Manufacturing Improvement : What Should I Do During Recession Period

.

.

.

There’s a ton of talk recently that we’re moving towards a Recession. That’s right… a Recession! Isn’t that horrible? Well, sort of, but what exactly is a recession? A recession, by definition, is when the GDP declines for two or more consecutive quarters; but how does that really affect you? In reality, it’s a period of economic slowdown that is marked with companies earning less, paying less, and generally things in life are a little less prosperous.

.

So, what should you do to prepare yourself if a recession, specifically a prolonged recession, hits? It’s actually quite simple, the biggest fear you have and the biggest thing you should prepare for is the possibility that you could lose your job. In a recession, companies often scale back operations as sales lag and when that happens employees are often one of the things to hit the chopping block. To prepare for this, keep your ear to the ground and make sure that in the event that you are let go, the first you hear of it shouldn’t be the moment after your boss calls you to his office to deliver the bad news.

.

The second part of preparation is to pull back your spending and boost your emergency fund. What? Don’t have one? Start one immediately! That’s what you will be to lean on as your income because you won’t be earning money if you’re unemployed.Now, preparing for the worst is always a good idea but the worst may never happen. In recent memory, recessions haven’t been all that bad for most Americans so the doomsday scenario isn’t all that likely. What’s more likely is that raises won’t be as big and promotions won’t be as plentiful, which is fine because it’s better than being fired.

.

So, if the only real tip is to pad an emergency fund, what’s the big deal? The big deal is that you need to begin planning for it now. If you wait until it hits the cover of Time or the New York Times, it is already too late.How can you pad the emergency fund now? If you’re contributing more than your employer match in your 401k, consider pulling back so you can put that towards savings. If you’re making large payments on your car note, consider downsizing your car and getting into something you can handle better. Some things are easier than others (adjusting 401k contributions is easier than changing cars) but ultimately you want to reduce your spending to pad that fund.

.

Whether or not a recession does hit, having a nice fat emergency fund is certainly something valuable in any economic situation (one can lose their job during a period of economic prosperity!).

.

.

.

Manufacturing Improvement : Focus On Your Manufacturing Target

.

.

Focused improvement is a way to approach manufacturing improvement that will help you improve all levels of the manufacturing process and your entire company. By implementing a focused improvement approach, then you will be able to ensure that your entire organization is working smoothly and that your organization's goals and efforts are being accomplished.
Before you can implement focused improvement in your manufacturing processes, you need to decide what your goal is going to be for focused improvement. You also need to set up a way to measure the improvement of your manufacturing performance. By measuring performance, you will be able to see how well your organization is succeeding at implementing your new plans, strategies, and goals. While you can use financial measures as a way to measure your performance and your improvement, financial measures end up having a number of problems with them. Here are some of the problems with traditional financial performance measures:
Problems with financial measures of performance-- they do not give you a good reflection of what the customer wants-- they do not give you strategies that you need in order to beat your competition-- they identify problems, but they cannot identify the causes of those problems-- they do not support measures to solve problems-- they are inflexible-- they do not support innovation, but rather prohibit it-- they encourage a large volume of activity, but they do not encourage useful activity
.

A focused improvement approach to improving manufacturing operations will help you work against these problems with traditional financial performance measures. A focused improvement system will be more relevant to your actual strategies and goals, and will help you improve your overall approach to manufacturing. Focused improvement will support changes in your operations, rather than working against change and innovation.
The following are the different parts of the control system that you must implement in order to control and contain your manufacturing operations.
.

Elements of control include the following:
Establishing a target or an overall plan.
Establishing a tolerable deviation from that plan or target.
A way to measure the actual deviation from the plan or the target.
A comparison between the actual results and your plan.
A way to identify potential areas for improvement as a result of the comaprison.
Feedback that will identify significant deviations from your plan or target.
A way to correct deviations.
.

The only way that you can establish focused improvement in your manufacturing systems is by implementing a process of control that will let you take charge of your manufacturing operations. A focused improvement approach to manufacturing will help you achieve your goals to beat your competition, fulfill customer demands, and then measure how you are achieving what you desire. Your focused improvement approach to manufacturing will also help you communicate your goals and communicate whether or not your strategies are up to date and your decisions are helping you achieve your goals and your objectives. Finally, a focused improvement strategy will also help you come up with innovative ways to meet your goals and will help you find any problem areas. In addition, a focused improvement strategy will help you compare your practices to other practices, record your achievements, set your goals, and will give you feedback to how your strategies are working. Employing a specialist in focused improvement will help you implement focused improvement throughout your organization, helping you achieve your goals and improve your overall manufacturing processes.

.

.

.

Manufacturing Improvement : Avoid "Free Passanger" In The Manufacturing Team

.

.

.

All organizations seek to avoid setbacks in their manufacturing processes. There are a number of different ways that you can avoid setbacks in your manufacturing processes. One of the most popular and successful approaches to quality management and control that will help you avoid setbacks in your manufacturing processes is Six Sigma quality control and manufacturing organization.
.

In essence, six sigma is a management plan geared towards producing better results, better products, and better service. Developed by Joseph M. Juran and Peter Senge in conjunction with Motorola, six sigma is technically an objective of quality. This objective very specifically defines how variable a process needs to be in terms of product specifications in order to meet and exceed customer demands in terms of product quality and product reliability.
.

Confused? Well, that's the technical definition. Ultimately, six sigma is an overall quality management program that uses leadership approaches, makes use of business infrastructure, and different management tools. General Electric was one of the very first users of six sigma, after Motorola, and defines it as "a disciplined methodology of defining, measuring, analyzing, improving and controlling the quality in every one of the company's products, processes and transactions--with the ultimate goal of virtually eliminating all defects."
.

Six sigma is tailored to meet each company or business' specific needs. However, there are overall basics and tools that are used in order to achieve the ultimate level of organizational performance. The cycle of methods used is called DMAIC, which stands for define, measure, analyze, improve and control. The entire approach is oriented towards product--the quality, reliability, and production of quality products. Six sigma is different from other quality control approaches, because it combines statistical programs and tools with observation and experimentation. This means that experiments should take place on two levels, and then are analyzed using graphical methods. This is a combination of the analysis of product variance and also observation so as to aid instead of blocking the work of both statisticians and engineers. Another way to understand the basics of six sigma is to look at the term itself. Sigma, which is a Greek letter, is also a symbol used in statistics that measures how far a process (or product) moves from what is considered to be perfection. So basically, in six sigma, the idea is that if you can measure how many problems or defects exist in a process, then scientifically you can decide how to get rid of those defects and then move as close as possible to no problems or defects in a process or a system.
.

There are several basic and central concepts that form the basis of six sigma. First is critical to quality. These are the attributes of a product that the customer considers to be most important. Defect is the failure to provide what the customer ants. Process capability is what the process or the product is capable of delivering. Variation is based on what the customer feels about a process/product and sees in that product. Stable operations are the attempts to make sure that processes are always the same and predictable in an effort to ensure that the customer always feels the same way--good--about a process or product. DFSS stands for design for six sigma. This is the methodology that uses tools, measurements, and specific training geared towards helping you design the processes and products that meet the needs and expectations of your customers.
.

Six sigma is a highly technical and mathematical approach to product control and organizational efficiency. Individuals take courses in six sigma, and are then certified to be at different levels of understanding and proficiency. The terms for the different levels of certification are taken from martial arts practices that we're all generally familiar with--green belt, black belt, and master black belt.

.

.

.

Manufacturing Improvement : Manage Crises In Manufacturing

.

Crisis management for manufacturing can take a number of forms and can be implemented in a number of different situations. For example, crisis management must come into play if your company has to admit to environmental quality control violations, or must answer to a lawsuit. Crisis management is necessary if a flaw in a product or a service is revealed and the news goes to the press and you must recall the product. Also, crisis management becomes necessary if you end up with a union strike, or if your equipment malfunctions, or if you are trying to wage a publicity campaign in a community that doesn't want you to move into their neighborhood. No matter what situation may arise, you must have a good crisis management plan and a good crisis management team in place so that any type of crisis can be handled, no matter what that crisis is.

.
For an example for our discussion of crisis management for manufacturing, let us use the example of a very important critical piece of equipment failing. Even if you have the best maintenance team in the world, machinery is never foolproof nor perfect, and so something is going to break down sometime. The problem then becomes that your machine is not producing money. You should have a crisis management position in place so that you can minimize the impact on your business, the customers' products, and your credibility.

.
Crisis management for manufacturing can take a number of forms and can be implemented in a number of different situations. For example, crisis management must come into play if your company has to admit to environmental quality control violations, or must answer to a lawsuit. Crisis management is necessary if a flaw in a product or a service is revealed and the news goes to the press and you must recall the product. Also, crisis management becomes necessary if you end up with a union strike, or if your equipment malfunctions, or if you are trying to wage a publicity campaign in a community that doesn't want you to move into their neighborhood. No matter what situation may arise, you must have a good crisis management plan and a good crisis management team in place so that any type of crisis can be handled, no matter what that crisis is.

.
For an example for our discussion of crisis management for manufacturing, let us use the example of a very important critical piece of equipment failing. Even if you have the best maintenance team in the world, machinery is never foolproof nor perfect, and so something is going to break down sometime. The problem then becomes that your machine is not producing money. You should have a crisis management position in place so that you can minimize the impact on your business, the customers' products, and your credibility.

.

.

.

Manufacturing Improvement : Always Remind Your Self

In any organization, Human Resource development is very, very improtant. We can say that the development is the heart of the company. Potentional employee is value to the company. Company should identify this type of employee, before other company 'detect' this employee and hire them for their company.

.

There is many ways to keep this kind of employee, such as built up good relationship with them, setup good environment in the organization, hire only employee that can contribute something to the company, reward the employee (according to company gain), and soo on.

.

Selecting correct is not only depend on the qualification and / or experience. Many of Human Resource Manager forget to include this to thier one of the list - attitude.

.

Attitude will determine attitude. For me, that statement is 100% correct. If my employer give me an option - 1) 10 employee with high skill, good qualification but bad attitude, 2) 10 employee with fair qualification, and no experience but have very good attitude, I'll immediatelly will select group 2. WHY? because I'm part of them before.

.

Manufacturing Improvement : Manufacturing Improvement : Kaizen

.

Kaizen principles are a comprehensive way of approaching the continual improvement of your manufacturing processes. Kaizen is the Japanese term for "change for the better" or it can be translated as "improvement". Kaizen is often translated into English as "continual improvement." Kaizen works to improve quality in the workplace, particularly in manufacturing companies, though it has also been applied to service providing companies and other types of companies. Kaizen is most often used in reference to Toyota Production System and is the combination of a number of different systems that are geared towards quality control.

.
What the overall purpose of Kaizen is is to eliminate waste. Joshua Isaac Walters defines wastes as "activities that add cost but do not add value." Very little of the process that goes into producing a product is paid for by the customer; instead, you as the manufacturer have to pay for all of this waste. Reducing waste is ultimately an effort to improve your bottom line, so there is nothing that you can lose by reducing waste. Implementing Kaizen is a way to improve your own financial standing. Kaizen also works to standardize the production process through doing things like leveling off the production flow so that there aren't variations in the production process, and also by doing things like switching from push production to pull production.

.
Kaizen principles are a comprehensive way of approaching the continual improvement of your manufacturing processes. Kaizen is the Japanese term for "change for the better" or it can be translated as "improvement". Kaizen is often translated into English as "continual improvement." Kaizen works to improve quality in the workplace, particularly in manufacturing companies, though it has also been applied to service providing companies and other types of companies. Kaizen is most often used in reference to Toyota Production System and is the combination of a number of different systems that are geared towards quality control.

.
What the overall purpose of Kaizen is is to eliminate waste. Joshua Isaac Walters defines wastes as "activities that add cost but do not add value." Very little of the process that goes into producing a product is paid for by the customer; instead, you as the manufacturer have to pay for all of this waste. Reducing waste is ultimately an effort to improve your bottom line, so there is nothing that you can lose by reducing waste. Implementing Kaizen is a way to improve your own financial standing. Kaizen also works to standardize the production process through doing things like leveling off the production flow so that there aren't variations in the production process, and also by doing things like switching from push production to pull production.

.

.

.