As a speaker at the 2012 IndustryWeek Best Plants conference last week in Indianapolis, I had the chance to sit in on some of the sessions and keynotes. I found one keynote speaker, Mary Adringa, CEO and President of Vermeer, an international, family-owned agricultural, construction, environmental and industrial equipment manufacturing company, particularly interesting. Mary [...]
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Manufacturing: If it can boost the stock market, why aren't people more interested in working in it?It’s been proven that supply chain risk events can cause a company’s stock to tank and company to lose market value. Now enter the new supply chain risk market makers: the channel checkers. These are the analysts who follow large manufacturing firms’ supply and demand and make a living out of predicting whether production [...] As part of the public flogging of Toyota for its massive quality problems and recalls, some are calling lean and the Toyota Production System into question. A recent WSJ article, How Lean Manufacturing Can Backfire, describes how Toyota’s use of common parts wreaks havoc during a recall. Part simplification is considered a lean practice. [...] Looks like it’s really all over for NUMMI, the Toyota/GM joint auto manufacturing venture in Fremont, CA. Last summer, I wrote a post about the strong possibility of Toyota’s closing the plant (NUMMI: Things Are Looking Gloomy). The plant was losing money. Located in a high-wage area, even potential UAW concessions didn’t seem like enough to [...] Boeing recently announced that it was planning to replicate all 787 parts built in the Puget Sound area in a new facilities being built in North Charleston, South Carolina. According to a recent article in the Seattle Times, Boeing machinists are seeing this as the first step toward moving all parts out of Boeing’s Puget Sound [...] While American auto suppliers have not been directly bailed out, many have survived due to the bailout of their customers, GM and Chrysler. No so for small Italian suppliers. According to a WSJ article, the Italian auto industry has not received government bailout money. So the auto supply chain, comprised of much smaller suppliers than [...] I recently heard a presentation at the AME Lean Conference that was given by representatives from Hershey Foods and K-Mart (part of Sears Holdings) about customer-supplier collaboration. A K-Mart General Manager and a Hershey Foods sales executive discussed how the two companies worked together on special in-store programs that delivered very strong financial results [...] // I thought this video, which shows a 100-year-old manufacturing building in Lawrence, Massachusetts being demolished, was pretty cool. In its heyday, Lawrence was an important textile manufacturing center due to its location near water to power the mills and proximity to Boston. However, it suffered a major decline when that industry all but [...] Attending the annual AME Lean Conference was energizing and inspiring. The conference delegates are a different crowd. They are practitioners of the lean enterprise. This is apparent if you spend any time with these folks. You know you’re at a lean conference when delegates: Complain that the buffet layout is not lean and discuss ways to [...] |
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