Operations

• Production efficiency improvement: At Bantam Doubleday Dell implemented improvements in vendor relationship management that resulted in a reduction of $2.1 million in pricing, reduced contract print cycle by 15-days, and improved on-time delivery to 99+ percent. BDD's president was quoted in Publishers Weekly naming manufacturing cost reduction as one of the three sources of BDD's best year ever. (Trade3)
• Product standardization: At Bantam Doubleday Dell implemented standardization measures that with no perceptible change in variety of books published decreased paper raw material inventory from $8.5 million to $6.2 million and had no effect on printing lead times. (Trade4)
• Department consolidation: Merged Simon & Schuster's (pre-Viacom sale) customer service and credit departments to create "one face to the customer", leading to Simon & Schuster being recognized by our customers as being "most improved" in customer service in the 1997 annual Market Partners survey of publisher performance. (Trade10)
• Call center productivity: Increased call center productivity by 7%, simultaneously increasing attainment of target service levels. (Trade12)
• Transportation cost reduction: At Simon &Schuster reduced education transportation cost per unit by over 6% (both gross and net) through consolidation of carriers used and negotiation around specific rates on heavily traveled lanes. (Trade14)
• Bibliographic operations management: Directed bibliographic data acquisition and database management at Barnes & Noble, Inc. including a redesign of the internal B&N title database (over 1,000,000 titles), and negotiating new agreements with title data vendors. (retail1)
• Inventory planning system: Implemented system to reforecast monthly title demand and returns, month-by-month at an ISBN level over a 36-month horizon. System computes projected inventory position out into the future allowing a dynamic schedule of printings that allows projection of inventory levels, cash requirements, vendor capacity, and raw materials (paper) requirements. System also provides sufficient notice of reprint requirements to allow sufficient time for corrections and offshore sourcing if available. (HE4)
• Customer data integration: Developed plan to tie customer inventory, sales and returns data into inventory planning system using a consolidated data model. The objective was to increase the accuracy of demand and inventory positions forecasts and to provide meaningful recommendations to the customer on which titles and quantities they should be purchasing. (HE6)
• Paper, Print & Bind (PPB) metrics: Implemented monthly reporting of differences in PPB spend from prior year based on number of titles, printings, units per printing, format, page count and interior color mix. (HE24)
• Inventory Metrics: Implemented monthly reporting of changes in inventory levels based on differences in sales, returns, purchasing, scrapping and unit value. (HE25)
• Divisional consolidation: Drove functional consolidation of multiple divisions resulting in a 25% reduction in headcount. (HE26)
• XBITS Implementation: Implemented the XBITS XML transaction standard among Cengage Learning and its paper and manufacturing suppliers. This reduced the need for multiple manual processes to record and verify details of purchasing, scheduling and specifications transactions. (HE29)