Identifying Areas for Manufacturing Process Improvements
At The Remington Group, our business process improvement specialists believe there are Four Key Issues facing the manufacturing industry, and are skilled in the Nine Key Opportunities available to address them. The Four Key Issues are:
Key Issue: CUSTOMER SATISFACTION
In the new millennium, there can be no doubt who is king in businesses that delivers goods—the customer. The demand of the customer for Six Sigma quality (both of the product and the delivery system), shorter lead times, innovative packaging and labeling, vendor management of inventories, and competitive prices have become the basis for financial success. Discovering the needs of the marketplace and commitment to delivery of customer needs are the easy part of the equation. Keeping the commitment on a day-in and day-out basis—customer satisfaction—is the challenge. Successful techniques of total productivity management in the new reality are directly related to honoring the commitment to customer satisfaction.
Key Issue: COSTS
The costs of manufacturing enterprises—those of doing business (variable costs) and of being in business (period costs) have bedeviled managers for much of the 20th century. Past and present theories and fads for cost management, notwithstanding, focus on being the low-cost producer as a necessity. Appropriate focus on the manufacturing enterprises’ costs will be defined by the price in the market for products and in constant visibility of the activities that are the underlying cause of the organization’s cost structure. Perhaps the watchwords in strategic cost management in the new century will be activities and value. Concentration on activities, value and, resources will then drive competitive costs through resource allocation and cost accounting.
Key Issue: PEOPLE
Having men and women that you trust and empower instead of employees who simply work for you is how the competitive manufacturing enterprise of the 21st century is organized. The command and control approach to people management has been giving way to participatory management for the past quarter century. We now have experienced the power of collaboration among shop labor, technical staff, and supervision to dramatically improve operations. Whether through self-directed work teams, pay-for-performance, gain sharing, or cellular organization, the factory of the future will have a flatter and more participative organization. The leadership challenge will be to define the organization structure and style, select the leaders, and let them achieve.
Key Issue: STRATEGY
As markets redefine, the manufacturing enterprise and globalization brings new opportunities; the strategy employed to furnish goods to customers must be periodically re-examined. With manufacturing as the umbrella core competency, strategies for manufacturing resource deployment, distribution and product sourcing, among many others, will be redefined in the terms of the new and ever changing marketing environment. The death knell of “functional silo” management has been sounded and with it the isolation of manufacturing from the strategic management of the enterprise. Senior manufacturing executives and their staffs will no longer be seen only as managers of the factory operations, but will be known as key participants in business strategy.
Let The Remington Group help you identify the issues facing your manufacturing organization—and deploy smart solutions to help your company thrive. To contact us, click here or call 609.497.6400.
