Building A Showcase Culture

Building A Showcase Culture, Powerful and Practical Keys for Manufacturing, by Mark Lado, Global Manufacturing Services, 2018 

Manufacturing veteran Mark Lado brings together principles and details for anyone wanting to step into manufacturing.  He covers quality manufacturing process improvement and gaining buy-in for change.  Happily this is not a "lean book," nor is it a Japanese manufacturing techniques copycat, but instead it offers readers a comprehensive review of the basics that must be covered to raise our operations to the level we need to compete globally.

Chapter 5 is devoted to Supervisor and Leadership Training, a comprehensive approach to being sure employees have everything they need to work well.  In Chapter 6 the author offers a detailed approach to Key Performance Indicators (KPI), including the all important engineering change orders performance, cost or profit indicators, and the whole critical area of improving customer fulfillment in eight steps. Chapter 7 delivers the basics of financial acumen - cash flow statements, competitor comparisons, balance sheets and income statements, along with change tracking. 

Chapter 8, Seven Basic Quality Tools and Data-driven Culture, covers the classic quality tools in sufficient detail that newcomers to manufacturing will feel comfortable with these measures, especially if quality tracking and measurement are now run by automated systems.  It's important for everyone to understand the meaning behind the systems' numbers and Lado covers the basics.

Chapter 11 - Organization, Layout, and Shift Planning provides the kind of detail that one would need to set up a greenfield operation, down to possible office layout considerations.  This is important for employee efficiency, communications and team work, and rather than growing an operations group "like topsy" Lado recommends deliberate approach to this location challenge.

Interestingly, the whole issue of shift planning, a complex formula that causes many missteps even in the best operations, occupies a good chunk of this same Chapter 11 - definitely worth a good review.

Chapter 14 is dedicated to a strong success factor, Visual Management, with detailed examples that capture the intent and the essence of good visual planning, another way to draw employees into the entire manufacturing process flow.  Pay particular attention to the Visual Control Productivity Chart and the KPI white board - companies that do this right engage their employees in a way that most machine systems cannot, and for now, that is extremely important.

 Unfortunately this book does not cover IT for manufacturing in depth; hopefully this topic, along with automation and systems integration, new product design and introduction, and push vs. pull vs. on-demand systems will be included in the next edition.

Patricia E. Moody

FORTUNE magazine  "Pioneering Woman in Mfg" 

IndustryWeek IdeaXchange Xpert

A Mill Girl at Blue Heron Journal, on-line resource for business thought-leaders and decision-makers, pemoody@aol.com, patriciaemoody@gmail.com, tricia@patriciaemoody.com,