Lasting Improvements in Manufacturing Performance - Essay Example

'The notion of 'best practice' in production and operations management is essentially false.' Discuss. Best Practices by implication point towards the idea of status quo that works best and is time tested and hence that may be undertaken multiple number of time (templetized) to achieve the same result. But this assumption is itself flawed, since to attain a kind of constancy or to repeat similar or same outcome is not only impossible, but an ideal standard that either deteriorates or becomes inapplicable to random situations or projects that may not be similar. Even when the conditions are similar best practices tend to stunt an organization due to lack of experimentation, challenge or risk and even if it help an organization meet its basic goals best practices are safe options that cannot help the organization grow or do anything innovative. Moreover, as we all know that without contraries there is no progression. Thus, the notion of best practice becomes a deterrent for a progressive state and its citizens or employees. Thus programs, initiatives or activities which are considered leading edge, or exceptional models for others to follow, for achieving a minimum standard that are that are successful and sustainable in social and environmental terms and can be readily adopted by other individuals or organizations. Hence, it has basic links to Taylorism1, waste management, minimizing inefficiency and ultimately increasing labour output thus maximizing revenue. Another general aspect is about synthesizing an Organization's broad range of experience from programme, projects, and makes it widely available to all, from policy-makers to practitioners. Thus, "best practice" may be defined as a superior method or innovative practice that contributes to the improved performance of an organization, usually recognized as "best" by other peer organizations. However, in establishing something as a best practice, it raises serious issues about how we determine what is a best practice to begin with. Again, in understanding best practices in relation to Production and Operations Management industries one must first understand their core values with analogies. The assumptions about Production and Operations Management must be elaborated, first, to support or defy its stereotypical paradigms, by which they are established in the world of economics and corporate jargon. Production implies goods or services that must satisfy the human needs or requirement and by transforming resources to outputs in the form of goods or services by the means of physical resources or physically driven resources. But production management has intrinsic involvement with the value added processes by the productive use of resources. And management processes in case of high productivity always seeks to eliminate waste, use improved technology, better production and operations design, involve better leadership management, produce better quality of goods, reduce material input, improved utilization of resources, strategic reduction in working capital requirements, reduction in inventory size, and improvement in manpower skills through training to say the least. Thus, two main objectives of product and operations management involves are product selection and understanding the product life cycle within the organized unitary body of interacting components that are inter-dependent and part of the suprasystem. This leads to process planning that assesses productibility. Nevertheless, management regarding best practices tends to value standardization against specialization. However, does true standardization restrict production Best practices are not always effective in every domain they are implemented. A related concern is that when network managers realize that multiple standards may be required to achieve their goals, they may become overwhelmed trying to discern the differences among popular frameworks and thus not effectively be able to implement best practices customized for their singular organization. Identification and implementation of a repeatable management process may not always be the key areas of best practices. Thus, one may conclude that what works best for a company may not work that well for another because the rules of best Practices aren't exclusive set of efficient rules that can work magic. It only means that a company can adopt certain guidelines (exhaustive and categorical though) and at any critical and comprehensive lengths to define and maintain their management framework and necessarily to get the highest output. But there are a lot of factors involved, like socio-cultural, economical, political, and so many more that can change the success rate from company to company, following similar practices. Again, there are various ways of defining success in different situation. Success and profit output for one company may be less than another company and yet the rate of increase may help the company claim a greater success rate. Hence, with best practices things are relative and thus cannot be judged under a single weighing variable. However, Best practices does seem to have added advantages of future options like interchangeability, various levels of standardization, enterprise resource planning on its sides, and logistics to take care of customer satisfaction within the supply chain process. Companies like Rediff.com which e-tails books, music, apparels and music are investing heavily in building a logistics infrastructure as one of their best practices for sourcing products ordered by customers (who are from various professional background). Blue Dart Express (South Asia's leading integrated air express carrier and premium logistics-services provider) too rely on the efficiency of their delivery system that can either make or break them. Again "InfoTech" (India-based Outsourcing company) use superb logistics operations to exceed needs and towards standardized superlative quality. Best Practices like Virtual Prototyping is being used to reduce product development time and cost by sharing partner expertise, technologies, resources and profits to achieve agility. Thus, this best practice happens even though these systems are deterministic in the sense that their future dynamics are well defined by their initial conditions, and there are no random elements involved. A common misconception about best practices is rightly quoted in the words of a Japanese industrialist to support the cause: "In 1986 the Japanese industrialist Konosuke Matshushita predicted that the United States would lose in the race for international markets because it is infected with the disease of Taylorism, with its disinclination to tap the flexibility and intelligence of the average worker".2 However, one cannot assert that a basic paradigm is made to fit all. Organizations are stretching their services globally and becoming internationally known for their operations. Thus the success of one in the global scenario gives another organization a desire to test these 'proven' methods as best practice so as to achieve these similar results. Thus using their best practices as the backbone of their own best practices make them implement them as generic ideas, concepts and techniques to make a name for them in similar field with similar ends and profits. Again, some companies combine the best of all the leaders to curve a niche for them that would help them to set better goals and even score higher. However, it is becoming apparent from a range of fragmented evidence that 'best practices' developed and successful in one context are not necessarily directly transferable to a comparable alternative. Best Practices also involve benchmarking company policies to keep on upgrading themselves against their own best practices. Thus inheriting from this efficient and progressive era boom, best practices too assert proven practices that should occur within the planning, implementing, and evaluating phases of the management control cycle that include day-to-day policies, data collection, and performance measurement activities. It primarily necessitates the development of a strategic plan that includes long-term goals, and provision for constant revision and refinement as and when required. This quantifiable action plan is always and primarily driven by the agency's material objectives. Thus, prioritizing goals or objectives annually and making activities to meet those goals are laid out. In addition, identifying stakeholders and involving them in the development of those objectives are important aspects of good practices, to get their assistance in defining what needs to be accomplished. Again, adapting statewide policies, like anti-sexual harassment, equal opportunity etc and also setting specific goals related to organization and implementing good data management as part of best practices, Human Resource Management, and performance measurement. These are then compared to the set goals of the organization and either benchmarked or re-implemented. 'Taylorism' nevertheless stresses standardization, that says treat everything the same "one best way": which equals modernist efficiency. There are a variety of analogies used, like in random and unique situations that involve challenges, standardized methods are often weaker than originality and flexibility, like Boxers with only one style may lose to street fighters. But what about a Boxer who was himself a street fighter This random analysis is used to present two sides to the argument. Hence, the definite question that, whether standardization is effective when the environment is complex/uncertain However, the answer may also lie in the fact that, in some cases, what is most efficient does not allow for originality. Moreover, good examples are the Wal-Mart workers. One also must understand that standardization is an assemblage of empirical experiences and categorical research methods. However, best practices like these have added advantages: it brought about an emphasis on efficiency. Taylor advocated higher wages and shorter hours for workers. For decades, the average number of working hours per week dropped for the average American. HR practice and leadership development practices may not be scientifically oriented in best practice, but much of his philosophy has survived and even thrived over the years - such contemporary business practices as total quality management, benchmarking, and systematic employee selection are very much a part of the Taylorist landscape that gives best practices its good name. Again, in his most important book, The Principles of Scientific Management3, Taylor writes: "We can see our forests vanishing, our water-powers going to waste, our soil being carried by floods into the sea; and the end of our coal and our iron is in sight. But our larger wastes of human effort, which go on every day through such of our acts as are blundering, ill-directed, or inefficient are less visible, less tangible, and are but vaguely appreciated." Waste, Taylor tells us here, is both a technical problem within the province of industrial engineering, and a human problem, the province of the new 'science of management'. The consumerist and marketisation perspective are still driving forces behind the implementation of the Best Value modernization programme. The aim is to include the service user more in the review process not only from the point of view of satisfaction surveys but as advocates to challenge basic thinking about service provision. Proving the notion of best practice as false would therefore be a little to essentialist in our perception, since it does allow a certain fracture in the idealist scene of production and operations management, by raising questions like: Does best practice allow an average worker to indulge in creativity Does it produce ennui, highly specialization of work area concentration thereby making the worker unable to multitask in unique cases In addition, the notions of best practices also include the successful methods of training, which uses its own resources to overcome shortcoming and gather better efficiency. However, we must bear in mind that the power and the attraction of these practices is that they are intuitive and straightforward. There are many studies and empirical evidences by many such theorists who have affirmed that organizations with a high speed of growth, had teams that had multitasking employees and were cross functional and worked at a balanced speed. Sustainability of the resource is the primary objective in all organizations. However, the biggest problem with best practices is whether it is being practiced at all, since some futures methods are extraordinarily resource intensive that require global research and lengthy business tracking and interview techniques! In such cases, the company cannot build up from experiences and strike out bad choices and resort to other actions since all its supposed best practices are neither time tested nor implemented to the best of its capacity. However, implementing best practices with complete level of commitment and tracking them for future use may not be a easy job and therefore lack of documentation may also lead to such assumptions that companies do not use best practices methodologies. Different methodologies require different levels of participation, which are hard to combine. Nevertheless, best practices themselves remain a testimony to strategic futures thinking based on assumptions about how the present is changing. Organizations also provide sustained and continued guidance through such activities as workshops, mentoring programs and diversity teams. A good example is Tata Interactive Systems, India, a e-learning and outsourcing company who include training sessions and brainstorming session as actively for each of its projects large or small, easy or challenging, so as to define their options, boundaries and roles for each arising situations and until the project is delivered and accepted. Again, role clarity also helps in making best practices effective throughout the organization. Other, smaller scale efforts can also be effective (and more personalized). Companies such as Southwest Airlines for example, create strong emotional bonds between people and the company, hires people based on cultural fit, and relies more on peers than managerial authority to guide the work. The Sand Cone Model explains how firms can develop a complete competitive advantage through an exhaustive and novel categorization of strategic priorities that are applied to the firm only and to its immediate and long-term requirements and goals. The trade-off theory suggests that firms will do better business and have greater success rate if they focus on a cluster of major priorities or a few priorities instead of trying to prioritizing everything on their list. The sequence as given by Ferdows and De Meyer (1990)4 shows that quality, dependability, speed, and cost efficiency must respectively be the overall priorities of most Production and Operations management organizations. Transparent processes where methodologies and objectives are explained fully to the participants are more likely to be noted than methodologies or best practices where the assumptions are concealed and thus not recorded. In addition, the benefits of strategic futures work may take time to realize and thus the best practices may not look to have been implemented at all or just is changed too soon for short-term benefits. Overall, best practices are more likely to have a significant impact if it is approached as a continuous process of learning rather than a quick one-off exercise. Some futures thinking best practices may filter into the policy area years after it has initially been developed and are re-implemented into everyday practice within the organization. Thus, best practices have its critical ways of proving its worth and tracking the practice through a definite formula of measurement and its resultant success through internalized practice may not always be a visible or active criterion within organizations who may take longer than intended time to prove the worth of these strategies. With an increasing number of progressive organizations that are realizing that, a commitment to continuous learning by the workforce cannot but impact organizational success and discipline - at least ideally. New roles demand new levels of skills (i.e., technical, business, team, interpersonal, and leadership skills). A commitment to being a "learning organization" through indulging in best practices needs continuous learning and skill development that are expected and encouraged-is critical, but rewarding nevertheless if implemented with a commitment to continuous and learning from experience or mistakes. Works Cited 1. Ferdows, K. and De Meyer, A. Lasting Improvements in Manufacturing Performance: In Search of a New Theory. Journal of Operations Management, Vol.9 (2), 1990, 168-184. 2. Kanigel, Robert. The One Best Way: Frederick Winslow Taylor and the Enigma of Efficiency. Penguin, 1997. 3. Taylor-made.(19th-century efficiency expert Frederick Taylor) by Robert Kanigel, May 1997 v37 i3 p18(1), Page 5. The Sciences 4. Taylor, F. W. (1911). The Principles of Scientific Management. New York: Harper & Brothers. Read More