[The following news item appears in the October 1994 edition of
_Quality_Progress_, pages 14 18, and 22.]

                   MANUFACTURING EXECUTIVES PUSH THE 
                    BORDERS OF CONVENTIONAL THINKING

     What will the work year of the future look like? How about
nine months of work, two months of vacation, and one
month of training? That was just one of the ideas put forth when
a group of manufacturing executives from nine companies and one
union met recently to discuss enhancing and investing in
corporate manufacturing capabilities.

     The meeting, hosted by management consultant firm Arthur D.
Little, included a select group of senior manufacturing
executives from Allegheny Ludlum, Corning, Eastman Kodak,
Honeywell, Iomega, Motorola, Saturn, S.D. Warren, The Toro
Company, and United Auto Workers (Local 1853, Saturn).

     What follows are the key issues and insights that were
culled from the meeting. 

-- Manufacturing starts and ends with the customer. For too long,
American industry, secure in its global dominance in any given
market, built products without regard for customers.
Manufacturing must be the process of making a physical product
that people want. In the global marketplace of the 1990s and
beyond, senior executives no longer see manufacturing as simply
the process of making things.

-- Every step that involves the human element-customer, worker,
and manager-is integral to success. Manufacturing's most
important resource is people, without whom change, innovation,
and implementation of technology cannot be achieved. The pendulum
of change, once swung toward process and technological
enhancements, has returned to where it began-with people.

--Manufacturers must be able to adjust rapidly to changing
conditions while maintaining a balance of ongoing operational
systems. This will require the creation of an environment in
which learning and knowledge sharing are continuous processes and
in which managers are as good at managing human resources as they
are at managing technological resources. A new breed of
manufacturing leaders is being spawned by this change in
environment.

-- If continuous learning and knowledge transfer are central to
success, it is the manufacturing executive's responsibility to
create and nurture an environment that allows them to happen.
Practices that help create this environment include establishing
minimum thresholds for educational levels in work teams, internal
benchmarking, and forging partnerships with local technical
schools.

-- The key to efficiency is to understand manufacturing processes
especially technical ones. Once processes are understood,
disruptions that lower yields, raise costs, and reduce profits
can be eliminated.

-- The manufacturing industry must overcome the American spirit
of individualism. If another plant comes up with a better
process, managers should copy the process because it's the
rational thing to do. One executive said his company pits plants
against one another based on cost, quality, and cycle time.
Leading plants share their knowledge with the other plants, thus
facilitating improvement in every plant. Since 1990, said the
executive, the spread between the best and worst plant in any
given product has gotten smaller.

-- Human resource teams are as important to success as
technology. Some executives at the meeting said their companies
had changed the title of manager to coach, stressing the team
mode. For the new manufacturing manager, leadership and
interpersonal skills are often more important than technical
ability.

-- Training is of paramount importance. One executive's company
spends $120 million annually on employee training, including $2
million on literacy.

-- Work teams are being nurtured toward fully internalizing their
companies' values and becoming, in effect, process owners in the
companies' businesses. To help achieve this, one company has gone
to a 168-hour-a-week factory schedule in which people can choose
to work weekends or work four 1 2-hour days per week. One
executive referred to these types of practices as "people-first
scheduling." 

For further details, contact Arun N. Maira, director, Arthur D.
Little, at (617) 498-5493.