Class A Lesson 15: Effectiveness First, Then Efficiency

20 Lessons From Implementing Class A Manufacturing

Lesson 15: Effectiveness First, Then Efficiency

After reading the title of this Lesson, my colleagues in manufacturing must be asking, ”Who are you and what did you do with Alex?” Isn’t it heresy in the factory to say that efficiency isn’t always top priority?

Answer: Absolutely Not.

Serving the customer (remember Lesson #1?) and speed-to-market can often determine the winners in the marketplace, and only the winners’ factories keep running, growing and optimizing for the long term.

When things go wrong in the factory – and remember that Murphy lives in factories – Time is critically short to keep the customer happy. Materials are expedited, people work overtime, master schedules are changed, lot sizes are sub-optimized and shipments are air-freighted. All of these actions are inefficient, but they are effective in serving the customer.

When bringing new or revised products to market, it is crucial to optimize as much of the product design and as many of the processes as possible. In fact, Class A companies measure themselves and pride themselves on concurrent product-and-process design collaboration. And truthfully, in the medical device industry, making any changes, post-launch, is expensive and time-consuming, so it’s in our interest to minimize the need for post-launch efficiency-driven changes. Acknowledging those truths, when launching market-changing new products we must accept that speed-to-market is often more effective for profitability than product cost, and therefore go to market with an inefficient process.

A tutor of mine many years ago made an impression when he said,” Anything worth doing is worth doing poorly……until you can learn to do it well.”

In manufacturing, that’s our challenge; serve the customer effectively and launch major products effectively, accepting their inefficiencies until we can learn to become efficient. Happy customers and market-leading products will buy us the time and resources to learn.