Paralelismos (parte III)

Continuado daqui e daqui.
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Mais uma vez chamamos a atenção para o artigo "The Focused Factory" publicado pela revista Harvard Business Review no primeiro de Maio de 1974 da autoria de Wickham Skinner.
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Skinner escreveu e reparem no paralelismo e na actualidade:
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"1. There are many ways to compete besides by producing at low cost.
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the persistent attitude that ways of competing other than on the basis of price are second best.(Moi ici: paralelismo perfeito) The other is that a company which starts out with higher manufacturing costs than its competitors is in trouble regardless of whatever else it does.
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2. A factory cannot perform well on every yardstick. There are a number of common standards for measuring manufacturing performance. Among these are short delivery cycles, superior product quality and reliability, dependable delivery promises, ability to produce new products quickly, flexibility in adjusting to volume changes, low investment and hence higher return on investment, and low costs.
These measures of manufacturing performance necessitate trade-offs—certain tasks must be compromised to meet others. They cannot all be accomplished equally well because of the inevitable limitations of equipment and process technology. Such trade-offs as costs versus quality or short delivery cycles versus low inventory investment are fairly obvious. Other trade-offs, while less obvious, are equally real. They involve implicit choices in establishing manufacturing policies.
Within the factory, managers can make the manufacturing function a competitive weapon by outstanding accomplishment of one or more of the measures of manufacturing performance. But managers need to know: “What must we be especially good at? Cost, quality, lead times, reliability, changing schedules, new-product introduction, or low investment?”
Focused manufacturing must be derived from an explicitly defined corporate strategy which has its roots in a corporate marketing plan. (Moi ici: e em quantas empresas existe reflexão estratégica?) Therefore, the choice of focus cannot be made independently by production people.
Instead, it has to be a result of a comprehensive analysis of the company’s resources, strengths and weaknesses, position in the industry, assessment of competitors’ moves, and forecast of future customer motives and behavior.
Conversely, the choice of focus cannot be made without considering the existing factory, because a given set of facilities, systems, and people skills can do only certain things well within a given time period.
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