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12 Key Factors That Determine
World Class Manufacturing Operations
by Jim Cammarano, President
Copyright 1993 by Hawthorne Management Consulting
In my experience, there are 12 key factors that indicate if a company's manufacturing related operations are positioned as World Class competitors. The commonality of these 12 factors present in World Class operations provides the motivation to emulate them.
1. The systematic organization of the work place is a basic building block for success. A well run operation is clean, comfortable and well organized. If you have not established this level of discipline it is a good place to start.
2. The desire of people to be safe in their work environment has a direct bearing on productivity. A safety program must include measurements and systems to ensure the safety of all personnel. Form a safety committee with a membership that represents each department. Checklists must be developed to ensure that an inspection of the work area is thorough. Safety should not be regarded as a static situation: a work place that was "safe" yesterday may not be "safe" today.
3. Goals that are common to the entire organization will engender a team environment, which will increase your chances for success. The goals must be quantified and measurable. Keep the feedback cycle as short as possible. This will provide timely opportunities to make improvements. The longer the feedback cycle the more time it will take to facilitate improvement.
4. Encourage people to question "Why" things are done in a certain manner. To promote continuous improvement, the freedom to question the status quo as well as the "permission" to fail at trying a new idea must be extended to each employee. All forms of waste must be identified, examined and reduced. The "process" has to be examined from the beginning to the end.
5. Inventory reduction must be recognized as a bi-product of efficient and effective operations. Inventory reductions which are made by an edict and not by a system or process improvement will inevitably backfire. Removing inventory from the process to uncover waste is a useful tool. Once the inventory buffer has been removed, the reason behind its existence can be revealed and resolved, resulting in reduced inventory. Inventory must be controlled systematically to prevent its proliferation.
6. Quality has to be designed and planned into the product long before it reaches manufacturing in order to be cost effective. All pre-production, production and post-production groups have to be part of the quality process from the beginning of the product life cycle through the product's completion. All processes should be audited automatically to ensure conformance to quality standards. Proper documentation must exist for all products and processes.
7. The plant layout must be organized to produce the greatest thruput. Minimize the distance that a product has to travel from operation 1 to the final operation. Another critical measurement of a good plant layout is the amount of space that it consumes. Having too much space available can be a problem because it promotes waste.
8. Preventative Maintenance programs are a wise investment. It is far less expensive to keep equipment running smoothly with preventative maintenance than having a machine breakdown during the working day. Preventative Maintenance programs reduce machine downtime and keep quality levels uniform.
9. Work times that are highly structured yield improved group cohesion. Tomorrow's work must be prepared today to ensure an immediate start-up of production in the morning.
10. Skills training and cross training programs ensure a high level of competence and increased flexibility in the deployment of the employees.
11. Formalized systems and modern computer technology should be used in all applications to reduce manual work currently performed by employees. Leading edge technology should be utilized if the cost of the process can be reduced.
12. A key indicator that you are moving toward World Class manufacturing is the ability to routinely meet production schedules without being in a "crisis" mode.
To get you started,
we offer a
FREE
initial consultation AND
project proposal to
all prospective clients.
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