No single competitive manufacturing strategy can deliver on all these issues or to companies of all sizes, as larger companies have extra layers of management and embedded processes compared to smaller and medium companies. However, there is a significant potential for gain from best practices described by approaches in competitive manufacturing.
Four common steps to successfully embark on the CMI journey include:
- Accepting Change
- Identify Help and Support
- Develop Strategy and Plan
- Creating Partnerships
- Build the CM Systems for your organisation
- Implementation
- Business Integration
Implementing Competitive Manufacturing techniques in your organisation requires change to the way “things are done” and “whom to involve”. The first step is to accept that change is required at the strategic level in your organisation. Any change needs to be lead and supported from the top.
Identify Help and Support:
A range of companies and consultancies provide mentoring and support services to organisations wishing to take the CM journey. The Associates listed are among these organisations (section 43). Further organisations are listed in the links and accredited provider sections of the website.
If your organisation has less than 50 employees you may be eligible for assistance through the New Zealand Trade and Enterprise sponsored BIZ programmes.
Contact BIZ for further information by clicking here: www.biz.org.nz
Develop Improvement Strategy and Plan:
The complexity of this plan will reflect the needs you have identified for your organisation. However complex or simple such a plan it is likely to consist of four phases:
- Creating the partnership: In this phase you will work to clarify how you and your chosen mentor or support organisation work together. This may involve:
- Gaining buy in and support from the entire organisation from senior management to employee representatives
- Identifying project key performance indicators
- Agreeing communication and reporting processes between all participants
- Agreeing a strategy and implementation plan to address your needs
- Building the CM systems for your organisation: In this phase you will work to:
- Review your organisations performance in key areas
- Identify critical issues
- Develop workplace projects to address the selected issues
- Integrate this plan with existing workplace systems and programmes
- Identify pilot areas and project teams for implementation
- Implementation: This phase involves an iteration of activities:
- communication with the wider organisation:
- the need for change
- the way the organisation is going to make the change
- the way employees at all levels are going to be involved
- timeframes and expectations of programmes to be implemented
- feedback and ongoing two way communication processes
- training for employees involved in pilot activities identified in the plan. This is best linked to Competitive Manufacturing standards and qualifications to optimise the support your ITO can give you on this journey.
- Activities are commenced with mentor support to ensure the pilot success and identify issues in implementation
- Pilot activities are completed, reviewed, and reported
- Improvements or modifications arising from this review are agreed and made to the plan
- Further roll outs are commenced after employee training with mentor support in line with the strategy.
- communication with the wider organisation:
- Business Integration: The key to ongoing success in your organisation is to ensure improvements made are sustained over time. Building the identified improvements into your procedures, processes, systems and employee job training will all assist to ensure sustainability. With this in place periodic audits against these processes will ensure the gains are sustained.
The process of ongoing improvement will also become part of the "way things are done". To sustain this, systems of recognition and reward will be identified and implemented, consistent with the workplace culture your organisation develops working together.