Continuing the series on what makes a GOOD manufacturing organisation we come to:
Manufacturing Effectiveness 13 – Utopia for Designers
The unevenness of underlying strategy is best described with respect to what could be considered a utopian situation for some of the main functions within an organisation when left to set their own priorities:
The Utopian situation for Engineering Design is that the company is seen as an engineering led operation (by which designers really mean that it is design orientated) and my experience across a number of manufacturing sectors has shown that in the minds of the designers this often means one or more of the following:
- They can take as long as is needed to perfect the design of a new product – leaving the purchasing and planning operation very little time to procure raw material at optimum price and lead-time before full production starts.
- They can meet their initial targets for producing a design by producing one in a slapdash manner – one full of mistakes that have to be rectified when in production.
- They are far more interested in designing the next product, than in re-engineering the last one. Therefore, even after the obvious faults in the design have been removed – usually whilst in production – fallibilities from a production engineering point of view and cost premiums from purchasing point of view may remain in the design for the lifetime of the product.