Each year IndustryWeek seeks out the best manufacturing plants across North America, facilities that are on the leading edge of efforts to increase competitiveness, enhance customer satisfaction, and create stimulating and rewarding work environments. Its further goal is to encourage other manufacturing managers and work teams to emulate the honorees by adopting world-class practices, technologies, and improvement strategies.
We call this annual search the IW Best Plants Awards competition, and our 2020 effort to locate and recognize such stellar facilities is underway. You can download an entry form here.
What do we look for in an IW Best Plants Award winner? Among the qualities we seek are:
- A comprehensive effort to achieve world-class manufacturing capability.
- Management practices geared to motivating achievement of breakthroughs in operating performance and customer satisfaction, as well as cultivating continuous improvement.
- Strong quality systems and results, including evidence of low defect rates and good process-control capability.
- Extensive employee involvement and empowerment programs, especially efforts to create and provide training for high-performance work teams.
- A strong customer focus, including formal customer-satisfaction programs, customer involvement in product design, employee contact with customers, and efforts to reduce customer leadtimes.
- Effective supplier-partnership programs, including efforts to solicit supplier evaluations of plant practices.
- Appropriate use of technology, as required by changing business needs.
- Flexible and/or agile production systems capable of responding quickly to customer needs and shifts in the marketplace.
Does your manufacturing plant have what it takes? Is now the time to participate? Get an entry form and review its requirements. (Downloading an application does not commit you to participating.)
Eligibility
Candidates for IndustryWeek's 2020 North American Best Plants competition must:
- Be a single manufacturing plant or a combination of related facilities within a specific geographic location (not to exceed a 25-mile distance from plant to plant) and under the direction of a single management team. To qualify as a manufacturing facility, the plant's output should be a physical product representing value-added.
- Have completed at least three years of operation as of January 1, 2020. Plant startup on or before January 1, 2017.
- Be located within the United States or its territories, Mexico, or Canada. Eligibility is not limited to plants owned by U.S.-based parent companies.
- Not have been honored as an IW Best Plants in the previous two years.
Due to challenges related to the coronavirus crisis, the deadline to return completed 2020 entry forms has been extended to August 15.
Download your entry form today. For more information, contact Jill Jusko, IW Best Plants administrator, at 518-323-9117 or jjusko@endeavorb2b.com, or visit About the IW Best Plants Program.
On May 18, the factories of General Motors Co., Ford Motors Co., and Fiat-Chrysler Automobiles NV roared back to life following months of suspended production due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Early in the pandemic, the three Michigan-based automakers and the United Auto Workers formed the Auto Coronavirus Task Force in order to align their virus response. Following pressure from the UAW union, which represents workers at all three automakers, GM, Ford, and Fiat announced March 18 they would close production at their plants for at least two weeks. Now, two months later, those plants actually are opening again, albeit with safety measures and fewer shifts than usual.
According to the UAW, the auto union will be monitoring the situation closely. “The UAW will continue to do everything we can to protect the health and safety of all members as plants reopen,” they said in a statement.
Restarting production might also involve logistical difficulties. On May 15, Daimler AG said they would suspend production again at its Alabama Mercedez-Benz plant after part shortages made continued operation impractical.
The plants might look a little different than they did before, thanks to safety measures. All three automakers say they’ve increased safety at the plants, including plastic shielding and signs enforcing physical distancing. GM and Ford are employing thermal cameras at the entrances to their plants, and FCA is providing employees with thermometers so they can check themselves at home. General Motors said on its website that each employee will be provided with a face mask, which they are “required to wear at all times, except when eating or drinking.” Ford’s worker-provided PPE includes a watch that beeps when workers get too close together.
In a statement on General Motors’s website, the Detroit-based automaker signaled confidence in its safety protocols implemented so far. The company’s Warren, Michigan and Kokomo, Indiana plants have remained open as part of GM’s partnership with Ventec Life Systems to help construct ventilator life-support systems. According to GM, those plants have not yet seen a confirmed case of person-to-person spread of the virus.
The companies have also signaled they will provide tests for employees. Ford Motors announced March 16 that it had contracted with health systems in four metro areas—southeast Michigan, Louisville, Kansas City, and Chicago—to test local hourly and salaried employees with suspected COVID-19 symptoms. Those testing protocols will cover more than 72,500 employees, including 46,000 near Ford’s Michigan headquarters.
“We are working on quickly expanding testing of symptomatic employees,” said Ken Washington, Ford’s Chief Technology Officer. General Motors says it will offer a test to employees who show symptoms of COVID-19 at work, and that workers found to have been exposed to the virus will receive paid time off.
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