Plant Tour #312: Ideas That Work

Having spent about 15 years in the end-to-end Supply Chain, I've been fortunate to tour a wide variety of manufacturing & distribution facilities. Today, I toured manufacturing plant number #312 in my career - - as we visited a wonderfully successful (and progressively minded) contract manufacturer in Georgia. I thought I'd share a couple of best practices & ideas that I saw today:

#1 - They intentionally develop a 3-deep depth chart on all key, skilled positions - - and regularly rotate key members. Not only does this benefit the team member & develop their skills sets (and improve their compensation), but it provides the operation options and valuable flexibility. Note: the company promotes from within as a core value, thus this cross-training practice benefits the entire workforce.

#2 - Plenty of visual management was utilized throughout the plant. Many cells were able to operate successfully with minimal verbal exchange. While the leadership team sees plenty of opportunity, we saw an impressive array of communicative redundancy.

#3 - Speaking of communication, the team groups around a huddle board every weekday morning at 8:30am. They cover the good and the bad - - and ensure solid communication & follow-up of key issues & opportunities that might carry over from the shift or day before. 

#4 - Although they asked a wide variety of ideas from their team members for improvement opportunities, one of the neat things I saw: they asked their team members to submit their favorite inspirational quotes. They took the submissions, produced professional signage out of each submission, and plastered throughout the breakroom. Very cool.

#5 - I could list numerous other items observed today, but with a Top 5 in mind, I loved their metrics they keep on a key wall that showed: # of countries their team originated from; # of women on their team (out of the total number of employees); # of Veterans on their team (out of a total number of employees).

Unsurprisingly, of this company's seven-member leadership team: three of the team members are women; certainly ahead of most contract manufacturing operations.

From the wall of the plant: