July 1997, Volume 3, No. 7
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July 1997, Volume 3, No. 7 Manufacturer's Library |
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With the accelerating pace of technological advances and expanding global markets, a manufacturing organization must become agile to excel, according to the author of this new book. Manufacturers must respond to unexpected demands, fleeting opportunities and fast-moving competition with innovative, first-to-market products and services that meet diverse customers' varying needs. In this book, one of the developers of the Agility Movement shows you step-by-step how to accomplish the transitioning of your organization from one mired in rigid mass production to one capable of flexible and fast mass customization. The book offers a pragmatic approach to creating an entirely new type of organization with no functional hand-offs. The book centers on the Continuous Transitioning System, with a self-rating matrix that helps you determine where you currently stand and direction you need to take along the road to agility, doing in minutes what now takes days. The book gives you a holistic view of the transitioning process, showing you how to transform every element of your organization: the structure, the leadership, the corporate culture and the actual business processes (see accompanying box). An extensive examination of the migration to high performance teams is included, along with a discussion of the latest in virtual partnering strategies to exploit opportunities presently beyond your capability. The book discusses real-world examples of companies that have undergone the transition process to produce higher value solutions at a fraction of the previous time and cost. These profiles point to the pitfalls and opportunities that will help you successfully transition your organization to agility. Gunneson is the founder of Agility Resources International (Mountain Lakes, N.J.), a consulting firm.
The Balanced Scorecard: Translating Strategy into Action, by Robert S. Kaplan and David P. Norton, Harvard Business School Press, 322 pages, $29.95, ISBN 0-87584-651-3 This book illustrates how managers can use the Balanced Scorecard to mobilize their people to full the company's mission. The Balanced Scorecard is a management system designed to channel the energies, abilities and specific knowledge held by people throughout an organization toward achieving long-term strategic goals. The authors demonstrate how senior executives are using the Balanced Scorecard to guide current performance and to target future performance. They show how to use measures in four categories - financial performance, customer knowledge, internal business processes, and learning and growth - to align individual, organizational and cross-departmental initiatives and to identify entirely new processes for meeting customer objectives. The book also reveals how to use the Balanced Scorecard as a learning system for testing, gaining feedback on and updating the organization's strategy. Finally, the authors walk through the steps that managers can use to build their own Balanced Scorecard. The book provides a management system for companies to invest in the long term - in customers, in employees, in new product development and in systems - rather than managing the bottom line to pump up short-term earnings. Kaplan is with Harvard Business School, and Norton is president of Renaissance Solutions (Lincoln, Mass.), a consulting firm. |
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