Systems for Manufacturing Excellence

Generating efficient and reliable manufacturing operations

Nick Rich,Mohamed Afy Shararah

• Publisher: Kogan Page
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9780749497002
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Negocios y empresa
• Subtopic: Operaciones

Many production managers have de-stocked excessively large inventories, gone lean, experimented with continuous improvement processes and introduced new working practices. These interventions have largely failed. Businesses have also failed to invest in the workforce that undertakes improvements. This means that cash flow stops quickly, stocks are depleted to zero and customers lose confidence. Systems for Manufacturing Excellence looks at how people and technology work effectively together to generate high performance manufacturing and service operations. Not everyone is a Toyota but that does not mean we cannot learn from such businesses. The book will present a logic, variety of approaches and methods that underpin the different models of high performance used by 'world class' businesses. The authors use examples from their training with Toyota, work with Tesco, and many world class manufacturing businesses that form their research agenda. The book will help teams run each part of their production process for effectiveness and efficiency, with a high level of discipline that supports excellence in performance.

02

A history of manufacturing systems excellence

Introduction

Manufacturing excellence is difficult to sustain. Many companies achieve manufacturing excellence, but only temporarily. Some companies will have achieved it by luck but most will have worked hard to achieve it.1 Maintaining the level of excellence in the context of competitors that change, markets that change, technology that changes, and changing customer expectations, is difficult and requires dedication from all staff. The history of manufacturing is littered with important lessons for the modern manufacturer and it is important to understand how manufacturing excellence has been defined over time. This chapter will set out the key features of the manufacturing excellence evolution and show what today’s excellent manufacturing companies have used to achieve high-performance and high-reliability production.

LEARNING OBJECTIVES

By the end of this chapter the reader should be able to:

• understand how history has been dominated by key organizational and manufacturing models;
• understand the design weaknesses of each manufacturing model and its relevance as an option today;
• understand the significance of maintaining a ‘fit’ between the manufacturing enterprise, its environment, and its key stakeholders;
• determine the power of process thinking as a basis for modern operational and manufacturing excellence;
• evaluate the significance of a ‘learning organization’ capability.

Modes of manufacturing

Today, managing cash flow and making products take many forms. There are many different models that are available to modern leaders and managers. The options seem, at first sight, confusing and it is difficult to see how these models support or result from manufacturing excellence.2 The next section of this book will provide a review of the dominant business models over time. It is important to note that none are offered as superior to any other; the reader will have to draw their own conclusions. To support this learning, the models are represented in deliberately simplified forms – their usefulness and feasibility will depend on the particular business being reviewed. The key issue is that manufacturing organizations must fit with the environment within which they operate; those that have a mismatch with the environment will face an uncertain future. The analogy with the biological world is a direct one – evolve or die! Maintaining the most appropriate organizational form, adapting and delivering a level of performance to remain competitive are key to survival.

The history of manufacturing

There have been many distinct eras, from early industrialization, that have influenced contemporary models of excellent and ‘best practice’ management. These manufacturing evolutions have included:

• craft production and individual expertise;
• mass production and the management prerogative;
• the process-based approaches:
  • the Lean factory;
  • the Six Sigma factory;
  • the Agile ‘smart’ factory;
  • the high-reliability organization.

Craft production and individual expertise

The earliest form of manufacturing organization is termed ‘craft production’. It involved expert workers who would collaborate to create specific manufactured products to satisfy orders. The expert workers had often conducted an apprenticeship (lasting many years) in a coveted area of knowledge. Knowledge and experience are key aspects of the craft approach. Such skills would include welding, sewing, wood or metal working and even expertise in cooling systems, transmissions or combustion engines, for example. These types of ‘individual-based’ organizations meant the owner-entrepreneur would travel to find work and deliver their service. The reputation of the individual was the brand of the person and their knowledge (converted into products) was what the customers wanted.

This stage of manufacturing lasted until the early 1900s, when large-scale factories emerged and the craft model was replaced as the dominant model of management thinking. Until that time, individual workers would acquire specialist skills and protect this expert knowledge. Teams of crafts people would combine to make complex products such as lifting cranes, early motor vehicles or ocean-going vessels. The production of any of these complex products was beyond the skills of an individual worker and therefore communes of skilled workers would get together and literally solve complex problems by working together and sharing knowledge to ‘get the job done’. Experts were well rewarded for their diagnostic problem-solving skills and would command a high price for their employment during each project. The skills needed to build a wooden hulled boat would include drafts personnel (to draw the blueprints for the boat), woodworkers of all types to create the load-bearing parts and to finish the interior, textile workers to create sails, metal workers for fixings and operating mechanisms, rope drawers, and many more.

In this era, the person held knowledge that was needed by others and such specialist knowledge was not freely available so it commanded a good wage. Any trip to a major industrial city would reveal the importance of the crafts person – such as those employed at Venetian shipyards, British military armouries, Spanish steel workers, British potteries, brick makers, tanneries, glass workers to name but a few.

Figure 2.1 The crafts person

Figure 2.1 details

The crafts person is represented by a ‘smiley’ at the centre with the several traits shown around it. The traits are:

• Low levels of competition
• A ‘one-person business’
• Simple tools and special tools are purpose-built based on the job
• Self-reliant (material ordering and paying others)
• Quality of work is paramount
• High levels of customer intensity and engagement
• Networked to other craft professionals
• Networks are protected and only trusted collaborators are maintained
• Deep knowledge of process and materials
• Detailed knowledge of tools and long apprenticeship for experience
• Self-empowered
• Highly skilled
• Self-employed.

The customer during this era of manufacturing excellence was drawn from the wealthy and aristocratic classes. These were the only people who could fund such large labour bills and undertake such elaborate projects. The craft worker often practised their trade by moving from job to job, and operated from where the work was. This era was typified by specialist skills and the use of manual tools (eg hand working tools) that were used to build products one at a time and where a significant amount of thinking was needed to solve a problem and then to craft the product. The typical product was therefore bespoke and unlikely to be repeated. Such craft workers would satisfy customers by building a product that was to their exact requirements. Early car production is typical of this era, and crafts people would build the wheels (from hand-crafted wood, metal and rubber), the engine would be purpose build, the drive chain would be hand cast, the seat, steering wheel, axles and every other part of the car would be made by hand.

Table 2.1 Social and technical features of craft production

Skip table

Feature	Implications/Purpose
Organizational Leadership	The individual crafts person (there is no formal organization but other individual crafts persons may...