You can easily web search this topic and come up with dozens of diagrams and repetitive examples for being efficient. The trick for everyone is the implementation of an ongoing and ever improving execution of efficiency. Here are three quotes that I think do a good job of helping us wrap our mind around efficiency. Are they obvious?
Perfection is not attainable, but if we chase perfection we can catch excellence. – Vince Lombardi
Successful people ask better questions, and as a result, they get better answers. – Anthony Robbins
If you cannot measure it, you cannot improve it. – Kelvin
The first quote is my favorite, but it takes the next two to actually begin implementation and understanding of excellence. Genera Energy has very high standards. I have high standards, but as a group we have higher standards that hold us accountable to one another. The pursuit of perfection is indeed the beginning of excellence but not the end thereof.
Who impresses you the most, perhaps in a meeting or elsewhere? To me it is the person that asks the best questions and quickly gets to the points that make a difference. Everyone asks questions to get started, but at Genera Energy we know the right questions to ask and we don’t stop until we have found the right questions. Next, we spend our waking hours answering the right questions. Let’s take the biomass supply chain as a quick example. Here are a few key questions we ask in every supply chain operation.
- Which biomass should you use?
- What does it cost? What are the main components of its cost? What is the denominator?
- Will it be available every year in abundant supply at that cost? How do you know?
- How do you keep harvests and trucking on schedule even when it rains? What will it weigh every time?
- How will it store? How will you protect it? How will you keep from having large losses? How much time will it take?
- Are you wanting bales, field chopped, just in time delivery, bulk inventory, or bale inventory? Why? Can you trace your product within a few hours of the first call?
- When you have issues, how will you get to the root cause quickly?
- What type of bale do you need? Are you choosing it based on inventory, processing, quality control, or overall system cost? How do you calculate overall system cost?
- What particle size do you need? What efficiency basis did you use for that – from the cradle to the grave or only at your plant?
- How much land is required? What are the rates? What if the land owner dies? What does it take to establish it and can that cost be recovered? How can you acquire the right land?
- Do equipment vendors see the whole picture and cost or are they concentrating on a small picture? Does particle size distribution matter or just dollars per pound milling cost?
- How much time will be lost on plugged bins, cyclones, and conveyors? What do you check before design?
We’ll continue the discussion on efficiency in Part 2 of this blog post! In the meantime, please contact Genera Energy to see how we can design the supply chain for your project with maximum efficiency!
By Keith Brazzell, Chief Operating Officer
