Letters

REVAMPING MANUFACTURING METRICS

Re: "Measuring Success In A Global Economy," Editor's Page, Page 7, August 2005. I also believe that lean manufacturing has slowed investment in new equipment [and] that it has slowed job creation.

Your comment about squeezing more value from existing assets

hopefully included attempts to squeeze that same value from human resources, which is why the industry is seeing job burnout and no interest in the manufacturing field from young people. Who wants to work in the same field as Dad when he comes home complaining about "doing three times the amount of work for the same pay"?

I am a fan of lean manufacturing when it is properly used, but when a general manager or operations manager has no understanding of the lean process and thinks not of supply-chain improvements, or cell-manufacturing improvements, but rather of busting human resource numbers to cut overhead expenses without true production improvements, I lose interest.

I understand that the industry must undergo a structural change if manufacturing is to survive. The collection of data needs to be a continuous tracking procedure, not a one-time "eureka, we hit the jackpot" collection. The trends need to be realized and acted upon. Tweaking the system is necessary, and a good data tracking system would verify processes. But then again that is more overhead isn't it?