How far on the Continuous Improvement journey has your company travelled in order to achieve World Class Manufacturer status?

We bet it's not as far as you would like.

There are 4 speed and sustainability settings a manufacturing organisation can employ on the Continuous Improvement journey towards World Class Manufacturer status:

Setting 1:  Expert Based:  Learn as you go
Most manufacturers are at this stage.  The Continuous Improvement journey has begun, but many experts have been employed from many CI disciplines with no centralised method for management or measurement.

Multiple plants means multiple experts and this is expensive.  Progress is very slow and inconsistent.

Setting 2:  Codified:  Functional excellence
The organisation has documented some CI processes, but not all of them.  It is not a holistic system and is open to interpretation.

Progress is still slow, but there are marginal cost improvements.

Setting 3:  Systemised:  Organisational excellence
All CI processes are documented and a more holistic system exists within individual plants but not across multiple plants.

Progress is much faster and costs are decreasing.

Setting 4:  Collaborative:  Learning organisation
All CI processes are centrally managed and exist not only between shifts but between different plants.  All members of the organisation learn from each other and contribute to the success of the business.

This is the fastest speed setting, and there are exponential cost savings.

Naturally every company would like to be at Setting 4, but not many get there.

In this webinar Ton Aerdts from Blom Consultancy will be joined by Kevin Whelan from Competitive Capabilities International and John de Poot from HJ Heinz.  They will discuss the need for manufacturers to move towards a single system that not only allows intra-organisational standardisation of CI processes but also regional flexibility, and the ability to develop a collaborative, learning organisation.

John de Poot will focus on Heinz's recent moves to implement such a system across more than 65 sites globally - starting with four pilot sites in North America, the UK, the Netherlands, Spain and Italy.  He will outline the decision making process employed by the company when implementing a global management process, and show how the company is bucking the recession-led trend for contraction by investing in their plants, their processes and, importantly, their people.