By John Brandt
Manufacturing excellence doesn’t just happen. Plants near or at world-class status are far more likely to pursue improvement methodologies and best practices.
Executives at most plants understand that process improvement is important or highly important to their success (84%). But there’s an enormous gap between plants near or at world-class status and those furthest from world-class status when it comes to executing process improvements. For example, 93% of plants near or at world-class status follow an improvement methodology vs. just 80% of plants furthest from world-class. At the same time, plants near or at world-class status have 75% of their workforce (median) engaged in the improvement methodology vs. just 25% of plants furthest from world-class.
MPI also asked manufacturers to report on use of various operational best practices. For example, 50% of plants near or at world-class status use benchmarking vs. just 36% of plants furthest from world-class status. And a majority of plants near or at world-class status (52%) have five or more best practices/programs in place, vs. just 35% of plants furthest from world-class status.
Operations Execution (% of plants)
Furthest from world-class | Near or at | |
| Process improvement highly important or important (% of plants) | 80.1% | 90.9% |
| Use of lean manufacturing (% of plants) | 57.1% | 75.0% |
| Use of any improvement methodology (% of plants) | 79.9% | 92.7% |
| Use five or more operations practices/programs (% of plants) | 34.7% | 52.4% |
| % of workforce fully engaged in improvement methodology(ies) (medians) | 25.0% | 75.0% |
| % of processes addressed with improvement methodology(ies) (medians) | 40.0% | 75.0% |
How well does your plant execute on process improvement?
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Contact The MPI Group to learn more about the 2011 MPI Manufacturing Study findings and the 2011 Next Generation Manufacturing Study findings.
