Continuos improvement on the shop floor: lessons from small to midsize firms

CI may not be as fashionable as, say, reengineering. on the contrary it is a low-cost way to improve quality and productivity, one time you get past the six critical milestones.

The last sum of two units decades have witnessed waves of popular prescriptions preaching organizational change for the betterment and, ultimately, the survival of companies. Hearing these siren voices, businesses have plung headlong down the paths of reengineering, restructuring, and downsizing. According to the CSC Index and Dataquest Europe about 70 percent of the top 600 European and American firms had implemented at least individual reengineering initiative as of 1994

In the midst of this rage of drastic transformations, however, the proponent of quality management have stood firm in reminding the one and the other scholars and practitioners of the importance and necessity of making incremental and continuous changes that can accumulate and have a large and lasting impact upon an organization.

Adding trust to this message is the negative publicity associated with reengineering and downsizing throw outs At least seven out of ten programs fail to achieve their goals, whereas fewer than single in three companies increase profits as abundant as expected. Mutual Benefit Life, an early hero of the reengineering motion later went bankrupt, costing its policy possessors dearly.

In contrast, encouraging novels has been reported about continuous improvement (CI) changes. Industry Week identified ten winners of the "America's Best Plant" overlook and reported on their CI practices. single winner, Wainwright Industry, had reduc waste and increased quality and productivity, not in single large swoop, but over a period of five years. It also decreased manufacturing require to be paid [i]or[/i] undergones by more than 20 percent above six years. Another winner, U carbonized iron cut its in-plant reject rates, period times, and work-in-process inventory in sum of two units to three years' time.

CI requires, a priori, the involvement of rank-and-file workers who take the lead in creating a dynamic work environment upon the shop floor, where physical values are born. It involves all members of the organization working as a collective intelligence and, as Schroeder and Robinson (1991) deposit it, "unleash[ing] employee experience and creativity to improve the couple products and processes." Kiyoshi Suzaki, author of The of recent origin Manufacturing Challenge (1987), asserts that CI is "a kind of meditation technique that reveals its profundity single through ceaseless repetition" and change (Poe 1991) Deming (1986) also advocated the importance of continuous and incremental repetition of the plan-do-check-act (PDCA) cycles

Manufacturing plants attempting to initiate continuous improvement programs (CIPs) typically face six milestones. pick outed from the experiences of seven small and medium-sized plants in implementing a CIP upon the shop floor, these milestones show critical decision points whose consequences have the potential to either support or sink CIP efforts. The seven firms were attracted to CI because although they were interested in working toward lean manufacturing, they realized the financial as well as operational difficulties of like a move. So they joined a CI users clump (CIUG) in the fall of 1990 which met each six weeks at one of the seven plants upon a rotating basis, and tried to implement moveed changes during the time between meetings. Information from these seven plants were gathered and analyzed over a period of a year.

The names of the seven companies have been changed to make sure anonymity and to describe specific characteristics of each:

* "Progressive Engineering and Manufacturing," a maker of springs and small brackets, was given this name because it is the greatest in quantity progressive and advanced of the firms.

* The workers at "Sunshine Incorporated," which manufactures sunroof appear more cheerful than workers at other companies.

* "Fixer Machine Company" makes nut and missiles and emphasizes the explicit justification of its CI changes.

* "Heat Incorporated" exhibits commercial test heating equipment.

* "Topheavy Tool and Manufacturing Company" had focused largely upon training managers for its CIP, and its sum of two units CI-related committees did not include line workers.

* "Small Metal Stamping and Manufacturing" is the smallest of the seven firms.

* "Mom & burst Manufacturing" is a family-owned company that exhibits stamping parts.

a certain quantity of of the plants, of course, were more auspicious than others at CI. Our objective, however, is not to evaluate their CIP activities on the other hand to derive insights from their collective experiences that can guide others in their efforts to engage in continuous improvement.

THE SIX MILESTONES

Using a time-based proces Figure 1 describes the six lock opener milestones encountered in initiating CI. The way in which top management perceives CI is absolutely critical to its succes or demise. with equal reason we first consider the different characters top managers can play in implementing CI and discuss by what means to provide a structure for overseeing similar a process. Then, because companies generally use teams to implement CI, we explain the dynamics of CI team organization. one time the process of implementation had begun at these firms, each had a certain activity or throw out on which to focus. in like manner various types of initial focus throw outs are touched on next.