Downloads
Welcome to our downloads page where we have gathered together a series of Lime Information and Top Tips documents that we hope will be of interest and add value to your company. You can also subscribe to our newsletter from this page. Please contact us if there’s anything else that you’d like more information about.
There are three categories
Top Tips
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Commercialisation: Supply Chain Top Tips
A well designed and executed supply chain will maximise your sales, minimise your product cost and hence optimise the value of your brand.
Before the launch review your progress against the check list below. -
Top tips for Make Vs. Buy decisions
Make Vs. Buy (MvB) is an integral part of any purchasing function. We have to give information and help make decisions over the best strategic fit of our manufacturing operations whether in-house or in the supply chain. Here are some pointers to help you get it right.
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Top tips for low cost sourcing
For many years corporations around the world have been taking advantage of low cost country sourcing to manufacture their goods. Whilst some in the Medical industry have followed this example, many companies have been reluctant to take advantage of this situation.
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Top tips to improve customer service
The most important feature of any company is its customers. However it’s all too easy to forget the customer when faced with the plethora of problems and internal initiatives that soak up all your resources. It is essential to invest time, training and effort to make the customer central to your organisation.
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Top tips for making change in a regulated environment
We all know some of the challenges to making changes in the medical industry, but why do some changes fly while others take three times too long and deliver 50% of the benefits? Here are some considerations when making changes that may help smooth the process.
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Top tips to ensure that Lean works in your health technology environment
Most companies understand the principles of Lean and understand the validity and benefits of implementing it. Some companies have even taken on some Lean techniques and trained some of the key staff up to deliver projects. Very few organisations however have truly managed to embed Lean into the businesses.
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Top tips to get the most out of your freight carriers
Freight spend for a lot of companies accounts for a large amount of expenditure, yet it can often be overlooked or seen as unavoidable. You can save money on your current freight rates by understanding how the charging works and regularly review the rates from various carriers.
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Top tips to improve supplier relationship management
Supplier Relationship Management is something that most of us have heard about and we all want to believe we have fantastic relationships with our suppliers – and often like to call them “strategic partners”. But are we really managing our suppliers in the most appropriate ways to drive the best value?
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Top tips to maximise your tendering process
All Purchasing professionals understanding running a tender, but do you always know which variant to use and how to generate the best value from the project? Many individuals think that suppliers need to, and will, respond simply because you are giving them an opportunity.
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Top tips to set up your European Supply Chain
A robust European supply chain must balance the challenges of multiple languages, significant distances, widely varying customer demands for next day or five day shipment times and all at the same time of meeting the imperatives of financial constraints and ever improving need for quality.
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Top tips to reduce inventory
Whilst it is always re-assuring to have stock in the warehouse to meet customer demand, it is rarely a good idea to have more than is absolutely necessary. Additional inventory results in extra write-off costs and has an adverse effect on cash flow.
Newsletters
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December 2014 Newsletter
As we approach yet another year end, we’d like to thank all clients, colleagues, suppliers and friends who have made Lime Associates’ fifth year in business the best yet. For more information about what Lime Associates’ team of experts has been up to, please download our latest newsletter below.
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Newsletter November 2014
Lime Associates is delighted to announce that we have been joined by Ian Claydon-Butler who will be adding his expertise to Lime’s offering for our clients. Read about this and more by downloading the newsletter below.
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Newsletter September 2014
We’re very proud to announce that Lime Associates has been sharing its purchasing expertise and experience with clients for five years!
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Newsletter August 2014
We’re very pleased to announce a new partnership for the benefit of our clients. Since we launched Lime Associates almost five years ago, we have been keen advocates of the use of online tools for sourcing, procurement, auctions and contract management. As technological advances in software have been made, it has become an increasingly effective part of Lime Associates’ offering.
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Newsletter July 2014
The schools may have broken up, but it’s business as usual for the Lime Associates team as we embark on some very exciting projects over the summer period.
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Newsletter June 2014
For information about regulations, e-Procurement; benefits for buyers and suppliers and Top Tips for managing risk in a regulated environment, download the latest newsletter below.
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Newsletter May 2014
For more information about ERP, Supply Chain top tips and commercialising your offer, please download our latest newsletter below.
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Newsletter April 2014
Welcome to our latest newsletter. This month sees the end of the Financial Year for many and, for us, an increase in enquiries from Medical Device and Health Technology companies looking to streamline their costs and maximise efficiencies for the year ahead.
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Newsletter March 2014
How ethical is your procurement and supply?
Since we mentioned ethical procurement and supply management in our January newsletter, we have received many enquiries from med-tech businesses anxious to reduce their potential risk in these high profile areas. Download the newsletter below to find out more..
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February 2014 Newsletter
As the 2014 PwC Global CEO Survey reveals that 64 per cent of bosses planned to implement a cost reduction initiative in the following 12 months and a quarter of bosses planned to outsource a business process or function, we have a cost reduction theme to this month’s newsletter.
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January 2014 Newsletter
We start the year by bringing you news about a recent healthcare survey, our own advice for ensuring that your suppliers comply with ethical procurement codes and a new Special Interest Group for Medilink.
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December 2013 Newsletter
It’s hard to believe that another year is almost over and we’d like to thank all of our clients and suppliers for making this another bumper year. In our latest newsletter, we report on the value of the European Medical Technology industry and how we helped Owen Mumford to choose a new ERP System, amongst other things..
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November 2013 newsletter
As always, it’s been a busy month and it’s alarming to think that this will be our penultimate newsletter before Christmas! In this newsletter, we offer low cost sourcing hints and tips and share with you a white paper regarding a low cost sourcing project.
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October 2013 Newsletter
We’re proud to report that we’re now four years old and in this newsletter we will be reflecting on some of the milestones and great projects that we have worked on along the way.
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September 2013 Newsletter
Although summer time is traditionally a quiet time for many non seasonal businesses, we’re pleased to report that we’ve had a very busy time meeting new potential clients all over the UK.
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July 2013 Newsletter
Skydiving, inspiring enterprising students and solving supply chain challenges – all in a month’s work for the Lime Associates team..
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June 2013 Newsletter
Here’s our latest newsletter with congratulations, tendering tips and skyfall updates
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May 2013 Newsletter
Top Tips on SRM, exciting CIPS news plus skydiving Lee Robinson!
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March 2013 Newsletter
If you’d like to know what keeps CEOs awake at night, download our latest newsletter by clicking on the image below.
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January 2013 Newsletter
Here’s the latest news from Lime Associates;
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December 2012 Newsletter
Season’s Greetings to all
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November 2012 newsletter
Here’s the latest news from Lime Associates.
Lime Information
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Controlling the Tailspend
While emphasis on the core purchasing categories that have the potential to make a strategic impact is to be expected, care should be taken not to neglect the spot buys, one-off purchases and maverick spending that are to be found in nearly every organisation. Click on the pdf below to download the Controlling the Tailspend whitepaper.
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Lime Associates and SourceDogg
We’re very pleased to announce a new partnership for the benefit of our clients. Since we launched Lime Associates almost five years ago, we have been keen proponents of the use of online tools for sourcing, procurement and auctions and, as technological advances in software have been made, it has become an increasingly effective part of Lime Associates’ offering.
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Introducing Lime Associates
Lime Associates is a highly experienced
Purchasing and Supply Chain consultancy
that specialises in driving sustainable profit
improvement in highly regulated industries.
In the last four years we have helped our
clients save over £25 million. -
Transparent e-Souring
Various studies and reports show that when it
comes to managing their purchasing and supply
chains many firms suffer from a lack of oversight
and awareness on who is spending what. This is
certainly not in a firm’s interests and can impact
everything from profitability to share price.Take a look at this white paper to see how to make audits pleasingly predictable. -
Achieving a Breakthrough is not the Only Step to Commercialisation
Product innovation means the designer is often treading the less worn path to a new breakthrough. As part of a major company, it is possible to try and fail to obtain new materials a number of times, as the pipeline is normally healthy with other new product developments. This is not the case for smaller companies, or research facilities developing something new.
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Lime Associates and iCEO overview
Lime Associates uses its extensive experience and resources to help Medical and Health Technology clients to address purchasing and supply chain issues including cost and inventory reduction, supply chain designand set up, overcoming technical constraints, customer service improvement and global sourcing. To help to do this we utilise a methodology called iCEO.
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Lime Associates and CEO planner
CEO Planner, developed in conjunction with the University of Warwick, is a Multi-dimensional spend analysis tool that enables you to look at spend data in four dimensions – time, process, location and supplier. The data is presented in highly visual formats so that you can easily and quickly identify where best CEO opportunities are to improve efficiency, eliminate waste and drive savings.
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Lime Associates and Process Optimiser
Process Optimiser provides an excellent digital alternative which focusses on ease of use, speed of data capture with intelligence built in to enable more informed decision making. It makes data gathering and analysis much easier and faster and the results have been impressive.As part of our suite of CEO tools, Process Optimiser is a Software as a Service (SaaS) application that is accessed through a standard web browser.
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Lime Associates and Value Optimiser
Organisations in the private and public sectors strive to reduce the cost of goods and services purchased and strategic sourcing is widely used to achieve that aim. However it is difficult to ensure that the most rigorous techniques are used consistently across organisations for both strategic and non strategic spend items. It is also essential that all major spend covered under contract.