Manufacturers always find it difficult to manage — or improve — what they don’t measure. Just-released findings from the 2011 MPI Manufacturing Study (survey of 322 plants in the United States and abroad) show that while manufacturers are monitoring a range of fundamental operations performances, other key processes and outcomes are ignored.
The top five performances monitored and measured by manufacturers (rated 4 or 5 where 5=real-time capability) are:
- Location-specific inventory levels (58% of plants),
- Process-specific quality (58%),
- Process-specific safety (56%),
- Process-specific pace or speed (51%), and
- Process-specific productivity (47%).
A high percentage of plants have “no capability” to monitor and measure external logistics/distribution performance (18% of plants); in-plant material-handling performance (17%); and process-specific sustainability performance (16% of plants).
Plant’s capability to monitor and measure (% of plants)
1=No capability | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5=Real-time capability | |
| Location-specific inventory levels | 6.9% | 8.7% | 26.3% | 30.5% | 27.7% |
| Process-specific quality | 3.8% | 10.7% | 27.6% | 30.7% | 27.2% |
| Process-specific safety | 7.3% | 10.1% | 26.1% | 35.2% | 21.3% |
| Process-specific pace or speed | 6.3% | 11.8% | 30.9% | 28.5% | 22.6% |
| Process-specific productivity (i.e., value vs. waste) | 6.9% | 14.9% | 30.9% | 30.9% | 16.3% |
| Individual equipment or machine performance | 6.6% | 15.6% | 32.3% | 30.6% | 14.9% |
| Supplier performance | 6.2% | 17.0% | 38.8% | 29.4% | 8.7% |
| Process-specific sustainability performance | 15.5% | 16.6% | 35.9% | 24.3% | 7.8% |
| External logistics/distribution performance | 17.5% | 18.2% | 34.6% | 24.1% | 5.6% |
| In-plant material-handling performance | 16.6% | 20.7% | 34.5% | 19.0% | 9.3% |
Does your company monitor the right measures?
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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.
