Consultant Chris Stergiou wrote an article in the Advanced Manufacturing magazine entitled "We must rebuild our factories if we want to compete". The major point of his thoughts are:
"Most manufacturers know their processes well enough that if they started from a blank slate, they could design systems to produce twice the product with half the input costs and meet lot size of one requirements at higher quality. These are benefits to be had “out of the box” with a new, engineered, physical plant and before any lean implementation. This new plant will incorporate all the principles that define lean manufacturing."
This is an interesting, if not radical suggestion. What do you think?
- Could we design better infrstructure? Or will we make different mistakes.
- Is the manufacturing process the problem or is the management overhead adding most of the cost?
- Do the systems like ISO, lean, 6 Sigma, etc. actually add to the solution or just add more overhead to the entire process?
- Should we just be looking at reducing costs (Lean) or do we need to concentrate on increasing value?