President & CEO of Tight Lines Advisors, John Abplanalp, recently spoke to a gathering of faculty and students at the O’Malley School of Business (OMSB) in Manhattan College on the topic of productivity and its impact on manufacturing and other types of organizations.
An accomplished veteran of industrial manufacturing for more than 35 years before founding Tight Lines Advisors four years ago, Abplanalp served as CEO and President of Precision Valve Corporation from 2003 to 2013 and as Chairman of the Board from 2013 to 2015.
A central component to Abplanalp’s speech was his dialogue on the Performance Accelerator™, Tight Lines Advisors’ proprietary productivity system “It’s a radical departure from the traditional, time-worn approaches of the past,” Abplanalp explains. “This innovative methodology offers a principled operating approach, which establishes mutually beneficial relationships among a company’s stakeholders resulting in sustainable growth and profitability.”
ORGANIZATIONAL RESTRUCTURING – A NEW WAY FORWARD
Historically, legacy approaches to operational restructuring are sometimes more detrimental to a business due to how elements above the gross margin line are handled. These approaches essentially look at factors such as procurement, operational and plant consolidation, offshoring, and location viability as opportunities for realigning a business. In an effort to resolve financial issues or improve the bottom line, these can be extremely disruptive to the operations of the business and can create negative movement in competitive positioning.
As Abplanalp explained to those in attendance at the OMSB meeting, the Tight Lines’ system achieves results by analyzing operational inefficiencies first, then by navigating upwards in a stakeholder-centric format from the gross margin line through the Performance Accelerator™ method. Regarded as a truly revolutionary approach that delivers dramatic results, the program brings an organization to optimal efficiency through a five-phase program:
- Analysis & Assessment
- Bottom-to-Top Issues Resolution
- Top-to-Bottom Improvements
- Staying the Course
- Resetting the Company Vision
Each of the phases follows a clearly defined focus and stakeholder-centric process for achieving tangible results and measurable progress, creating a more time-efficient, profitable and competitively positioned organization. This approach is much like the modern pedagogical approach employed by the school. The age-old “slash and cut” approach of trying to improve the bottom line of a company dissipates, much like the old-school forms of educational instruction, which unloaded reams of information on students, expecting them to return it in a proper narrative structure. As Abplanalp explained to the group, “The understanding of human behavior evolves, so must the approach to handling organizations and situations that involve people.”
FUSING REAL-WORLD SOLUTIONS WITH ACADEMIC THEORY
During and after the event, Abplanalp interacted with students from the business school who were studying a variety of subjects, including global management, supply chain management, and communications among others. Dean Gibson and other faculty members in attendance also noted the considerable benefits and value in the strategic and practical concepts exhibited by Abplanalp.
“John’s presentation inspired a new awareness of what can be accomplished above the gross margin line which can allow organizations to be even more viable and exponentially grow in value, and more importantly help them avoid the inevitable downturn’s,” remarked Professor Kudret Topyan, Professor of Economics & Finance. “In updating the syllabus for my Corporate Restructuring course at OMSB, I anticipate incorporating aspects of the Tight Lines’ productivity system, and I hope to have John return to address my classes directly.”
