Manufacturing Best Practices: Optimizing Productivity and Product Quality

On second thought, look at all the recent issues in the news about recalls. Several large industries have to recall product due to quality problems. Problems plague these very large corporations who are supposedly too big to fail. They are failing because they have not optimized their production methods. They have not fully embraced a best practices philosophy. Therefore there is a need for a forty-thousand foot overview of best practices. It is necessary to step back every so often and do an honest assessment of where we are and where we are going. This book is a tool that helps to make this assessment and provides proven methods to shore up any weaknesses you may find.

Today, modern manufacturing is overwhelmed with tools to manage itself. There are countless hot, new, innovative ideas that become the flavor of the day—Deming’s Statistical Process Control, Total Quality Management, Six Sigma, Lean, ISO 9000, just to name a few. All these programs offer some better tool to manage our business, make decisions, and manufacture a quality product.

No one system, however, can be an instant fix. No canned concept can guarantee success. You can’t purchase “best practices”. Best practices come from a mindset, a philosophy, developed by looking at all the tools available and deciding which ones will work for your particular goals and implementing them. Best practices also require common sense scrutiny and must draw on the experience of your people.

Best practices also have to evolve in the truest sense of the word. Tools are tried and discarded. Some tools are adapted. Others are left untouched due to the complexity of installation or excessive cost. The outcome of this trial and error is an entity comprised of functional elements which truly works in your organization and is uniquely customized to your business. This entity is a living, breathing presence that permeates every level of your operation. This corporate consciousness becomes your center point, a place of calibration against which all decisions are measured.

This is not a recipe book. You cannot install these pages and expect your company to suddenly sprout innovative products and break out of old paradigms. This isn’t the next hot program. Instead the goal here is not only to have an open and honest investigation of many areas of physical manufacturing but also of business management, decision making, and personnel. We will explore what lies behind the cultivation of a corporation’s culture, help you define and understand your goals, inventory what tools you have, and arm you with a willingness to consider new ways of thinking.

Some ideas you may embrace. Others you may discard. Both decisions are correct. The key to understanding best practices is the willingness to change your practices as the environment of your business shifts. Being unconsciously stuck in a paradigm is surely a death sentence. The ultimate best practice is the ability and flexibility to change; an openness to learning and exploration.

Bobby Hull is Corporate Systems Analyst at BGF Industries Inc., formerly known as Burlington Industries, Inc., and cofounder of Questworks Productions, a company specializing in computer training, Web site design, graphic design, staff development workshops, stress reduction workshops, quality control consulting, and auditing. In his analyst position, Hull focuses on designing and implementing quality control and business intelligence solutions for various divisions of BGF Industries, a multimillion-dollar textile company. Prior to this role, Hull spent over ten years as a senior quality engineer, coordinating all facets of the BGF quality control program, including the redesign of several quality subsystems to meet the requirements of ISO 9001:2000. During his more than thirty years with BGF Industries, Hull has performed in the capacity of Finishing Inspector, Lab Technician, Crew Leader, and Manager of their QC laboratory. Hull holds a Doctorate of Divinity from the American Institute of Holistic Theology, Birmingham, Alabama, and has completed course work in chemistry at the University of Richmond and in Fine Arts at Lynchburg College.