Think Inside The Box: Discover the exceptional business inside your organization

Think Inside the Box maps a regimen to discover and revitalize the exceptional business that exists inside your current organization. Businesses add complication and complexity as they grow. Winners and losers exist side by side in product catalogs and among customers. Sorting through the noise to focus on the core and eliminate the wasteful is a constant management challenge.

The methods and tools in this book are the same ones used by consultants and private equity investors. Think Inside the Box walks you through the process step-by-step. You have the data and you have the tools; we provide the map and the directions.

The regimen detailed in Think Inside the Box:

• Is data driven, using data readily available in the organization.
• Relies on the well-established 80/20 rule to direct focus and attention.
• Anchors analysis in the fundamental elements of any organization; products and services and the customers who use them.
• Demands no rare or unusual skills, techniques, or technology.
• Adapts simply to new data as it becomes available.
• Has a proven track record; applied to over 850 businesses acquired and integrated in one Fortune 150 company, ITW, which has consistently produced superior results.

Think Inside the Box doesn’t stop with analysis. It takes you from insight through execution. It shows you how to identify your most profitable products and customers. It walks you through how to combine those two lists to map your business into four boxes: The Core, Supporting Products, Benefactor Customers, and The Residual.

Next, we show you how to take the resulting Quad Map and unearth the treasures locked inside each box. We demonstrate how, when, and where to apply over twenty distinct improvement tools and techniques including:

• Product Line Simplification
• Visual Production
• Kanban Inventory Management
• Dedicated Equipment
• One-at-a-time Manufacturing
• Value Stream Analysis

In the final section, we detail the project management, program management, and organizational change management tasks and challenges you will face in taking advantage of the multiple opportunities that will create using the Quad Map and Tool Kit. Finally, we discuss how to embed the process and the tools into the ongoing operations of your business. The result is a business built to adapt to change.

Organizations that have followed this process and used the tools and techniques systematically have seen sustained improvements such as:

• Eliminating 25% of catalog items without reducing total gross margin
• Increasing on-time deliveries to over 97% by instituting Kanban inventory management
• Reducing suppliers from over 200 to 40
• Increasing revenue per employee from $137,000 to over $425,000
• Improving operating income from 4% to over 28%

Tim Nelson graduated Cum Laude from San Diego State University with a BS with Distinction in Finance and then spent several years working in various finance roles for several large organizations. He received his MBA from the University of Chicago specializing in Operations and Accounting. Tim founded Midwest Industrial Packaging, Inc. (MIP) in 1987, which was sold to Illinois Tool Works (ITW) in 2000. Spent seven years as Vice President and General Manager for ITW helping to manage and improve several divisions. In 2008, he founded a new packaging equipment company while performing consulting projects leading transformational projects to improve businesses ranging from $50 million to $100 million in revenue. He has helped transform multiple business units using the techniques and processes discussed in the book. Jim McGee was one of the Founding Partners of Diamond Management & Technology Consultants in 1994, helping it grow from 25 employees in 1994 to over 1,000 consultants and $260 million in revenue in 2000. He has also worked as a consultant and entrepreneur with Accenture, Huron Consulting Group, Ernst & Young, and Collaborating Minds. Jim has taught organizational design, organizational change, technology management, strategy, and economics at Northwestern's Kellogg School of Management, DePaul University's School for New Learning, and Columbia College of Chicago. Jim has a BA in Statistics from Princeton University, an MBA in Strategy from the Harvard Business School, and a Doctorate in Organizational Design, also from the Harvard Business School.