Innovative Manufacturers Honored

Some of the most innovative manufacturers in North America were honored recently as recipients of the Shingo Prize for Excellence in Manufacturing. The prize recognizes companies that excel in process and productivity improvement, quality enhancement and customer satisfaction. The idea for such recognition is to show other manufacturers that world-class status may be achieved through focused improvement to manufacturing processes, said Ross Robson, director of the Shingo Prize.

Each of the recipients is a leader in its industry and all share a philosophy of employee empowerment as the means to achieve quality and excellence goals, said Robson. "Their success in using the principles of lean, just-in-time manufacturing demonstrates how applicable these techniques are to any manufacturing operation."

The Foxboro Company's I/A division (Foxboro, Mass.) is a worldwide supplier of instruments and systems used to automate industrial processes for the mining, chemical, oil and other industries. The company has reduced production cycle times from 17 to three days, improved space productivity 2.5 times, reduced warranty returns to 1%, and tripled sales per employee in four years. Their customer service level exceeds 99%.

LifeScan (Milpitas, Calif.), a Johnson and Johnson company, supplies blood glucose monitoring products used by people with diabetes. Among other achievements that helped the company land the Shingo Prize, LifeScan has increased employee output 740% in four years. They have reduced their price of non-conformance by 50% while reducing manufacturing floor space by 50%. They have virtually eliminated all landfill disposal of materials through recycling.

MascoTech Braun (Detroit, Mich.) is a supplier of differential gears to automobile manufacturers, and manufactures cold and warm formed metal extrusions, producing near-net and net-shaped products used in vehicles. The company was honored for improving setup times by 16%, increasing market share by 26%, significantly decreasing scrap and waste leading to a 27% reduction in their quality costs, increasing labor productivity 64% and sales per employee 63%.

A joint venture of Nucor and Yamato Kogyo of Japan, Nucor-Yamato Steel (Blytheville, Ark.) is a producer of low carbon steel for wide flange beams and H-piles for large structural use. Producing 1.75 million tons, the company has more than 50% of market share in its product after seven years of operation. Employee productivity has increased by 30%. Reduction of downtime has saved nearly $2 million in labor costs in three years and the illness and injury rate is half the national average.

Tennalum (Jackson, Tenn.) is a manufacturing plant of Kaiser Aluminum, producing about 48 million pounds of aluminum products for automotive and aerospace industries. Plant operations are managed by an all-salaried workforce of self-directed teams which has eliminated the need for supervisors. The company has had a 60% increase in production in three years, over 60% reduction in injuries and in extrusion press downtime, and a 40% reduction in order lead times.

Vintec (Murfreesboro, Tenn.) is a joint venture between Johnson Controls of Milwaukee and Ikeda Bussen of Japan. The company manufactures car seats and headliners for Nissan Motor U.S.A. They use a synchronized system based upon up-to-the-minute production orders so that seats arrive on the Nissan production line as they are needed. They have reduced customer costs by more than $2 million annually, have gone from 60 inventory turns yearly to 210, and achieved 98% participation in the employee suggestion system last year.

Named for the late Shigeo Shingo, a Japanese engineer who along with Taiichi Ohno created the original Toyota production system, the prize is administered by the College of Business at Utah State University.

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