What is it?

Companies that maintain scheduling databases have tons of information. A manager looking at the many reports that can be generated can easily be overwhelmed and not know where to start and know which problem to solve first. TPG has come up with an easy solution for its clients to get the best results in reducing their backlogs and cycle-time. TPG provides weekly and monthly action plans in the form of customized reports. These reports are easy to read and guide the management team to act on the most important delay and not worry about an inconsequential delay that doesn’t directly affect cycle-time.

What kind of analysis reports does TPG offer?

As part of this service, we offer the following reports as a standard, but can also create customized reports based on your specific needs:

· Capacity and Trend Analysis Report

· Cycle Time Status Report

· Delay Analysis Report

· Even Flow Analysis Report

· Capacity and Trend Analysis Report

The Capacity and trend Analysis Report looks at your historical production (past eight weeks) and shows you which vendor can cause a potential delay this week due to work overload. With TPG’s formulas, we prioritize the potential delays based on your vendor’s past performance as well as the activity’s critical status. This is an invaluable service that provides senior management with the precise items they need to work on to avoid a future delay and not worry about past delays that have already happened! Receiving this report each week is like having someone write your “To Do” list each week for resolving your backlog issues. It doesn’t get any better than that! Moreover, this report shows you a trend of your cycle time over the last eight weeks. You can be sure that when you attack the top most items shown as critical backlogs in the report, your cycle time will start to decrease. Our clients who use this as a weekly service know the value of using them and will testify to this fact. (To learn more about reducing cycle time with this report, read TPG’s special edition article – Click Here (you need adobe acrobat reader to view this article. If you do not have one, you can get one free from www.adobe.com. If you want this article mailed to you, please contact TPG))

· Cycle Time Status Report (Work in Process)

When you want to analyze your cycle time in detail for all your work in process, this is the report you need. It will detail your community cycle times and give you the detail of each home’s cycle time that was considered for the average calculations. This report can also be customized to provide cycle time for specific construction phases that you choose. This is a great feature if you are struggling with a specific phase and want to monitor your cycle-time among different communities for that phase. Clients who use this service are thrilled and like the detail that it gives among different communities or different product lines they build. This is a great analysis to receive on a weekly or monthly basis.

· Delay Analysis Report

The delay analysis report helps you understand the causes of delays. This report is based on the Pareto analysis, which is a very effective way of looking at what the major causes of delays are. According to the Pareto principle, 80% of your delays are caused by 20% of the causes. This report will help you see this trend and focus your efforts on the root causes so you can put in place preventive measures. It shows what impact your efforts have made in the past and where you need to focus your attention in the future.

· Even Flow Analysis Report

If you have adopted the Even Flow Start strategy and would like to monitor the progress of all your construction phases, this analysis is a must. With this analysis you will clearly know the performance of your production stages in terms of capacity constraints. You will be able to visually see the differences in the theory you have adopted and the reality that has been implemented and practiced.

Why do I need these reports?

These reports help you to focus on reducing your cycle-time! There are several reasons construction cycle time increases— lack of material, delayed shipments, shortage of labor, poor quality requiring rework time, inadequate crew, bad weather, etc. How we manage these delays and prioritize the top-most items on a daily basis is the key to reducing construction time. Anyone who uses a planner knows that the secret behind their efficiency is prioritization of tasks before they start work each day. The reports that TPG offers have been proven to help management hone in on the most critical of delays and remove the root causes.

What are the benefits of using TPG’s Data Analysis Service?

By subscribing to TPG’s Data Analysis Service, you can –

· Proactively prevent delays before they occur

· Immediately see your greatest backlogged activities so you can take action to resolve them

· See your backlog and cycle-time trends for the last eight weeks

· See graphs showing the top 5 delay reasons and vendors involved

· Know what your cycle-time is every week

· Visually compare cycle times of a particular phase in different communities thereby alerting you to potential problems or systemic problems in the way things are done in a particular community

· Save valuable time and efforts trying to generate similar reports and be able to spend more time talking with vendors and superintendents to resolve problems

· You get an independently generated report that is prepared without any bias and therefore can be used for in house auditing, vendor meetings or performance ratings

How does it work?

Three simple steps:

1. Make a backup of your project each Friday afternoon after your daily updates are complete

2. Login and upload your project to our website

3. Monday morning your reports will be waiting for you in your e-mail inbox

You don’t even need to distribute the report; we will gladly e-mail the reports to as many recipients as you wish.

Who really needs this? Do I really need it?

Any company that wants to improve their product delivery time & ROA will need these reports. A company that can satisfy any of the following can use this service and reap huge benefits:

A. Volume production or custom builder with an annual volume of 50-1000+ homes

B. A midsize builder with 30 employees or more with 5 or more as production staff (superintendents)

C. A company that wants to improve efficiency and reduce cycle-time

D. A company that wants to aggressively expand and build more units a year, but doesn’t know how to go about it

What are the bottom line benefits for me?

If all production stops in a company for a day, the company still incurs cost due to expenses such as salaries, utilities, rent and other overhead. Although most companies may not face a day of total production stoppage, they will certainly face days of very minimal production due to bottlenecks. Data Analysis service provides the company with reports that help the company identify bottlenecks and reduce the likelihood of such work stoppages and losses. It is estimated that the cost of production stoppage in a medium sized home building company could be as high as $13,431 per day. See the example calculation below:

Why can’t we run our own reports?

The reports that TPG provides through this service are complicated analyses, which require a lot of time to prepare. TPG’s staff use your data and manipulate them using sophisticated computer programs and generate the reports. TPG’s think tank always looks for better ways to provide information, which results in constant improvements in the quality of reports you get. Outsourcing reporting not only alleviates you from the headache of preparing these reports, but also lets you focus on your core job of building and managing homes. Compare it with an oil change service at an automobile dealership. You can do the oil change yourself, but it will be a lot quicker and cleaner if you get professional help.

How can we get it?

Please contact Totally Productive Group, Inc. by email at info@totallyproductivegroup.com or by telephone at . TPG representatives will provide you the current pricing and packages available and walk you through the process of signing up. You will be on your way to achieving immediate results!