Reinventing Manufacturing
PART III.
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8. Define product/process relationships, avoid functional "silos" Try to disregard the existing organization structure when developing the ideal process. Look at the objectives that need to be accomplished, the processes that are needed to support it, and finally, at the resources (including organization) needed to accomplish them. 9. Set a hierarchy of customer, product, process, function, activity Figure 1 depicts some important relationships.
Objectives 10. Compress time Faster is almost always better, if it's done right. More speed means more cycles, which means more output per unit time, faster turnaround, which usually improves service and reduces costs. Simply trying to speed up the existing process, however, might actually increase costs, and cause quality problems. This is why "old school" people usually tell you that it will cost more, hurt other priorities, or reduce quality if your request to do something faster is granted. 11. Eliminate bottlenecks Find the slowest activity in a process. Speed it up. This speeds up the entire process and is usually the cheapest way to do it. 12. Reduce number of steps, complexity, levels, people The more moving parts that anything—a machine, system, process has, the more it costs, the more that can go wrong, and the longer it takes. Reduce number of steps, operations, people, parts, and improve performance. 13. Reduce defects Most processes take much longer and cost more due to defects and exception handling. Defects are the worst form of waste. They usually force more expensive exception activities to correct them, slow down cycle times, rob capacity, and force increased capital investment (for inventory, space, equipment, working capital). It has been said that defects cause 5 to 10 times their apparent costs. 14. Increase flexibility Being adaptable to change enables introduction of new products, services, processes, schedules. Try to envision the parameters of possible change when designing the process. Increase flexibility by using adaptable people, training them, and designing processes to accommodate future change.Philosophies 15. Empower people, but with strong leadership, clear mission and beliefs Empower doesn't mean to abdicate management leadership, but to provide to employees the direction, skills, authority, and tools they need to accept as much delegated responsibility as possible. However, even in this era of oncoming "self directed work teams", there is still a very great need for leadership. A lot of it needs to come from management, as well as other team members. One cannot overemphasize the value of enthusiastic, strong, informed leadership to energize a reengineering effort. People tend to respond quite positively to this. To be Continued STAY CONNECTED To stay current on bullet-proofed manufacturing solutions, subscribe to our free ezine, "The Business Basics and Best Practices Bulletin." Simply fill in the below form and click on the subscribe button. We'll also send you our free Special Report, "Five Change Initiatives for Personal and Company Success." Your
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