Focused Manufacturing

1. Focused Manufacturing Professor Kleinberg Braulio Soto, Rob Morris, Evelyn Ozburn, Tiye Cort

2. Focused Manufacturing • Basic Concepts • Characteristics • Approach

3. Basic Concepts of a Focused Factory • Producing a lower cost is not the only way to compete • A company cannot perform well all the time • Simplicity and repetition create competence

4. Characteristics of a Focused Factory • Process Technologies – Typically, unproven and uncertain technologies are limited to one per factory. Proven, mature technologies are limited to what their managers can easily handle, typically two or three. • Market Demands – Quality, Price, lead times, and reliability specifications. • Product volumes – comparable levels such as tooling, order quantities, materials handling techniques, and job contents, can be approached with a consistent philosophy. But what about the inevitable short runs, customer specials, and one-of-a-kind orders that every factory must handle? The answer usually is to segregate them. • Quality levels – set approaches to neither over-specify nor over-control quality and specifications. • Manufacturing Tools – limited to one or two at a time.

5. Manufacturing FocusA way to achieve it Focus the whole manufacturing system on a limited task that is exactly represented by the company’s competitive strategy and its actual technology and economics.

6. Guidelines • Center the factory’s focus on appropriate competitive skills • Stay away from the tendency to increase staff and overhead in order to save on direct labor and capital investment • Each manufacturing unit should work on a limited task instead of a complex mix of opposing objectives, products and technologies. Note: Others may also apply as company sees fit!

7. How can I achieve a focused plant?4 step process • Develop a specific, brief statement of corporate objectives and strategy • Should cover the next three to five years and top-management should be involved to (marketing, finance, control executives etc.) • Translate the statement into: What it means to manufacturing? • What must the factory do well to meet and carry out the corporate strategy? • What will be the most difficult task we face? • If function is not strong where will we most likely fail? • Carefully examine each element of the production system • How is it setup, organized, focused, and manned now? • What is it especially good at now? • How ought it be changed so it can carry out the key manufacturing task? • Reorganize the elements of structure to produce a congruent focus • This means organize it so that it is able to do the limited things that are most important to completing the manufacturing task.

8. Wickham Skinner • Considered the father of Manufacturing Strategy • Graduated from Yale • Emeritus professor at Harvard University • Wrote “The Focused Factory”

9. Basic Changes in Management of Manufacturing • Four Basic Changes • “How can we compete?” • Look at efficiency as the whole manufacturing organization • Each plant needs to learn to focus on a limited, concise, manageable set of products, technologies, volumes, and markets* • Learn to structure basic manufacturing policies and supporting services so that they focus on one explicit manufacturing task instead of on many inconsistent, conflicting, implicit tasks* *W. Skinner, “The Focused Factory”, Harvard Business Review June 1974

10. Reasons For Inconsistency • Professionals in each field attempt to achieve goals that are not corresponding with goals of other areas • Manufacturing tasks were never made specific • Inconsistencies never identified • Manufacturing task lightly changed while certain departments like operating and service stayed the same • Market & Product Proliferation

11. Alternative Approaches to Focusing Facilities • Based On: • Products/Markets • Directed for specific customers or product groups • Processes • Puts products together based on similar processes used • Manufacturing’s Strategic Task • Products are assigned to a specific unit based off OW & Q • Task is consistent

12. Plant-within-a-Plant (PWP) • Divide existing plant into PWPs • Physically • Organizationally • Each PWP has its only facilities where it can focus on • Its specified manufacturing task • Use its own working style • Production control • Organizational structure

13. Results From Using a PWP • Volume & Quality will not be mixed • Clear focus for worker training & incentives • Resources are now shared • Equipment, engineering processes and materials handling are specialized as needed • Decreases focus regression • Smaller size

14. Forces That Make it Difficult to Focus • Marketing • Sales • Manufacturing • Accounting & Finance • Corporate Forces

15. Questions?