Road to gold: Red X drives quality at General Motors.

To accelerate production of its top selling-brands Buick and Pontiac and eclipse rival automakers in a teeming industry, General Motors has buttressed its Global Manufacturing System Division with lean initiatives. Initiatives have been calibrated by GM's industrial engineers to eliminate waste, increase value and quality, and solve basic manufacturing problems. Among these is a program called Red X, which is based in statistical engineering.

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In 2003, GM gained publicity for redesigning its engineering department to include math-based software and design for Six Sigma, which helped improve the physical characteristics of newly released car models while lowering manufacturing costs and strengthening transmission reliability. Six Sigma processes can still be seen in GM work operations, yet the effects of the Red X strategy have further visibility inside each facility because of their tailored focus on quality.

The Global Manufacturing System Division implemented five structural lean principles throughout every plant in North America to teach members to be lean producers and lean leaders. Prime aspects include people involvement, standardization, built-in quality, short lead-time, and continuous improvement. These building blocks have established quality parameters for employees to perform their duties with fluency and consistency, as evidenced in larger production numbers and better product ratings.

Within those five categories lie 33 elements of GM's lean initiative (Figure 1). Many of the elements guide production at other automakers as well, such as the "andon concept," a type of visual control that displays the current state of work (task instructions, abnormal conditions, job progress information). However, GM has expanded them to fit specific output goals. "The efforts around problem solving, including Red X, are all a part of the continuous improvement process," said IIE member Lou Farinola, manufacturing engineering director for General Motors Global Manufacturing System Division. "There are numerous strategies associated with the built-in quality principle. So obviously we got a major focus on everything from process control to process verification to assessing quality standards and defining quality standards."

With an eye on efficiency throughout the workday, employees are assigned to teams and trained in various programs, including Red X problem solving, to run their departments better and maintain continuous improvement. People involvement is thought to propel the company's core competencies within a supportive framework of health and safety, open communication, and shop floor management.