Building A Showcase Culture, Powerful and Practical Keys for Manufacturing, by Mark Lado, Global Manufacturing Services, 2018
 
Manufacturing veteran Mark Lado brings together principles and details for anyone wanting to step into manufacturing.  He covers quality manufacturing process improvement and gaining buy-in for change.  Happily this is not a "lean book," nor is it a Japanese manufacturing techniques copycat, but instead it offers readers a comprehensive review of the basics that must be covered to raise our operations to the level we need to compete globally.
 
Chapter 5 is devoted to Supervisor and Leadership Training, a comprehensive approach to being sure employees have everything they need to work well.  In Chapter 6 the author offers a detailed approach to Key Performance Indicators (KPI), including the all important engineering change orders performance, cost or profit indicators, and the whole critical area of improving customer fulfillment in eight steps. Chapter 7 delivers the basics of financial acumen - cash flow statements, competitor comparisons, balance sheets and income statements, along with change tracking. 
 
Chapter 8, Seven Basic Quality Tools and Data-driven Culture, covers the classic quality tools in sufficient detail that newcomers to manufacturing will feel comfortable with these measures, especially if quality tracking and measurement are now run by automated systems.  It's important for everyone to understand the meaning behind the systems' numbers and Lado covers the basics.
 
Chapter 11 - Organization, Layout, and Shift Planning provides the kind of detail that one would need to set up a greenfield operation, down to possible office layout considerations.  This is important for employee efficiency, communications and team work, and rather than growing an operations group "like topsy" Lado recommends deliberate approach to this location challenge.
 
Interestingly, the whole issue of shift planning, a complex formula that causes many missteps even in the best operations, occupies a good chunk of this same Chapter 11 - definitely worth a good review.
 
Chapter 14 is dedicated to a strong success factor, Visual Management, with detailed examples that capture the intent and the essence of good visual planning, another way to draw employees into the entire manufacturing process flow.  Pay particular attention to the Visual Control Productivity Chart and the KPI white board - companies that do this right engage their employees in a way that most machine systems cannot, and for now, that is extremely important.
 
 Unfortunately this book does not cover IT for manufacturing in depth; hopefully this topic, along with automation and systems integration, new product design and introduction, and push vs. pull vs. on-demand systems will be included in the next edition.
 
Patricia E. Moody
FORTUNE magazine  "Pioneering Woman in Mfg" 
IndustryWeek IdeaXchange Xpert
A Mill Girl at Blue Heron Journal, on-line resource for business thought-leaders and decision-makers, [email protected],[email protected],[email protected]

Building a better manufacturer

Mark Lado, president of Asia Manufacturing Services in Baldwinsville, NY turned his 30 plus years of manufacturing leadership experience into a helpful guide for those who are looking to achieve a the best possible manufacturing facility.

Lado wrote "Building a Showcase Culture: Powerful and Practical Keys for Manufacturing" with the desire to "provide the tools and guidance as a go-to resource to make managers better leaders, and to elevate their facilities to a higher competitive level." Lado breaks the book down into four sections: Orientation, Foundation, Conditioning, and Competitiveness.

Bryce Currie, vice president/general manager of Delivery Operations at GE Aviation wrote the foreword for the book and also helped summarize the focus of each section saying, "You can read the entire book or concentrate on areas where you need help. This book follows a maturity model of plant excellence, starting with orientation/new plant basics, which are the early how-to's that are needed to start a greenfield site...The book then transitions into the foundations of how to effectively build or improve the manufacturing facility infrastructure. Key areas of focus are the development of the organization, the facility itself, and the standard processes...In the 3rd section of Mark's book, there is a heavy focus on the sites' operating rhythms. Having a consistent daily production rhythm in conjunction with a good communication plan is absolutely paramount to be a world class manufacturing site. The book finishes with Competitiveness, which focuses on ensuring the site has a long term strategic plan and vision. Having a true strategic roadmap with plans to organically grow is key, but again, tends to be weak at many sites, as people tend to focus on short term metrics."

Lado says that the book is intended for a variety of audiences, but especially those who want to become factory showcase leaders, including: current manufacturing leaders, entrepreneurs starting new manufacturing enterprises, and students studying engineering, operations, supply chain, production planning, finance, human resources, quality, and business administration. "Building a Showcase Culture" is available on Amazon.