OCTOBER 20238MANUFACTURING TECHNOLOGY INSIGHTSIN MY OPINIONBy Joe Panebianco, Director of Manufacturing Engineering, Tekni-Plex In FRAMEWORK FOR OPERATIONS EXCELLENCEOperational excellence and continuous improvement are related concepts, but they are not the same. Continuous improvement is a methodology within operational excellence that focuses on incremental improvements to processes and systems over time. It involves the ongoing identification and elimination of waste and inefficiencies to create an organization's culture of continuous improvement. Continuous improvement is based on the principle that small incremental improvements can achieve significant gains over time.Operational excellence is a broader business strategy that focuses on achieving superior performance with greater consistency and efficiency than the competition by improving all aspects of an organization's operations. It involves optimizing processes and systems to create maximum value for customers, employees, and stakeholders. Let's look at the four pillars of a practical operational excellence framework.MANAGING THE BUSINESSManaging the business sounds basic; this encompasses ensuring the safety, quality, delivery, and cost objectives are achieved. But it is essential to have a system to do this efficiently and more consistently than the competition. Where most systems fall short is that they are focused only on achieving this in the near term, yet it is essential in an operational excellence framework that managing the business is focused on achieving this daily, monthly, and quarterly/yearly for long-term success. There are three elements to managing the business: daily management, monthly business reviews, and quarterly/annual business reviews.Daily management ensures the day-to-day activities go as planned and continuously improve. The major components are daily rhythm and equipment reliability. Having a daily rhythm is about creating the expectation that we have a daily routine for managing our factory safely and efficiently and planning what to do when something unexpected happens. This has many familiar elements, including hour-by-hour boards, escalation processes, and shift handoffs, to name a few. Equipment reliability means keeping the equipment in good running condition so that the machines can safely produce good-quality products when needed.The monthly business review is about reviewing the progress of KPIs, financials, and operations strategy and adjusting activities based on performance. The monthly reviews should review and discuss plant and financial performance, sales volume, key customers, cost ops performance to budget, continuous improvement activities, and capital project activities.The quarterly/annual business review needs to consider items from the monthly business review and additional items to ensure alignment with long-term business needs, which includes identifying performance gaps and changes in the customers and markets served, then reviewing and adjusting, and if needed, the execution plan. The quarterly/annual reviews are the opportunity to review and evaluate how you are performing and update items from the operations strategy like the capital deployment plan, the supply chain/global footprint, the continuous improvement plan, evaluation of the current condition of equipment, capabilities, and plans for automation, quality improvements, and cost improvement.CONTINUOUS IMPROVEMENTMany practitioners of continuous improvement focus on the tools used to solve a problem or make an improvement. While the tools are essential, they represent only one element of the process that will help reduce the business's waste, Joe Panebianco
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