This is the time of year when people make resolutions to achieve personal goals. One of the most common resolutions is to make this the year to finally get in shape. Maybe this is the year that you make a similar resolution for your business?

As you’re toning your muscles and losing weight, you could be streamlining business processes and losing non-value added actions that detract from your company’s profitability.

Need some inspiration? Try taking these steps to ensure you set the right manufacturing business goals and achieve them in 2015.

Step 1: Set Measurable Goals

The first step is setting business goals so you know what the target is. The more specific your goal is, the more likely you are to achieve it. Try to avoid goals such as “become more profitable” and replace them with goals that you can measure. For example “increase margins by X percent without raising prices” gives you a number to shoot for and also a strategy – you will have to reduce costs by eliminating waste or increase efficiency to meet this objective.

There are many books and articles full of goal setting ideas to help with this step, but one of the easiest is to ask your team during a brainstorming session. Peter Drucker’s “The Practice of Management” is more than 50 years old now, but it is still one of the best books ever written on managing by objectives.

Manufacturing Business Goals

Manufacturing business goals usually fall into a few basic categories:

• Reduce costs
• Eliminate unnecessary inventory
• Increase efficiency and throughput
• Shorten lead times

However, none of these goals are specific enough to provide the roadmap and strategy to achieve them. Goals need to be “SMART”, which stands for specific, measurable, assignable, realistic and timed.

So, to turn “improve margins” into a SMART goal, you might set out to:

• "Improve margins on product line X to Y percent by running three Kaizen events in manufacturing to eliminate non-value added actions”
• "Work with engineering and suppliers to find ways to reduce material costs.”

Add a realistic time frame, and you now have a SMART goal.

Step 2: Align the Team Behind Your Goals

Once you have identified your goals and put them in the SMART format, you must ensure that the entire company is marching along with you to reach the objective. You may need to align KPIs, compensation or job descriptions to assist in this part of the strategy.

One of the most important parts of ensuring that your organization as a whole is working toward your resolution is aligning goals with ERP information. For example, if your objective is to reduce inventory, you will want to do a thorough review of safety stock and order policy settings in the ERP system, especially on expensive items. One of the most common errors people make is to set these codes during the initial ERP implementation and then never review them. As your business changes, the ideal safety stock quantity for a part may go up or down, or lot sizes that once made sense may be irrelevant if you’ve moved to a Kanban or pull system for managing inventory.

According to research published by the University of Scranton, only 64 percent of people maintain their New Years resolutions past one month, and less than half are still working on them six months later. Don’t let your business resolutions fall into the category of lapsed good intentions. Use all the tools at your disposal, including your team, your suppliers and your ERP system to ensure you achieve your goals.