What Makes a "Superfactory?"

Posted by Bob Hunt

Ah! Manufacturing!  I love to read what others are saying about what makes a manufacturing organization a good one these days - very different in many respects than when I first worked the factory floor 28 years ago. 

I read some very interesting comments in a Linked In group called "Superfactory" that identify those elements of performance excellence in high performing manufacturing organizations. If you are in manufacturing, or any other organization pursuing performance excellence, there is some very good stuff here.  Common themes for a superfactory are:

• all roads lead to the customer
• workforce engagement, characterized by "shiny eyes" and low turnover
• minimal inventory
• preventive maintenance
• knowledge management
• continuous improvement
• lots of "issues" for the right reasons

That last one is kinda curious, isn't it?  The commentor, James Sanfield, infers that even superfactories have problems because circumstances always change - it's how we respond to them that differentiates the "super" organizations. He suggests these six examples can be found in superfactories:

1. Hardly any inventory - because of 1 piece flow and virtually no buffers (an almost empty factory)
2. Problems - Visual management showing where the process has failed and how it is being fixed
3. Non-productive staff - People scratching their heads - solving another problem
4. Stopped production lines - Alarms, bells and stopped lines - being attended to and resolved
5. Idle people / machines being run at less than their capacity - suboptimisation subordinated to the constraint (the only part of the factory being used to almost it's capacity)
6. Managers with sleeves rolled up helping - not directing

Predictably, several of the aforementioned superfactory common themes, ie., customer focus, workforce engagement and knowledge management are "Categories" contained in the Baldrige Criteria for Performance Excellence, not to mention the cross cutting theme of continuous improvement.  

The Baldrige criteria do not presume to prescribe that all factories must adhere to the six examples listed, but what do you think?