Raúl Gorrín: Waste not, Want not

For want of a nail the shoe was lost.

For want of a shoe the horse was lost.

For want of a horse the rider was lost.

For want of a rider the message was lost.

For want of a message the battle was lost.

For want of a battle the kingdom was lost.

And all for the want of a horseshoe nail.

By Raúl Gorrín. This proverb is centuries old. It may be over a thousand years old and the concept still hold true today. 

Productivity  essentially consist of two parts. One is the cost (outlay of monies) and the other is the  collections of monies. Most people, and most organizations, are far more motivated to increase sales than to reduce consumption. Reframing the problem in this way is therefore more likely to produce major improvement opportunities in productivity. A company in China, for instance, followed this proverb and increased the power it generated from waste heat by 25 percent.

Using what we have more efficiently, will stir the imaginations of management about the possibilities for using resources more productively. In fact, the vast majority of the world’s manufacturers have a wealth of opportunities to make more money and increase returns to shareholders by using what you presently have more efficiently.

Think lean

The lean ideas first advanced in the production system gave organizations a new way to recognize and root out waste. Applying that same rigor to a specific form of it—energy and materials—lies at the center of resource productivity. these methods often involve following a product through a factory or service operation. That’s known as value-stream mapping.

"For Want of a Nail" is a proverb, having numerous variations over several centuries, reminding that seemingly unimportant acts or omissions can have grave and unforeseen consequences. It describes a situation in which a failure to anticipate or correct some initially small dysfunction leads by successively more critical stages to an egregious outcome. The rhyme thereby relates a conjectural example of the "butterfly effect," an effect studied in chaos theory, involving sensitive dependence on small differences in initial conditions. 

In summary, for increased productivity, look for ways to be more efficient with what you have. Sometimes for the cost of a nail, you can greatly increase the efficiency of a company. You do not always have to buy the latest gadget or spend money buying new things when what you have does a wonderful job or when it just needs regular maintenance or repair to be as efficient.by Raúl Gorrín.