Process improvement appears to be of equal importance to manufacturing operations around the globe. But how that improvement is achieved appears to have some geographic correlation.
When asked which process improvement methodologies they employ, similar percentages of U.S. manufacturers (85%) and international manufacturers (86%) indicated that they use at least one process improvement system.
The difference is in which systems they use.
In order of acceptance (respondents were allowed to make multiple selections), the improvement methodologies favored at U.S. plants are:
- Lean Manufacturing (69% of respondents pursue it)
- Total Quality Management (29%)
- Six Sigma (28%)
- Theory of Constraints (17%)
- Other system of systems (16%)
- Toyota Production System (12%)
- Agile Manufacturing (8%)
Among international plants, the order is different:
- Total Quality Management (50%)
- Lean Manufacturing (41%)
- Other system or systems (23%)
- Six Sigma (22%)
- Agile Manufacturing (18%)
- Theory of Constraints (12%)
- Toyota Production System (8%)
Also interesting is the large lead in the United States that a single system— Lean—commands over all other methodologies. While 69% of facilities report using Lean, the next-most-popular methodology, TQM, is 40 percentage points behind in adoption.
The results around the rest of the world are more fragmented. While TQM leads international plants with 50% adoption, Lean comes in second, just 9 percentage points behind.
Lean manufacturing is adapted by many of the companies.It is considered as next generation technique.To adapt this in the companies it is better to take the assistance of experts
Posted by: Jason Furness | 07/04/2011 at 05:21 AM