Book: The 12 Principles of Manufacturing Excellence

(CRC Press: Boca Raton, FL) -- Explaining how to implement and sustain a top-down strategy for manufacturing excellence, The 12 Principles of Manufacturing Excellence: A Leader’s Guide to Achieving and Sustaining Excellence, by Larry E. Fast (CRC Press, 2011), provides a comprehensive, proven approach for delivering world-class performance while also cultivating the right culture through leadership and mentoring.

Tapping into four decades of leadership experience, 35 years of it in the manufacturing industry, Fast explains how to achieve vertical and horizontal alignment across your organization. He details a clear pathway to excellence via the 12 Principles of Manufacturing Excellence and provides a method for tracking progress—plant by plant and function by function. Emphasizing the importance of using lean and Six Sigma tools to improve your business, the book:
• Integrates strategy and leadership development
• Paves a path for culture change–Operator-Led Process Control (OLPC)—that prepares hourly employees to take control of their processes and prepares management to enable them to do it
• Details an audit process for tracking progress and ensuring sustainability
• Includes a CD with color versions of the images in the book as well as a sample manufacturing excellence audit, a sample communications plan, and a sample training plan that can all be easily customized for the reader’s use

This resource-rich book will allow you to spell out leadership expectations and provide your employees and associates with a clear understanding of their individual roles. Helping you keep everyone in your organization focused during the quest toward sustainable manufacturing excellence, the accompanying CD supplies the tools you and your team will need to pursue it with passion, confidence, and urgency.

Larry E. Fast, founder and president of Pathways to Manufacturing Excellence LLC, a consulting company based in Gainesville, Georgia, is a 35-year veteran of the wire and cable industry and held senior management roles for 27 of those years. He is regarded by some as “the father of manufacturing cells” in bulk cable operations in the industry. Fast is a long-time member of the Association for Manufacturing Excellence (AME), the Wire Association, and is a former member of the American Production and Inventory Control Society and the American Society for Quality. He also has served as a section chair for NEMA, the National Electrical Manufacturer’s Association.

Chapter titles

THE 12 PRINCIPLES OF MANUFACTURING EXCELLENCE
The Manufacturing Excellence Strategy
Manufacturing Principle 1: Safety
Manufacturing Principle 2: Good Housekeeping and Organization
Manufacturing Principle 3: Authorized Formal Systems
Manufacturing Principle 4: Preventive and Predictive Maintenance
Manufacturing Principle 5: Process Capability
Manufacturing Principle 6: Product Quality
Manufacturing Principle 7: Delivery Performance
Manufacturing Principle 8: Visual Management
Manufacturing Principle 9: Continuous Improvement
Manufacturing Principle 10: Communication
Manufacturing Principle 11: Training
Manufacturing Principle 12: Operator-Led Process Control
The Plant Manager’s Role
The Manufacturing Manager’s Role
The Materials Manager’s Role
The Process Engineering Manager’s Role
The Maintenance Manager’s Role
The Quality Manager’s Role
The Human Resource Manager’s Role
The Finance Manager’s Role
Sustaining Manufacturing Excellence

About The Author