Solectron Corp: IW Best Plants by John Teresko
…
before lean arrived at Columbia, WIP typically was five days. After implementation of lean, WIP has been reduced to a half-day to one day. Lean also has cut employee “touches” as measured by the number of times a unit is picked up or transferred from one station to another. On average, “touches” have been reduced from eight to four, Petta says.
Solectron has long been a company focused on management improvement: Baldrige, Six Sigma, Process Improvement, Lean etc. Their stock value sure has not done well however. Partially this is due to the very difficult contract manufacturing competitive landscape.