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Manufacturing Systems Foundations of World-Class Practice (1992) / Chapter Skim
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Executive Summary
Pages 3-8

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From page 3...
... manufacturers and a rapidly growing body of scholarly work linked closely to changing industrial practices. Particularly relevant research and publishing includes such topics as concurrent product and process engineering, total quality management, justin-time manufacturing and distribution processes, quality function deployment, lean production, and incorporation and management of innovation.
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From page 4...
... It is the committee's strongly held conviction that the worldwide competitive environment will richly reward the manufacturers who adopt these principles while penalizing those who do not. Although success in implementing the foundations depends on many things, the committee emphasizes that they represent a system of actions that cannot be embraced piecemeal.
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From page 5...
... FOUNDATION: Employee involvement and empowerment are recognized by world-class manufacturers as critical to achieving continuous improvement in all elements of the manufacturing system. Management's opportunity to ensure the continuity of organizational development and renewal comes primarily through the involvement of the employee.
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From page 6...
... Metrics Performance evaluation is a process applied throughout the manufacturing organization to measure the effectiveness in achieving its goals. Because of the variety, complexity, and interdependencies found in the collection of unit processes and subsystems that define the manufacturing system, appropriate means are needed to describe and quantify rigorously the performance of each activity.
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From page 7...
... FOUNDATION: World-class manufacturers recognize that stimulating and accommodating continuous change forces them to experiment and assess outcomes. They translate the knowledge acquired in this way into a framework, such as a model, that leads to improved operational decision making while incorporating the learning process into their fundamental operating philosophy.
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From page 8...
... Implementing the Foundations The implications of the competitive environment that has evolved over the past 20 years are profound. Just as no single element in the manufacturing system can ensure that an enterprise will be successful, so can no single sector of the national infrastructure ensure that the industrial sector will be competitive.
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Key Terms

  • continuous improvement
  • achieving continuous
  • manufacturers recognize
  • employee involvement
  • continuously measure

  • identity depends
  • organizational development
  • communicate unambiguously
  • study explores
  • describe quantitatively

  • automatically converted
  • establish organizational
  • performance expectations
  • renewal comes
  • continuous change

  • competitive environment
  • future employees
  • performance evaluation
  • independent elements
  • concurrent product

  • single sector
  • look beyond
  • comes primarily
  • distribution processes
  • change forces

  • industrial sector
  • quality management
  • learning experiences
  • organizational barriers
  • study argues


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