Book Reviews

Reinventing The Factory:
Productivity Breakthroughs In Manufacturing Today

By Roy Harmon and Leroy Peterson

Reviewed by Steve Buchwald, CIRM

During one of our Chapter Professional Development meetings, Dennis Fisher, an expert on JIT implementations, gave an interesting presentation on the work he had been doing for one of his clients.

What I thought was interesting about that particular talk was his comment about having to ReCentralize some of the factory functions in order to contain costs. I think this single comment needs further review as manufacturers move toward Cells, Sub-Cells, and Focused Factories. In addition to this, I was recently reviewing my own approach to Re-engineering and I realized I was starting to neglect the shop floor. I don't know if this is true in your environment but I was assuming that most of the fat had already been taken out of the shop and that the shop would take care of itself as it moved even further along the line of superior manufacturing. Areas like Sales and Marketing, Order Entry, and Billing. to name a few. However, if the total manufacturing concern is going to become superior we have to get out of this mode of fixing one area at the neglect of others. Well, all this is the long lead into why I choose to review this book.

Roy Harmon is an independent consultant working exclusively with Andersen Consulting's worldwide manufacturing program. Leroy D. Peterson is the consulting managing director of the Chicago Products Industries for Andersen Consulting. Together they bring years of experience together with actual case histories of some of Andersen's Consulting engagements to bring you an excellent book on superior manufacturing. They have even addressed the concern I voiced above about how much decentralization is correct. Although, the discussion does not come out and grab you, it is there if you read between the lines. I believe one of the underlying messages, one that I have been preaching for many years, is that if you first KNOW YOUR BUSINESS then you can apply all of the lessons learned in this book to accomplish superior manufacturing.

This book is a great text book for improving the entire value chain. As I mentioned above, you can't fix one process in a vacuum and ignore the other processes. That is what is so good about this book. It talks about superior manufacturing with a shop floor perspective, but it never misses the big picture perspective. For example, the book discusses everything from container size to aisles, from changing layout and moving equipment to dealing with that equipment which can't be moved, from one step changeovers to the paperless factory, and from material product storage to other productivity issues, not directly shop floor related, like office productivity for example. And throughout it all the authors talk about how these issues relate to the focal point of the change process, the Plantwide Plan.

The only negative comment I have, and it is really not all that negative, is that the book reads like a text book. If you remember those hard to digest text books from college you might understand what I am talking about. I believe this is so because there is so much information, both technical and non-technical, given in such a concise fashion. Nonetheless, the book is readable and if you approach it with the correct frame of mind will learn a great deal.

Good reading!