Michael Hammer, co-founder of the Business Process Re-engineering Management theory, said that 50% of companies fail to ‘do lean’ and for 70% of companies who have tried, lean was not fully implemented.
Will Stirling finds out what obstacles lean faces in an organisation.
No longer just a matter of decreasing costs through improved efficiency, pressure on manufacturers towards sustainable production methods have come from environmental legislation and the expectations of society.
Lorenzo Spoerry reports.
Notorious for the trauma it can cause to business infrastructure, enterprise resource planning has nonetheless become a necessity for competitive companies today. How can manufacturers tame this intractable software shrew to optimise system potential and return on investment? Shepherd Neame tell their story.
On 12 November, 2009, TM’s annual Directors’ Conference played host to fierce debate over the responsibilities and requirements of UK manufacturing companies. One year on, has progress been made? Jane Gray investigates.
Talk of advanced manufacturing across all industry sectors has exploded in the last 12 months.
But what does advanced manufacturing really mean for UK companies in terms of processes, skills and competition? Jane Gray finds out.
Examining ERP John Darlington of the Lean Enterprise Research Centre examines the rise of ERP, its foibles and the forces it brings to bear on manufacturing operations.
UK manufacturers assessing the fallout of the Emergency Budget need to look no further for their IT silver lining, as next generation enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems embrace the pay-monthly SaaS model. This presents new opportunities to get ahead, provided that manufacturers aren’t seduced by fly-by-night ERP pretenders, warns Steven Hargreaves, group product director at Solarsoft.
Is green manufacturing possible? It is, according to Siemens. Roberto Priolo visits Answers for the Environment in Coventry, a two-day event the company has organised to address environmental issues.
Early last month, a group of East Midlands manufacturers assembled in Nottingham to sample the culinary delights of local fine dining favourite, Harts. The group discussed their experiences with IT and specifically ERP and, as Tim Brown writes, while no two experiences were the same, the consensus among those present was that paper based systems are unequivocally a thing of the past.
