Introduction to Good Practices

These good practices try to demonstrate what “good” looks like in a manufacturing operation. They attempt to show how things tie together and why, if one functional part of the organization doesn't do their part, the whole system will break down. The role of management is to keep the organization focused on the big picture and working towards the general interest of the organization. Departments within the organization often optimize their own work processes without considering the consequences on other parts of the organization (sub-optimization).

Two keys to successful implementation of good practices are (1) build these practices into the routine of everybody's job and (2) discipline is extremely important, especially during the early days. Good practices should be routine job expectations that are checked routinely to make sure they are meeting the expectations.

The hallmark of a good organization is constant good execution of their strategy. This is discipline and executing known good practices. This is also boring and managers like to change, tinker and improve. If manager's don't distinguish themselves through change, how can they be singled out for the next level of management? Leadership needs to keep these issues in mind as they move forward with Good Practices.

Finally, don't put too much faith in benchmarking. This practice sounds great, you can go see what the good guys are really doing and just copy it and save all that learning. In reality you can only duplicate that success if you have their systems, culture and experiences (competence). What you most often find is that the industry leader will go out and look for ideas to improve but most of the time he is looking at himself and challenging himself to improve.

Areas Covered

• Projects

• Maintenance

• Reliability

• Operations/Production

• Leadership

• Business Planning

• Performance Monitoring and Tracking (Metrics)

• Safety

• Roles of support services

• Accounting

• Capital or Expense

• Environmental

• Legal

• Inspection

• Risk-Based Decision Making

• Engineering

• Training & Competency Assurance