‘World Class’, Lean or Agile Manufacturing

The terms ‘World Class’, 'Lean' and Agile' have become a constant stream of repackaged concepts and approaches to improving manufacturing business performance, with very little original thought for some years. You can see the transformation of a business over a period of time by a management team with the right mindset and tool kit. Once again every company, like every individual, is unique, and will have an optimum structure, technology, culture, systems etc. at any one point in time. Optimisation is in practice unachievable, (improvements are always possible) but some companies get a lot closer than others.

The following list, as an illustration, has been compiled from a number of sources. There are a number of approaches to achieving world class performance, which is becoming not a desirable, but a requisite, in today’s competitive environment.

 

 

Organisation

Problem solving -

Lead time -

Customer Service by -

Production Control -

Computerisation -

Data held -

Overhead Allocation -

Product Costing -

Pricing -

Efficiency Focus -

Key Management -

Approach -

New Product Introduction -

Suppliers -

Communication -

Orientation-

Profit Focus-

Training -

Management -

Style -

Inertia -

Processes -

Structure -

Accountability -

Systems -

Jobs       -

Layout   -

Quality -                                  

Traditional

Specialists

Weeks

Stocking

Buffers, Kitting

Everything

Centrally 

Absorption/Activity  

Full  

Cost plus

Utilisation

Middle

Functional   

Sequential   

Many  

Vertical

Product

Cost

 Individual Skills

Supervisory 

Closed

High

Fragile 

Tall & Complex

Top Down

Centralised Complex

Specialised

Process 

Applied 

World Class

Producers

Days/hours/minutes

Rapid Response

Kanbans, Lineside

DPC & Ext. Interfaces

Where used

Lead Time

Marginal

Market Related

Set-up reduction/Output

1st Line

 Customer or Product

Concurrent

Few      

Lateral

Customer

Wastage

Team Working

Facilitating

Open

Low

Robust

Flat & Simple (Cellular)

 Devolved

 Networked Simple

General

Product

Built-in

Examples of recent Assignments

Medical equipment manufacturer

UK medical equipment plant T/O £56M, subsidiary of US Group. Task was to create a ‘world class’ facility to introduce a state-of-the-art product, anew real-time business system (Mfg-Pro), complete a cost reduction, rationalisation and reorganisation programme and generally bring the operation under tighter control. All tasks completed with cost reduction programme resulting in a 20% net saving for major product line saving over £1M/annum.

Capital Equipment Manufacturer

Business improvement Project originally working for the MD then Chairman of the Group after acquisition by Venture Capitalist. Output increased by 17% and inventory reduced by £1.4M.
Send mail to webmaster@mexec.co.uk with questions or comments about this web site.
Copyright © 2002 Manufacturing Executive Limited
Last modified: June 27, 2011