Focused Manufacturing

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Focused Manufacturing

• Professor Kleinberg
• Braulio Soto, Rob Morris, Evelyn Ozburn, Tiye Cort

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Focused Manufacturing

• Basic Concepts
• Characteristics
• Approach

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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

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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.

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Manufacturing FocusA way to achieve it

• Focus the whole manufacturing system on a
  limited task that is exactly represented by the
  companys competitive strategy and its actual
  technology and economics.

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Guidelines

• Center the factorys 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!

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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.

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Wickham Skinner

• Considered the father of Manufacturing Strategy
• Graduated from Yale
• Emeritus professor at Harvard University
• Wrote The Focused Factory

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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

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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

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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
• Manufacturings Strategic Task
• Products are assigned to a specific unit based
  off OW Q
• Task is consistent

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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

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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

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Forces That Make it Difficult to Focus

• Marketing
• Sales
• Manufacturing
• Accounting Finance
• Corporate Forces

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• Questions?