Curious Cat Management Improvement Blog: Deming, lean thinking, innovation, customer focus, continual improvement, six sigma.
July 6, 2006
North American Manufacturing

Can North American manufacturers thrive again? by David Hogg

I once again feel compelled to point out that the USA is still manufacturing more than ever and its share of Global manufacturing is either not declining or declining very slightly.

The sad part is that employees seem to understand what managers do not. Why do you think that nearly 63,000 people applied for only 2,000 production line jobs at a new Toyota plant in Texas in just two weeks? Workers realize that Toyota offers the right environment for them to grow. They have grown tired of the lack of respect offered by most North American companies.


Well said. Also note, Toyota the most lean of all automobile companies is in the news announcing hiring new employees in North America. The others are announcing job cuts. Lean manufacturing is not about job cuts.

According to leaders within the Assn. for Manufacturing Excellence, some 80 percent of the nearly 495,000 North American manufacturers with five or more employees have yet to make a commitment to mount a credible attack on waste in their organization. And even among the 20 percent that has done something, some 70 percent have done nothing more than implement something they call lean but is little more than the implementation of some lean tools.

Applying a few lean and other quality tools can help but it won’t make a huge difference. What is needed are significant changes in the way the organization functions and all the employees think.

One Response to “North American Manufacturing”

  1. CuriousCat » Popular Mechanics: Made in the USA Says:
    February 19th, 2008 at 8:57 pm

    “America’s manufacturing sales stagnated at the $4 trillion mark in the late 1990s. But then something surprising happened. America started selling again—finding more customers for tractors, steel, plastics, knives and medicines than ever before. Manufacturing sales hit a record $5 trillion in 2006…”

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