Building a Showcase Culture: Powerful and Practical Keys for Manufacturing - Hardcover

Lado, Mark

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1732047502 ISBN 13: 9781732047501

Publisher: Global Manufacturing Services, 2018

Synopsis

This book is for those who want to become factory showcase leaders. Readers learn various tools and techniques along a structured path and will be able to apply them or evaluate their company's effectiveness. The information is useful for:           
- Manufacturing Operation leaders
- Department and functional staff, supervisors, and team leaders
- Students studying engineering, operations, supply chain, production planning, finance, human resources, quality, and business administration
- Entrepreneurs starting new manufacturing enterprises
          
The focus is on the necessary elements for individuals to develop leadership capabilities in manufacturing. The elements address the requirements to make it possible for employees to add greater value. In addition, the approach builds knowledge, factory strength, and collectively establishes a factory showcase culture. The elements presented apply to raw material processing through to advanced technologies such as: 3-D printing and nano-technology. The 4th industrial revolution will introduce more innovation, more digital technology, and a less labor-intensive environment, but the lessons in this book will stand the test of time for any manufacturing facility. If the destination is having a factory showcase culture, then the steps of the journey are:
- Orientation
- Foundation
- Conditioning
- Competitiveness
          Part 1 - Orientation is how the company introduces itself to New Hires and to other external people, such as customers, suppliers, contractors, etc. Orientation is visual, mindset, behavioral, and training based. It represents the company's standard operating practices for managing data using Key Performance Indicators (KPIs), which have to be learned, practiced, and honed for improvement.
          Part 2 - Foundation is the core of a company's processes. It is a collection of various systems and practices that are the basis for the company's success. Foundation is purely operational in nature and builds upon the Orientation section. The Foundation section does not stand-alone -- it must be used along with the other main elements.
          Part 3 - Conditioning builds upon Orientation and Foundation. It's the culture of motivating people, using daily routines, data collection and analysis, auditing to ensure compliance, coordinating resources to take actions, and responding to various inputs using analytics.
          Part 4 - Competitiveness is the way in which a company demonstrates its advantages by implementing short-term plans with long-term investments, strategies, and vision.

About this title

From the Author

I have been very fortunate to have worked in several different industries and in various manufacturing operations roles. I have extensive work-life experiences in Asia, Europe, and the USA, and have had several great mentors, as well as opportunities to work with some great companies. 
 
My first professional position after graduating with a BS in Industrial Engineering Technology from SUNY Polytechnic was with GE Aerospace, where I had two mentors helping me learn about make versus buy, supplier development, supplier management, and how to use various inspection gages and equipment. I often reflect on these times, since they remind me how critical this was in my own development. 
 
After several years at GE, I decided to obtain an MBA, since I wanted to gain business management knowledge and move up the corporate ladder. Earning my MBA from University of North Florida allowed me to work at Jabil Circuit, Saturn Electronics and Engineering, TRW Automotive (now ZF-TRW), and WABCO. TRW Automotive launched my global career and accelerated my learning from building new manufacturing facilities in several Asian countries to globally defining and developing a warranty management system. 
 
My first international assignment was in Thailand. This is where I was first exposed to a hands-on, in-your-face global business environment. Every day, I was exposed to something I had never encountered previously in my studies or work experiences, from communicating with Thai people by drawing engineering diagrams on a whiteboard to taking three-wheeled motorcycle rickshaws across Bangkok to see customers and suppliers or just to get something to eat. 
 
I was determined to succeed and behaved like a stereotypical American. To this day, I am still tough-minded, but much more open-minded. Here is where I learned to be culturally sensitive and adaptive to various situations. I was expected to participate in strategic management activities and be able to micro-manage various functional details as we started to build a new factory in the middle of a vast pineapple field an hour's drive from the city of Pattaya. Every day, I looked forward to testing my capabilities and seeing my previous day's work pan out to be a failure or success. On the weekends, I would reflect on the impact of those activities and decisions and assess whether I could have done something different. In addition, I studied the Thai language, and had time to recharge my mind for the next exciting week. 
 
After several years in Thailand, I moved onto other projects in Australia, Malaysia, South Korea, Germany, UK, and the USA. I was becoming more of a global manufacturing operations leader, with key insights into various working cultures, as well as a growing understanding of various languages. While working globally, regionally, or within a certain country or factory, I was highly sensitive to the operation's culture, their management ways, prioritizing criteria, and how and in which ways I could adapt my management style to accomplish my goals and business key performance indicators.
 
As I was finishing a project in the UK and Germany, I accepted a general manager position in China. This is where I gained extensive hands-on application of the various tools and techniques written about in this book from working with American, Asian, and European customers and suppliers. I was able to manage a state-owned enterprise and initiate their first exports to Germany, as well as establish a new, significantly larger automotive parts manufacturing business.
 
Then I moved into a director's role in China, where I gained the experience of managing several factories and developed various skill sets essential to those manufacturing operations teams, including operational finance; business case analysis; Daily Routines; project management for building new sites; product launches; joint venture management; warehouse and distribution management; and management of wholly owned foreign investments. 
 
Eventually, after 20 years of experiences around the world, I started a manufacturing operations management and quality improvement consulting company. Through these experiences, I have seen both successful and unsuccessful approaches for managing a factory.
 
The result of this wealth of experience is this prescriptive book. Managers and staff can use part of a section, an entire section, or the entire book as their manufacturing operations go-to book. Individuals can use it as a how-to guide for advancing into leadership roles. And students can gain a technical, practiced approach on various tools and techniques as well as learn how to implement them.

About the Author

Mark Lado is a consultant, advisor, writer, entrepreneur, world business leader, master CrossFitter, master Olympic weightlifter, husband, father of 2 boys, former CrossFit gym owner, former PADI scuba divemaster, and US Navy veteran. He was born in Utica, New York, and currently lives in Baldwinsville, New York. Mark earned a BS in Industrial Engineering from SUNY Polytechnic and an MBA from University of North Florida. Mark has lived and worked in several Asian countries for over 13 years, including Thailand, Malaysia, China, South Korea, and Australia. Also, he has lived in the UK and Germany and several US states. He loves living and visiting many different places seeing and experiencing the sites, cultures, foods, drinks, languages, and making friends. He has friends in more than 30 countries and is always looking to make more friends, especially ones that like healthy living. His work experiences and job titles were also quite broad and has held nearly every job title in a manufacturing facility. He probably did not meet the minimum experience requirements for some positions he has held, but the company leaders believed he had the right positive mindset, work-hard ethic, personal confidence, desire to achieve goals, and they knew he had a keen interest to make the business successful. He thrives on being put into a high-risk business situation with little to no knowledge of that situation and just the belief that he can manage that challenge and make improvements. After many years of honing that trait, he decided to start his own consulting company and that is when his life opened up to even more opportunities. He considers himself very lucky to have spent several years with his wife raising their kids, as that time is so precious. He admires people with similar interests, such as Mike Rowe from Dirty Jobs, Marcus Lemonis from The Profit, Andrew Zimmern from Bizzare Foods, Bear Grylls from Man vs. Wild, and Joe Teti and the other experts from Dual Survivor. He is sure there are many others too, as they all have a similar trait, and one he shares - they all seem to experience great satisfaction from getting into a new situation, learning about it, adapting to it, and overcoming or accomplishing a challenge. Mark enjoys several TV shows, including How It's Made, Extreme Engineering, Top Gear, Fast N' Loud, Through the Wormhole, Wonders of the Universe, Physics of the Impossible, and Star Talk. For him, these shows provide a forum to think, be creative, explore the unknown, and fantasize about it.

Edition details

• Publisher: Global Manufacturing Services
• Publication date: 2018
• ISBN 10: 1732047502
• ISBN 13: 9781732047501
• Binding: Hardcover
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 366