"Lean, Green, and Low Cost"

David Blanchard

Industry Week

October 2007, pp. 37-39

Industry Week and the Manufacturing Performance Institute have joined together for an annual Census of U. S. Manufacturers. This year, there were 433 respondents.

With multiple responses allowed, the following percentages of respondents reported the use of the indicated improvement methodologies:

• Lean Manufacturing—69.6% of respondents
• Total Quality Management—34.2% of respondents
• Six Sigma—29.0% of respondents
• Toyota Production System—17.0% of respondents
• Theory of Constraints—14.4% of respondents
• Agile Manufacturing—6.4% of respondents
• Other—14.6% of respondents
• None—11.6% of respondents

The following percentages of respondents engaged in each of these strategic practices:

• Continuous Improvement—76.9%
• Recycling/Reuse Programs—56.1%
• Quality Certifications—55.9%
• Customer Satisfaction Surveys—51.4%
• Value Stream Mapping—45.5%
• Kaizen Events/Blitzes—45.5%
• Environmental Management—43.6%
• Benchmarking—42.5%
• Supplier Management Program—36.1%
• Total Productive Maintenance—34.2%
• Energy Management—32.8%
• Quick Changeover/SMED—29.3%
• Strategy/Policy Deployment—26.9%
• Open-Book Management—16.0%
• None—4.0%

For Focus of Market Strategy, those emphasizing each of the following were:

• High Quality—73.7%
• Service and Support—55.8%
• Total Value—41.2%
• Fast Delivery—32.0%
• Customization—26.6%
• Innovation—26.8%
• Low Cost—26.8%
• Product Variety—13.4%

Back to top of page

"8 Ways to Build Collaborative Teams"

Lynda Gratton and Tamara Erickson

Harvard Business Review

November 2007, pp. 101-109

The authors of this article studied 55 large virtual teams at 15 multinational companies. Out of more than 100 factors examined by the researchers, eight practices were found that best seem to correlate with success in such teams, and that helped the teams overcome inherent difficulties posed by size, long-distance communication, diversity and specialization:

• Investing in signature practices—In a variety of idiosyncratic, company-specific ways, the company’s top executive invested in building and maintaining collaborative relationships throughout the organization.
• Modeling collaborative behavior—Besides emphasizing collaborative behavior for others in the organization, the senior executives also model that behavior themselves. The senior management teams collaborate very well.
• Creating a “gift culture”—This refers to the generous mentoring and coaching of others so they can build the networks they need to work collaboratively with various parts of the organization.
• Ensuring the requisite skills—HR needs to provide training and support for skills such as “appreciating others, being able to engage in purposeful conversations, productively and creatively resolving conflicts, and program management”.
• Supporting a strong sense of community—HR takes an active role in sponsoring group events and activities, and creating policies and practices that encourage them.
• Assigning team leaders that are both task- and relationship-oriented—These leaders usually started of the early stages of the team with task-oriented behavior, but at a later stage they switched to more of a relationship orientation.
• Building on heritage relationships—The researchers found that when 20-40% of the Participants already had previous solid working relationships, then the team had strong collaboration right from the start. However, there is the danger of subgroups if too many of the participants have varying previous relationships.
• Understanding role clarity and task ambiguity—The research found that it was best if the individual roles were clearly defined, but the team itself is given latitude on how to approach and achieve the task.

Back to top of page

"IW 2007 Best Plants Finalists Named"

Industry Week

October 2007, p. 50

Industry Week has named the 20 finalists for the 10 2007 Best Plants awards that will be announced in January:

• Autoliv North America Tremonton Initiator Facility (Tremonton, UT)
• Batesville Casket Co. Vicksburg Operations (Vicksburg, MS)
• Blue Bird North Georgia (Lafayette, GA)
• Cargill Corn Milling, Team Wahpeton (Wahpeton, ND)
• Donaldson Co. (Stevens Point, WI)
• DST Output of California O(El Dorado Hills, CA)
• DST Output East (South Windsor, CT)
• General de cable de Mexico del Norte de C.V. (Piedras Negras, Coahuila, Mexico)
• General Cable, Indianapolis Compounds (Indianapolis, IN)
• Genlyte Group (Sparta, TN)
• Hewlett-Packard/Americas’ Software Manufacturing (Nashua, NH)
• Lockheed Martin Missiles and Fire Control, Ocala Operations (Ocala, FL)
• Medrad, Heilman Center Plant (Pittsburgh, PA)
• Nordson Corp., Swainsboro Assembly Facility (Swainsboro, GA)
• Northrop Grumman Corp. Navigation Systems Division (Salt Lake City, UT)
• Novartis Pharmaceutical Corp. (Suffern, NY)
• Reiter Automotive Canadian Carpet (London, Ontario, Canada)
• Rockwell Collins Decorah Operations (Decorah, IA)
• Talecris Biotherapeutics (Clayton, NC)
• Weir Minerals North America-Hazleton (Hazleton, PA)

Back to top of page

"Six Sigma and Baldrige: A Quality Alliance"

Mahour Mellat-Parast, Erick Jones, and Stephanie Adams

Quality Progress

September 2007, pp. 45-51

The authors of this article argue that the Baldrige Award criteria and Six Sigma can work well in a complementary way. The Baldrige Award addresses systematic enterprise-level improvement, while Six Sigma works on more micro-level improvements. The two can be linked by choosing Six Sigma projects in the seven categories of the Baldrige criteria (leadership; strategic planning; customer and market focus; measurement, analysis, and knowledge management; workforce focus; process management; and results).

The authors state that Six Sigma is directly related to four of these seven categories already, and the remaining three are leadership, HR/workforce management, and strategic planning. To address these three areas:

• Six Sigma projects can focus on leadership development.
• Six Sigma projects can focus on human resource development.
• Hiigh-impact Six Sigma projects can be chosen that are consistent with the company’s strategic planning.

Back to top of page

"Just Say Jishuken"

Industry Week

October 2007, p. 16

Another “lean term” is becoming better known recently in the U.S. According to a Toyota website, “jishuken” means “management-driven kaizen activity where management members identify areas in need of continuous improvement and spread information through the organization to stimulate kaizen activity.’ This enables managers to be more fully involved in kaizen activity and to create a culture of observing problems on the shop floor.

The 7 steps for jishuken are:

1. Select an area that needs improvement
2. Develop a team, with a lead person and personnel from various departments
3. Assign each team member a plant function to monitor
4. Team members systematically ask questions about their assigned areas
5. Team leader tracks any issues on a jishuken worksheet that identifies what the problem is, what countermeasures should be taken, who is responsible for making the changes, and the date
6. Team leader meets with the operators to discuss their findings and the changes implemented
7. Results are posted, status of changes in tracked, and follow up is done through the supervisor and the checklist

Back to top of page

"Better Than the Rest"

T&D

October 2007, pp. 27-81

The American Society for Training and Development (ASTD) created the “BEST” awards in 2003. This article states that “Organizations only make it to the ranks of the BEST if they can demonstrate excellence in several of these areas: alignment, C-level involvement, efficiency, effectiveness, innovation, investment in learning, learning opportunities for employees, measurement of the effectiveness of learning, and success with nontraining solutions to business needs.”

Most of this issue of T&D is devoted to descriptions of the achievements of this year’s BEST winners. In rank order the top 20 winners are:

1. Satyam Computer services, Hyderabad, India (information technology)
2. sanofi-aventis U.S., Bridgewater, NJ (pharmaceuticals)
3. TELUS telecommunications, Vancouver, BC, Canada (telecommunications)
4. Becton, Dickinson & Company, Franklin Lakes, NJ (healthcare)
5. Deloitte & Touche USA, New York, NY (professional services)
6. U.S. Army Armament Research Development and Engineering Center, Picatinny Arsenal, NJ (research and engineering services)
7. Equity Residential, Chicago, IL (real estate property management)
8. Wachovia, Charlotte, NC (financial services)
9. The Home Depot, Atlanta, GA (retail)
10. Air Products and Chemicals, Allentown, PA (manufacturing)
11. Wipro Technologies, Bangalore, India (information technology)
12. EMC Corporation, Hopkinton, MA (information management and storage)
13. Checkfree Services, Inc., Norcross, GA (financial e-commerce services)
14. Telkom SA Limited, Pretoria, south Africa (telecommunications)
15. BB&T, Winston-Salem, NC (financial services)
16. UT-Battelle, LLC-Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Oak Ridge, TN (research and development)
17. Ruby Tuesday Inc, Marysville, TN (food services)
18. Tata Consultancy Services, Mumbai, India (information technology)
19. BJC Healthcare, St. Louis, MO (healthcare)
20. Caterpillar, Peoria, IL (manufacturing)

Back to top of page

On Becoming a Winning Organization

John McNeil, GP
 

Many of this month’s QUICK articles highlight winning organizations across the world in a variety of areas. We can be sure that these accolades were not bestowed for accidental excellence, for stumbling upon improvements or for brief flashes of brilliance. They were the result of diligent effort over extended periods following a prescribed set of steps and processes.

Many of GP’s clients are setting about improving their product or service development performance by implementing the Integrated Capability Maturity Model (CMMI). There is some additional work involved to be sure in becoming CMMI compliant, but the payback is improved quality of engineering, of the management of product development programs and, as a result, of end products. That improved quality results from the improved ability to set, predict, track and correct budgets and schedules. Success in becoming CMMI accredited comes from finding, codifying, implementing and measuring the very best current practices and organizational knowledge.

CMMI is also not a standalone effort as implied by Mellat-Parast, Jones, and Adams. It meshes closely with Lean, standardized work, and continuous improvement. CMMI does not define specific daily actions. It does not specify highly defined results, methods or reports. It does not replace ISO or Lean. It does not have a direct impact on the way companies actually make and ship products. What it does is ask organizations if they have standard approaches to almost 200 specific practices and then checks to see that they do what they say they do.

Organizations that are clear about what they should be doing on a daily and on a strategic level and then measuring compliance to their commitments have the stuff of which awards are made. Those that take those measures and continuously improve them may well find themselves in QUICK one day!

Back to top of page