SOCIETY of MANUFACTURING ENGINEERS
2011 LEAN DIRECTIONS
Manufacturings five golden metrics
http://www.sme.org/cgi-bin/get-newsletter.pl?LEAN&20061010&2
In this 2011 Society of Manufacturing Engineers article five headline areas are considered;
- Total Cost (cash)
- Total Cycle Time
- Delivery Performance
- Quality
- Safety
The article is summarized.
Is this really true? Is it that simple?
A growing number of businesses are making efforts to improve sustainability. Some programs are more successful than others. When you look at your own business and consider sustainability you will most probably conclude that there are huge opportunities for improvement. Your organization feels that they have been successful and have been meeting and beating, in some cases, the strategic goals that are set for the business. So it is probably fair to say that you may not be including sustainability metrics in your strategic goals or, if you are, the organization as a whole is not yet in tune with these.
So why worry about metrics?
Bill Hewlett, co-founder of Hewlett-Packard, once, famously stated, "You cannot manage what you cannot measure". The statement was later refined by Tom Peters who stated "What gets measured gets done".
I would be interested to hear what others think about this subject. Do you measure sustainability? Do you measure waste elimination? Have you proposed these ideas? What was the reaction?
"These five measurements are manufacturing's bottom line. All efforts must be aimed at improving one or more of them without degrading performance of any of the others. All other performance metrics are subordinate and useful to management only to the extent that they help improve performance of one of the golden five".
Is this really true? Is it that simple?
A growing number of businesses are making efforts to improve sustainability. Some programs are more successful than others. When you look at your own business and consider sustainability you will most probably conclude that there are huge opportunities for improvement. Your organization feels that they have been successful and have been meeting and beating, in some cases, the strategic goals that are set for the business. So it is probably fair to say that you may not be including sustainability metrics in your strategic goals or, if you are, the organization as a whole is not yet in tune with these.
So why worry about metrics?
Bill Hewlett, co-founder of Hewlett-Packard, once, famously stated, "You cannot manage what you cannot measure". The statement was later refined by Tom Peters who stated "What gets measured gets done".
I would be interested to hear what others think about this subject. Do you measure sustainability? Do you measure waste elimination? Have you proposed these ideas? What was the reaction?
