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The Manufacturing Growth Programme has been designed to help manufacturers overcome their business problems. The Marketplace, one of the many cogs in the programme's machine, specialises in providing the support needed to develop your business. They will advise you on the best providers to work with and how to streamline your business. As your business needs are their biggest priority, they have even developed a brainstorming exercise called the VIN Ranking Process© to ensure they have total clarity on how they can help you.
VIN, which stands for Vital, Important and Nice to Have, is a tool that can be used to define the procurement and supply chain requirements and strategy of a project or activity. In simple terms, it’s about deciding what steps are necessary to make business improvements and which ones might be best left on the backburner. This will help to you cut costs and invest in the jobs that are most beneficial to you. Instead of wasting money on minor tasks which will have little effect on the overall running of your business. You'll be able to devote your finances to the best priorities.
VIN Ranking Process Steps includes:
1. You will be asked to identify at least 3 priorities that need to be included/part of the procurement and supply chain requirements and/or strategy. Note: you can provide more than 3 if you wish.
2. You and all stakeholders involved in the meeting will simply write these priorities down onto a post-it note. The consultant will discuss with you the importance of each post-it note and together you’ll determine which of the 3 columns it should be placed into:
- Vital: must be included as part of the requirements/strategy to enable successful delivery and completion of the project or activity.
- Important: provides a positive impact on the delivery and completion of the project or activity.
- Nice to have: does not have a negative impact on the cost to deliver and could provide additional value.
3. Once all the priorities have been agreed and placed into the appropriate column, these can be ranked in order of importance – with the highest priority at the top.
4. After everyone has agreed on the positioning, the outcome should be documented and you can use the information to define and develop your procurement and supply chain strategy.
VIN is a simple and effective way for you to share your ideas and goals with the Marketplace and your team. The process allows you to define, capture and categorise the procurement and supply chain requirements for your project. There’s no need to be flooded under tons of paperwork and excessive data analysis – all this takes is a few post-it notes and a team discussion.
The Marketplace team have developed the VIN Ranking process and have used it successfully with their clients. If you want to be the next success story then the Manufacturing can help to cover some of the consultancy costs, so you can invest more money into your business growth.
To find our more you can get in touch at support@howsbusiness.org
Or you can download our free guide to manufacturing support