like 'leading manufacturers of', 'high quality', and 'unsurpassed reliability' banded about. But what does that actually mean to you or - more importantly – to your customers and prospects? Just what are the differences between world class and world average companies and why should you bother? You’re doing OK, aren’t you?
Content
- Why we must change
- Building sustainable competitive advantage
- High 'Value' Manufacturing
- Customer value propositions
- Competency led strategy
- Operational Excellence
- Case study - an Olympian effort
- Six Sigma overview and tools
- Lean and the Toyota Production System
- Concepts are more important than tools
- Measure lots, forget targets
- Systems thinking
- 2 x case studies
Afternoon: Finance
Does anything kill a business more quickly than running out of cash? How about an owner who doesn't see or understand that a business is running out of cash? We'll learn to see the warning signs, look at sources of short term funding, how to interpret and construct cash flow statements, look at how to tighten up on our trade creditors and control costs. Some critical financial ratios will be introduced. For those of a non-finance persuasion, it’s not pretty. It may even not be much fun. It is however absolutely essential to both your learning and your credibility as a manager.
Content
- Managing cash
- Working capital
- Cash operating cycle and its calculation
- Liquidity ratios
- Overtrading
- Budgets and Forecasts
- Exercise – using available data to construct a cash flow
- Short term Finance
We then turn our attention to understanding both the Balance Sheet and Income Statement (or P&L)
- What do Balance Sheets and Income Statements tell us?
- What’s the difference?
- Where do the numbers come from?
- What use have they? How do we use them?
- Profitability ratios
- Additional liquidity ratios
- Solvency ratios
- Using ratios
- Managing Inventories
- Managing Accounts Receivable
- Managing Accounts Payable
- Raising finance for SMEs – the options