Optimizing Manufacturing Operations: Structuring for Success
Analyze key manufacturing structure and management issues, including: structuring management, empowering employees, reducing turnover, staffing for fluctuations and managing change. This Best Practices Benchmarking® Report analyzes key manufacturing structure and management issues, including: structuring management, empowering employees, reducing turnover, staffing for fluctuations and managing change. After reading this report, you will be able to compare your company’s manufacturing operations and management structure against those of the benchmark class, spot areas for improvement, and utilize the best practices in this report to develop a plan of action to implement performance-enhancing initiatives. By studying these companies' operations, your organization can gain a deeper understanding of how leading companies manage manufacturing structure and performance issues.
Business Operations > Manufacturing d
Industries Profiled:
Manufacturing; Medical Device; Pharmaceutical; Financial Services; Service; Retail; Research; Computer Software; Diagnostic; Health Care; Transportation; Biotech; Consulting; Distribution; Insurance; Hospitality; Telecommunications; Technology; Professional Services; High Tech; Automobile; Utilities; Energy; Consumer Products; Chemical; Electronics; Entertainment; Internet; Computer Hardware; Aerospace; Academic; Media; Banking; Newspapers; Education; Shipping; Government; Office Supplies; Office Equipment; Cable; Computers; Defense; Diversified; Sports; Technology; Multiple; Logistics; Publishing; Legal
Study Snapshot
World-class production facilities are characterized by their relentless efforts to increase productivity and quality while reducing costs. Toward this end, leading facilities seek to establish an organizational structure that will enable them to provide effective leadership without swelling management ranks unnecessarily. This study examines three key factors facilities use to measure the effectiveness of their organizational structure:
- Organizational Depth: What is the optimal number of management layers?
- Span of Control: What is the optimal ratio of managers to hourly associates?
- Supervisory Duties: What are the key responsibilities of individual managers within an empowered workforce?
The results of this benchmarking study address these challenges and are critical in helping companies identify the optimal structure for their facilities.
Metrics Included in the Study
Best Practices LLC analysts collected and analyzed the following key metrics for manufacturing structure at each of the companies benchmarked in the study:
- Staffing Resources
- Management Layers
- Spans of Control
To ensure direct comparables, Best Practices LLC analysts gathered these metrics from a benchmark class of companies with similar manufacturing operations that include similarly complex equipment. Peer facilities are characterized by:
- Rapid Delivery
- Uncertain Demand
- Around-the-Clock Operations
Back to Top
Key Findings
Best Practices, LLC has identified key insights drawn from the interviews of executives at seven leading manufacturing facilities. The key insights below summarize the more detailed key findings contained in the benchmarking report:
The top five insights from this study are:
- Restructure positions that do not directly impact productivity to establish a lean management structure.
Benchmark research has uncovered the following guidelines for designing a lean management structure: restructure positions that are accountable for productivity goals, but are not empowered to impact production, establish a lean management hierarchy to oversee facility operations, processes, shifts and production departments, and establish team-based management structures to increase accountability and cross-functional sharing of ideas.
- Reduce management layers and establish a flat organizational structure through individual employee empowerment.
Benchmark partners have found that a flatter organizational structure enables its leaders to react to problems more quickly, because they are closer to the problem. Benchmark interviews uncovered three critical success factors for training and empowering employees within a flat management structure, including cross-training, continuous process improvements and outsourcing complex tasks.
- Staff below expected demand and augment the workforce with part-time employees to optimize staffing levels during periods of fluctuating demand.
Fluctuating demand is a challenge for managers since facilities are forced to increase or decrease its workforce in response to demand levels. Benchmarked companies manage uncertain demand by staffing their full time workforces below forecasted demand and having additional staff available to quickly support demand fluctuations.
- Anticipate and respond to the impact of structural changes on the facility's culture and workflow.
Structural changes are aimed at improving efficiencies and will likely result in a more productive workforce in the long run, but companies must also anticipate the short-term impact of structural reorganization on the culture and the workflow.
Back to Top
Related Research:
Pharmaceutical Science Excellence:
CMC Activities, Resources, and Performance
 |
STUDY OVERVIEW
Best Practices, LLC conducted this study to better understand resource and investment levels, expertise, and activities in global (pre-launch) Chemistry, Manufacturing and Control (CMC) operations in top pharmaceutical companies... (ID POP-225)
Companies Profiled: Johnson & Johnson, Sanofi-aventis, Daiichi Sankyo, Pfizer, more ...
Price: $10500.00 Free Excerpt Available
| |
Optimizing the R&D Quality Organization
 |
As the US Food and Drug Administration increases its regulatory scrutiny of R&D compliance, leading pharmaceutical manufacturers turn their attention to optimizing the quality organization that supports R&D... (ID OP-95)
Companies Profiled: Bristol-Myers Squibb, Sanofi-aventis, Medarex, Mayne, more ...
Price: $2490.00 Free Excerpt Available
| |
|