4.) EASE TRAINING OF NEW EMPLOYEES - By assigning indirect duties such as housekeeping to you new and lower paid personnel you will minimize the time and effort needed to get a new employee up and running. This will allow the employee to grow into your organization. You will find yourself providing the higher skilled training to those employees who have demonstrated they are both deserving and capable. As you promote from the bottom up you are replacing the lowest skilled workers in the chain. This minimizes time and expense greatly.

5.) IMPROVE EMPLOYEE RETENTION - If you allow your highly skilled employees to perform the highly skilled duties which they enjoy, they will be much more apt to remain with your organization. Likewise, if you are promoting from within, from the bottom up, then your workforce will realize that they can grow with the company. This will make them happier and will decrease your turnover rates.

6.) IMPROVE THE CAPABILITIES OF YOUR WORKFORCE - As your employees grow with your organization they will be acquiring more and more skills of a higher and higher caliber. Your workforce will be happier and considerably more skilled. This makes your workforce much more capable, not just at their specific duties, but at a larger variety of duties. They will understand the requirements and skills needed to perform their current duties and many others in the process as well. They can be more readily trained for new positions as well as being available to train others in new positions.

7.) IMPROVE QUALITY - When your highly skilled workers are performing the highly skilled tasks you will find that your scrap rates will be greatly reduced. When they can concentrate on the task at hand, rather than be distracted by other duties, they will make fewer mistakes and often times will be more prone to catching those mistakes they do make. When you have less skilled operators performing skilled tasks and being continually distracted, the level of quality will be reduced significantly.

8.) DELAY NEW EQUIPMENT PURCHASES - If your machine operator spends half the day performing duties other than operating the machine, then you will need twice as many machines to make the same number of parts. If you can keep that operator machining parts the entire shift you can put off those expensive capital equipment purchases for a much longer time.

9.) DELAY PHYSICAL EXPANSIONS - Just as indirect labor takes away from your capacity and requires you to obtain more personnel and equipment; you will also need more floor space to accommodate the increase in equipment and personnel. Keeping your indirect labor in check can delay the need to add that costly manufacturing space.

10.) INCREASE MARKETSHARE - By keeping your indirect labor costs at a minimum you will be able reap the benefits of increased productivity and efficiencies as well as minimize your labor and capital expenses. This allows you to decrease your sale price while maintaining your profit margin, thereby, gaining market share over your competitors.

Stop accepting all that indirect labor. Understand what your indirect labor truly is and optimize it so you can start reaping the rewards of a cost effective labor force.  James Cavalluzzi