Reduce the Units of Input Not Producing Output

Reduce units of Input (I) available but not producing Intermediate Cost Drivers
(ICDs). This action makes Input levels more directly variable with the quantity of the ICD by reducing the amount of the available Input that is wasted or idle. For example, an employee (I) might produce one subassembly (ICD) per day. During that day, the employee spends a total of one hour waiting for parts for the subassembly. If the Company could eliminate that one lost hour of the employee's work day by providing parts in a more timely manner, the Company could reduce the number of employees (I) needed to produce the same subassembly (ICD) by 1/8th.

D. Use short term sources of Input to meet peak demand.

The company would intentionally plan less capacity than it would need to meet its peak demand. It would supply the peak with other sources of capacity.

Use third party resources

No. Industry SIC Year Notes
1 0 2002 Industry insiders say firms have become more interested in hiring temps at higher skill levels. While temps are traditionally associated with manual labor and low-level clerical work, nowadays you can find them in jobs like computer support and programming, accounting, even management for short-term projects.
2 2834 2002 An online forum started by an arm of the Indianapolis-based company (InnoCentive) helps scientists get solutions to problems. Scientists use the system to pose questions to a global pool of adhoc experts. Those experts may be just around the corner or an ocean away. The questioner gets a needed answer that might aid manufacturing or speed drug development. The problem-solver gets a fee. The forum gets a cut of the transaction.
3 3559 1989 As a small company, Thermwood can't afford to hire top experts on a permanent basis, so it hires R&D people on an as-needed basis. Many come from the faculties of leading universities.
4 3559 1989 Using as-needed research experts is also efficient because experts are usually expert in narrow areas. By picking and choosing people to fit specific projects, you save huge amounts of time and money that would have been spent on your regular staff becoming familiar with the top technology in the area.
5 3571 1986 To avoid layoffs, some temporary workers, who normally number about 4,000, are not being rehired by IBM after their agreements expire.
6 3571 2004 IBM Corporation adapted quickly to the demand for cheaper servers and the competition from Intel-based servers, unlike many other companies. The company noted five years ago that Intel Corp.'s chips were becoming more powerful, allowing for cheaper servers, and that corporate buyers were not spending as much. In response, IBM decided to revamp its systems and introduced the Enterprise X architecture, which delivers scalability and ability to partition and manage, to the market. IBM accredits its uniqueness to its new system that allows a variety of processor systems (from 2 to 32), its integration with network switching and storage switching, and its management tools that provide the ability to manage the servers remotely.
7 3674 1988 DEC has about 20 permanent, floating employees doing temporary jobs that require them to deal w/ confidential info. DEC hires another 60 nonstaff temps directly from outside & often reuses them in specialized areas. Also brings in 800-900 temps daily from outside firms to avoid hassle & expense of finding, hiring, & managing such a large group.
8 3711 1986 Isuzu Motors is asking some employees to take early retirement and farming out others to parts suppliers, dealers, and even rival auto makers.
9 3825 1988 Tektronix uses 5 times as many temps as it did two years ago. It's more expensive, but necessary to maintain flexibility in the face of rapidly changing demand.
10 3911 1985 By contracting out specialized jobs, Bazar Manufacturing limits the hiring of new employees who might be subject to layoffs during the industry's seasonal fluctuations.
11 7375 2000 By pushing content such as graphics and photos on to their own servers, Akamai is able to take the strain off customers' central servers. By spreading out the content Akamai is able to speed up the time needed to access the data.
12 7378 1997 The PEO relationship is a contractual arrangement whereby a business will outsource many of its human resources responsibilities to Vincam, which acts as a co-employer with the worksite employees.
13 8742 2006 Outsourcing is transforming whole industries and the way we work. Creative new companies can exploit the possibilities of offshoring even faster than established players. Crimson Consulting Group performs global market research on everything from routers to software for clients including Cisco, HP, and Microsoft, and it only has 14 full-time employees. But it farms out research to India's Evalueserve and some 5,000 other independent experts from Silicon Valley to China, the Czech Republic, and South Africa.

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