Summary of Articles

Article 1: (Discussion Points)

Why some factories are more productive than others?

•
Article 1: (Key Takeaways)
● Real levers for improving factory performance:-

1.

2.

3.
4.

5.

6.
Article 2: The Focused Factory (Discussion Points)
The article identifies four changes in the management of
manufacturing that will help the US to compete against
countries with cheap labour.
1. “How can we compete?”
2. Seeing the problem as encompassing the efficiency of the
entire manufacturing organization.
3. Learning to focus each plant on a limited, concise,
manageable set of products, technologies, volumes, and
markets.
4. Learning to structure basic manufacturing policies and
supporting services so that they focus on one explicit
manufacturing task instead of on many inconsistent,
conflicting, implicit tasks.
It also introduces focussed manufacturing to us which states
that there are other ways to compete than on cost.
A factory cannot perform well on every yardstick and
there remain several reasons for inconsistencies.
● A fully consistent set of manufacturing policies
resulting in a congruent system is highly rare.
1. Professionalism: Fields like engineering,
inventory management, materials handling etc.
have come into existence for many different
reasons like to reduce costs, to save time and
such reasons so it is natural that for them to pull
the plant into different directions.
2. Product proliferation: Shorter product life,
more new products, shorter runs, lower unit
volumes, and more customer specials are
becoming increasingly common.
3. Toward Manufacturing Approach: Focus the
manufacturing system on a limited task.
Article 2: The Focused Factory (Key Takeaways)
● We cannot use scales like “cost” and
“efficiency” anymore as the main factors for
planning and controlling because competition is
getting rougher and, in particular, because a
strictly low-cost, high efficiency strategy is
apparently becoming less viable in many
industries.
● Our economy has moved towards advanced
technologies so we need to move forward from
using “productivity” and “economies of scale”
as guiding objectives.
● The U.S. problem of “productivity” is real
indeed. But seeing the problem as one of “how
to compete” can broaden management’s horizon
● Focussed plant is a rarity and there are several
reasons for it’s inconsistency as mentioned
before.
● Reversing the process is not impossible.
● A more practical approach is the “plant within a
plant” notion in which the existing facility is
divided both organizationally and physically.
● The focused factory approach offers the
opportunity to stop compromising each element
of the production system in the typical
general-purpose, do-all plant which satisfies no
strategy, no market, and no task.
● It helps to provide clear goals and a smooth
mechanism that offers a clear sense of direction.
Article 3: (Discussion Points)
● All these 3 topics provide the
necessary insights needed to
understand the history and the
current scenario of
manufacturing in India.
Article 3: (Key Takeaways)
●

●
Conclusion of all Articles
Takeaway

●
Thank you.