Some of the great companies of the 20th Century were built by engineers. These were people who designed products to solve problems for people, who would then want to buy them. They also knew how to manufacture those products and deliver them to the sales channel to get them into customers’ hands. This was true for companies such as General Electric Co. and Ford Motor Co., but it was also true for the more modern high-tech companies such as Microsoft and Intel.

Somewhere along the line, people with spreadsheets began to replace people with slide rules, and manufacturing started a slide into the back room of corporate life. Products, customers and employees were merely numbers. Manufacturing was a black box that caused problems and sucked in cash. The new managers asked a hard question, “Is manufacturing a strategic competitive advantage for the company?” Many answered, “No,” and started the infamous trend to outsourcing the function.

There are usually many reasons for a company to slide into bankruptcy, but it is not beyond belief to think that neglect of basic engineering functions of product design and manufacturing were a major contributor to the decline of General Motors Corp. and Chrysler into bankruptcy and U.S. government bailout. Both are showing signs of recovery, with General Motors even talking of an initial public offering (IPO) of publicly traded stock in the company. But one fellow member of the old “Big Three” of manufacturing, Ford, avoided those problems and is proclaiming manufacturing and product engineering as key to its resurgence.

For example, note this paragraph from Ford’s last Annual Report: “As Ford introduces a new generation of global products, the company’s ONE Ford strategy is clearly evident in its assembly plants. Taking advantage of global demand means scaling up the company’s manufacturing operations to produce the first of these global products—the next-generation Ford Focus—with universally high levels of craftsmanship, quality and efficiency all around the world. In Wayne, Mich., one of three North American truck plants is being retooled to build fuel-efficient global small cars, and in Chongqing, China, Changan Ford Mazda Automobile broke ground in September for a state-of-the art and highly flexible passenger car plant scheduled for completion in 2012 as the new home for Focus in China.”

Ford Vice President of North America Manufacturing, Jim Tetrault, discussed the company’s manufacturing turnaround to assembled manufacturing executives at the 2010 North American Conference of MESA International, the manufacturing enterprise solutions association, in Detroit last June. He touted the advances his company has made over the past 3.5 years in terms of worldwide manufacturing systems, quality, flexibility and ability to move quickly to meet changes in market dynamics.

Improvement journey

The Association for Manufacturing Excellence ( AME, www.ame.org ) was founded in 1984 as a not-for-profit organization dedicated to the journey of continuous improvement and enterprise excellence. AME’s membership is comprised of a trusted network of volunteers who are committed to leveraging the practitioner-to-practitioner and company-to-company shared learning experience. Two of those members spoke with Automation World about their experiences in manufacturing excellence.

Becky Morgan, president of Fulcrum Consulting Works Inc., Cleveland, says, “What’s the purpose of operations? Even in a service company, I see three. First is to deliver on the brand promise. Next is to provide a competitive advantage. Third is to do both profitably and reliably. Companies spend from thousands to millions of dollars to say what they are, but it is manufacturing that must define that brand promise. Look at Apple. Its strength is product development, design and marketing cool. But without operations delivering the products, it’s all without substance.”

One problem with operations executives stems from coming up from the shop floor experiences. “Companies that don’t have an operations strategy wind up with an ‘order/fill’ mentality,” says Morgan. “It’s a reactionary mode. The strategic mode is to figure out how best to provide the brand promise. Operations strategy must be built on business and marketing strategy. The problem is, people in operations are not taught to think and behave strategically. It’s been run by the expeditor who rides in on a white horse to save the day. This hero-based strategy just doesn’t work.”

Ken Rolfes heads KDR Associates, a Carlsbad, Calif., consulting group that “works with manufacturers and service companies to get them on the path to profitability.” He focuses on educating management on using tools to strategically help companies align their organizations. “Most of the time, companies get in their own way by having what they call strong ...