"...I had a feeling as I went into this that people had reached their limits working on Lean Manufacturing on the production floor. Many companies had reached what they thought was the limit of their savings, and they didn't know where to go next. That's why I wrote The Big Squeeze - I knew that there were opportunities out there - I call it Beyond Lean - so I established a blog to ask for savings ideas. I asked for 10 percent savings or more, which seemed like a good barrier - thought would get a few ideas from the people that I normally hear from, but was absolutely overwhelmed with suggestions. We got some incredible ideas about how to cut back on shipping costs, how to do a better job of running transportation and logistics, as well as a lot of suggestions on MRO [maintenance and repair operations] the low-hanging fruit as you would expect. Some of these ideas were yielding 20 to 40 percent reductions.Click here for What's Next After Lean in Supply and Demand Chain Executive magazine http://www.sdcexec.com/article/10289868/the-analyst-corner-procurement