Generic Manufacturing

Goal:  Competitive Advantage

Managers constantly strive to improve, but all managers are limited by their existing knowledge.  The Roadmaps Institute (RI) provides methodologies to consider best practices in management and the industry.  RI also helps your managers discover collaboration opportunities between divisions and across alliances, if the alliances also utilize the methodologies.  RI's goal is to help your management build a stronger portfolio of improvement projects to improve your company's bottom line and competitive capabilities. 

Generic Manufacturing Model

The model shows ten World-Class Management Step Charts that represent ten key core competency areas providing the greatest impact on companies in typical manufacturing companies.

Note the 10 step charts were selected from 25 possible charts at the Roadmaps Institute.  The World-Class Supplier Management Step Chart is shown in miniature to illustrate that each spoke represents a step chart.  

25 World-Class Step Charts

Step Charts are the foundation upon which we discover opportunities for improvement.  At RI, we kept creating new charts based solely on industry requests.  RI's most popular core competency step charts are: World-Class Cost Management, World-Class Customer Management, World-Class Demand Management. World-Class Design Management. World-Class Diversity Management, World-Class Information Management. World-Class Leadership Management. World-Class Lean Management. World-Class Process Management, World-Class Program Management. World-Class Quality Management. World-Class Supplier Management,  World-Class Sustainability Management.  

Lead with Paradigm Integration

Since RI incorporates the latest developments in management practice, the institute can be thought of as a paradigm integrator.  As a paradigm integrator, RI brings together the world’s best practices under one “umbrella.”   When the next paradigm emerges, RI works to incorporate it into its step charts.  Organizations can then tap the best practices from established and new paradigms without becoming too focused on one paradigm.

A result of this approach is the World-Class Management Step Charts need updating as new paradigms and best practices emerge.  So if you found one of our old step charts floating around on the web somewhere, odds are it is outdated.  And if you evaluated your company on a chart such as World-Class Cost Management a decade ago as an 8 out of 10 but you have stagnated since that time, odds are your latest score would be something like a 6 out of 10 today!

Example of a Step Chart Assessment

The step chart shown is from a major Southern California company that felt before their assessment they might be one of the best companies in the world at Cost Management.  Upon assessing themselves on the attributes in the chart, they discovered they scored 4.7/10 and had many opportunities for improvement to close their gaps to become Proactive and then World-Class.  In general, what RI will do with your managers for each chart is two steps.

STEP 1 – ASSESS ORGANIZATION:  An RI Facilitator presents the step chart attributes via PowerPoint.  Then, managers evaluate their organization's capabilities using the chart.  Then, consensus building is done to arrive at a final Chart Score.  

STEP 2 – GAP ANALYSIS:  First, attributes are listed in sections by color / type.  A description may be added explaining each attribute.  Then an RI Facilitator leads the group of managers in converting attributes into project ideas.  Actionable projects are listed to close the gaps.  

Print this Chart and Grab Highlighters!

The World-Class Supplier Management Step Chart is provided here so you can try out an assessment without RI facilitation.   This chart was originally developed and published in the book World-Class Supply Management by Dr. Starling and two co-authors.   Every year in use though it gets updated.   Don't be discouraged if you do not understand what some of the bullets in the chart mean.  It took 680 pages to explain best practices in the book to cover this chart!   Entire 16 week MBA courses have been built around our charts.  That is why we offer Roadmaps Institute Subject Matter Expert (SME) facilitators to facilitate the assessments.  We can do a single step chart assessment with your management team in as little as two hours.  (More time given though, the greater the understanding and learning.)

Collaboration Leads to Opportunities

This figure shows how your company can use its results to  discover opportunities with alliances.  These are actual results but the companies are not disclosed to protect them.  Looking at the figure, you can see there are three companies that have assessed themselves on ten charts in their industry model.  Same thing can be done with your alliances in your industry.  Overlays of the results allow us to quickly see where one company can help the other to close their gaps working towards world-class!

Robust Roadmaps

You can just create a project portfolio for your company and that will improve your company's knowledge and provide competitive advantage.   When you combine the projects into a network based on dependencies (many simply resource constrained and time phased) you end up with roadmap.   

The next level up though provides greater competitive advantage by creating Robust Roadmaps.  Robust Roadmaps are created when collaborative enterprise and alliance projects are interwoven into a larger project portfolio.  Projects developed between alliance members and against best practices using RI's step charts result in an optimized project portfolio.   The only way to generate higher returns on investment would be to bring in more alliance members.  It is a simple idea, and RI provides the methodologies to execute the program.

Design Your Own Advantage

All programs at RI were initially developed with industry and academia.  Our step charts are a bit like Legos!  You can put them together however you see fit to meet the needs of your customized program.  

 Let's build a world-class program together!

Industry Recognition

The Roadmaps Institute has been a work in progress, but it has not been working in its own Ivory Tower!    The original step chart was published in 2003 and published in the book World-Class Supply Management while the founder of RI, Dr.  Stephani Starling, served as an Associate Professor and as the Director of Resident Supply Chain Management Programs.  In 2004, Raytheon Company asked RI to develop a 10 chart model for their Integrated Suppl Chain.  Then word spread and companies started asking for other step charts and other industry models.  The Telecommunications Industry Segment Model was the second one created for AT&T and a few other companies in Telecom.  Then the Electronics Industry Model was developed, etc.  Some charts were one off charts based on a need, such as World-Class Diversity Management,  Point is .... the models were done mostly in collaboration with and/or after feedback from industry.