This paper takes an in-depth look at how to improve production efficiency in hog operations by improving sow management practices and genetic management. Three different areas are looked at and shown how improvements can increase production efficiency. The first area covered is sow and guilt management. Currently about half of sows are culled while only producing about 30-40 piglets in their life time, furthermore about 20% of sows are culled while not even giving birth. Better selection of gilts is one way to improve this, selecting gilts based on weight has proven to be a more effective strategy than based on age.  Improving guilt and sow management practices can have great benefits to an operations efficiency if attention is paid to all the small details. Some targets that should be the goal of any operation are: greater than 86% farrowing rates, greater than 12.5 total piglets born, greater than 70% of gilts served farrowing the 3rd litter, and 50 pigs weaned lifetime. The second topic focuses on the variability in grow-finish performance that can be linked back to birth weight. It is stated that growth rate after birth has already been pre-programmed before the pig is even born, this becomes most evident in the grow finish stage. Sorting pigs in the nursery and grow stage will not resolve variation in growth performance , it is still a characteristic of individual pigs and litters. The paper argues that recognizing and managing differences in birth weight and post natal growth between litters has the potential to cut costs in the immediate future. The third topic covered was the need to improve the genetic impact of elite sires. The overall production efficiency of the herd is dependent on the reproductive capacity of the boars used for mating, and the genetic merit of those boars. Because the pork industry will use one boar to breed hundreds of sows, if that boar has poor genetics it will impact thousands of pigs. Better management of genetic factors have the ability to improve overall production efficiency and help producers become more competitive.