Fast Cycle Production

The common belief in companies (especially manufacturing companies) is that the less that you pay for labor, the more successful that you will be. This sophistic reasoning is commonly associated with the movement of manufacturing responsibilities to countries that can provide labor at low cost. It is also the logic used by some companies to escape the influence of unions.

Manufacturing companies in countries that employ low cost workers are also deceived by the belief that not only is their economic future tied to their ability to offer low cost labor to foreign companies, but that productivity improvements would not work for them.

I can’t even begin to guess how many times I have heard a plant manager say that implementing a productivity improvement effort would “never work for them”. It was either their culture that would keep such an effort from succeeding or it would be something like low labor costs. “Why do we need productivity?”, they ask. “We pay peanuts for our labor!” To them, the prospect of implementing good manufacturing practices in their plant would not be worth the effort or the cost.