The manufacturing plant floor is a continual work in progress. A machine breaks down and needs repair. A new employee joins the first-shift crew and requires time to learn his role. A significant customer demands emergency assistance, and the daily schedule is abruptly reinvented. A bad batch of critical components arrives from a supplier. Stuff happens; it's a universal truth. It's not even bad stuff, necessarily. It may be the introduction of a new manufacturing process that ultimately will speed up production but in the short term slows it down. Or it may be the last day of work for a well-respected shop-floor employee retiring after a stellar 40-year career. Nevertheless, there's another universal truth: Your customers want what they ordered, with no surprises. That means they want quality product delivered on time, with no excuses. What they don't want is for your plant-floor stuff to become their problems. These two universal truths aren't secrets. However, they do illustrate why running a manufacturing production operation with sustained levels of excellence is such a challenge, and why facilities that demonstrate such excellence deserve recognition. Moreover, there is much to be learned from such organizations, if you can find them. We have. The annual Industry-Week Best Plants Awards competition annually salutes manu- facturing excellence across North America. These Best Plants employ practices that reap performance rewards in terms of quality, safety, delivery, customer and supplier relations, and, ultimately, profitability. And they typically sustain such gains.
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