Julie Fraser: Ensuring production plants are equal partners in innovation and profit

Today more than ever, manufacturing businesses have a stark choice: turn their production facilities into efficient operations that simultaneously boost innovation and profitability; outsource production entirely or fail. This may appear on the face of it as a plant-based productivity or cost problem. Usually, it’s not. Rather, it is a failure of management strategies.

Many companies treat and measure their production facilities in ways that prevent them from boosting overall company success. Yet, plants have proven their ability to generate ongoing incremental improvements in quality, productivity and responsiveness. However, if those plant programs are not in tune with overall company strategy and the plant does not influence innovation and go-to-market strategies, those annual gains may
not be adequate to make the plant competitive with low-cost country producers.

There are a few keys to ensuring production plants contribute effectively to achieving business objectives, so production remains a logical activity for the company

• Target plant performance gains that exceed simple cost-cutting. 
• Make manufacturing an equal partner in innovation and planning processes.
• Measure plant performance effectively to ensure improvement programs focus on issues that will impact company performance.
• Create visibility into production operations to serve all other departments.

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Ensuring production plants are equal partners in innovation and profit  (194KB)

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