Cut Costs Without Lay Offs

Dear Friends,
With Oil prices going through the roof we are all reducing head count to cut our costs.
How does a company function without people?
I have see a blog post by Mr. Suresh Lulla at domain-b.com: blogs:The New Microeconomics
I feel using this method not only can we curb inflation but also cut costs in places other than salaries.
I look forward to all your comments.

Does anyone know about COPQ?
People seem to be viewing this but I am not getting any posts.

COPQ is an abbreviation of the phenomenon of ‘cost of poor quality’ that pronounces the perils and setbacks that result from the undesirable quality of a product or service that fails to cater to customer expectations and hence results in a much lower degree of customer satisfaction. In other words, cost of poor quality contains in itself all those disadvantages that a poor quality brings to various areas of a brand that include its reputation, its future, even the organization that it is linked with.
As for the four categories of costs, the first category is called internal failure costs that elucidate those costs that are associated with all the flaws and defects before the consumer has come in encounter with a specific product or service. Coming towards the external failure costs, it is the opposite of internal failure costs in the sense that this category includes all those costs that result after the consumer has come in contact with the product or service. Appraisal costs constitute the third category of costs, pronouncing all those costs that are incurred to determine the conformance degree in the case of meeting quality requirements. The last category is that of prevention costs that a company incurs to minimize the failure (both internal and external) and appraisal costs.

Thank you for your post. Here is another very interesting blog on how India can actually take advantage of the oil prices going up and get ahead of the rest of the developed world.
I really think we should get this information out to all our managers. Together not only will we stop or reduce employee lay offs but also move far ahead of the rest.
Please look at domain-b.com: blogs: Pay for crude oil with chronic waste
Hope this helps you.

I have found great information on COPQ. You can look at the Qimpro site. The URL is From Juran to Baldrige: 20 years of Quality Management