Quick-Reference Guide

Chapter 1: The Manufacturing Chapter 2: If Vision, Mission,

Metamorphosis Imperative and Core Values Don’t Anchor
• Metamorphosis is a struggle between now and the
Your Business, What Does?
future; the future always wins.
• As transparency increases, consumers can make
• While manufacturing will not die, individual informed choices on something other than price.
manufacturing companies will if they do not learn And they will.
to thrive in our evolving world.
• Purpose does not have to be world-changing,
• Profit maximization interferes with forever. Earning, and should not be quixotic. But if few share it,
saving, and investing of strategic profits facilitate endurance will be elusive.
endurance of your business
• Because every manufacturing business requires the
If your organization is intimidated by the requirements help of its constituencies, focusing on value that
of accelerating improvement, your personal, matters to them as well as yourself is a requirement
demonstrable openness to learning and calm guidance of building endurance.
through ambiguity will make an important difference.
Take a hard look at your mission, vision, and
documented core values. Do behaviors and decisions
Leading
reflect them consistently? Members of all five of your
Relative Rate
constituencies would love to believe in and care about
of Change
the future of your manufacturing business. Make it
easier for them.

Current
Falling Off Falling Behind Competitive Distinct World Class Competitive
Advantage Your
Business

Investors 04 05 01 Employees
Community
Trailing at Large

Figure 1.1 The Manufacturing Metamorphosis Imperative 03 02

Suppliers Customers/Market

Figure 2.1 The Five Constituencies of Every Manufacturer

1 MANUFACTURING MASTERY QUICK-REFERENCE GUIDE

Chapter 3: Enterprise Chapter 4: Relationships Were
Capabilities Easier in High School
• The day you are no longer willing to be satisfied with • Leadership requires a common understanding
what exists, you can begin the process of designing of how each of your five constituencies can and
for endurance. should impact your progress.
• Enterprise capabilities are not defined by your • Peer relationships, in which each party receives
product. They are the thinking, integrating, and targeted benefit for equitable compensation,
value-adding your organization has mastered that facilitate endurance.
differentiate you.
• It is a problem when a constituency is being failed
• The more adept leadership becomes integrating and no one notices or takes action.
organizational capabilities, the less ambiguity
matters. Whether considering quality, speed and cost attributes,
or competencies reflected in agility, resilience, and
If your products and customers disappeared tomorrow, responsiveness, all constituents impact your reality.
what important value could your manufacturing What one thing could you simplify to make it easier
business offer the next day? If that’s a difficult question, for them to help you?
consider which processes and capabilities would
enable you to replace those products and customers
with even better ones in reaching your mission. Those
are the enterprise capabilities to focus on first. Example: Defining a Relationship
With a Constituent

Your
Business

Building Enterprise Capabilities

Investors 04 05 01 Employees
Community
at Large

03 02

Suppliers Customers/Market

Business Design Development

Operating System Competency of People

1. Awareness 2. Understanding 3. Some Implementation

4. Broadly Implemented 5. Fully Implemented

Cost Quality Speed Current Year-3 Relationships with Employees

Current Strategy
Status Target Permanent Temporary

Mission 1 • Build into job descriptions 5 • Know, understand, • Awareness on day 1

• Start all meetings with this care about, relate • How their work
Figure 3.1 Building Enterprise Capabilities • Monthly supervisor/employee their role to supports it
discussions of it and any accomplishing it every day
concerns/misunderstandings • Help all partners
internalize it

Vision 1 • Build into job descriptions 5 • Know, understand, • Awareness on day 1

• Start all meetings with this care about, relate • How their work
• Monthly supervisor/employee their role to supports it every day
discussions of it and any accomplishing it
concerns/misunderstandings • Help all partners
The Business Operating System • Relate our what to the vision
during monthly town hall
internalize it
• Understand how
How We Think and Act meetings the what defines
the vision

Core 3 • Emphasize safety at work, 5 • Know, follow, • Awareness on day 1

Values home, and in community explain to others, • Comply with
• Monthly discussions of each correct others as corrections from
core value, with witnessed needed others as needed
examples and exceptions – • Ask questions, • Bring exceptions
develop employee response suggest they see to the
capabilities as needed enhancements attention of others
• Address repeat offenders
appropriately

Enterprise 1 • Identify what they are and 4 • Comfort with the BOS
Capabilities how they can be observed in • Know how role uses
every job and impacts
• Develop evaluation system for enterprise capabilities
each major process and its (ECs)
current status • Enact/suggest
• Identify best opportunities for changes to enhance
meaningful improvement ECs

Figure 4.1 Defining Constituent Relationships

Figure 3.2 The Business Operating System: How We Think and Act

2 MANUFACTURING MASTERY QUICK-REFERENCE GUIDE

Chapter 5: The Road to the • Alignment is not one-and-done.

Future Verification of significant decisions and actions by

overtly connecting them to the strategy should be built
• The fundamental question is: By executing our into leadership discussions. Similarly, all employees
strategies, are we pursuing the most effective should be able to connect their priorities and decisions
alternatives to make progress toward our mission to the strategy. That is how line of sight provides
and vision? alignment throughout the organization.

• The content of that plan, which defines your

road to the future, is the vehicle to create agility,
responsiveness, and other capabilities you believe
integral to success within the cost, speed, and
quality parameters you specify in its design.

• Defining the current best path to the future cannot

be an annual event; it must be a living process.

Strong strategy requires both vertical and horizontal

input in the decision-making process. Managing the
right level of detail in the development and finalization
processes is important to speed and effectiveness.
Top–down strategy without that input is typically not
implementable.

Mission

Figure 6.3 Business Operating System Litmus Test Example

5
Chapter 7: Transitioning
Operations from Tactical to
4 Relationships Strategic Thinking
Identify Required Enterprise Capabilities
3 2 Mission, Vision, Core Values
1 Grasp Reality • If your customers’ value-adding thinking isn’t
evolving quickly, you’re in a dangerous market. If
yours isn’t either, you’re in a dangerous business.
Figure 5.1 Which is the Road to the Future?
• Not every decision is strategic, but every decision
should be guided by strategy. The much-discussed
Chapter 6: The Fallacy of concept of alignment requires that.

Trickle-Down Strategy • An enduring manufacturer is always searching for

better ways to create and deliver more value in
• Your defined strategy will be guiding hundreds of support of the mission.
daily decisions throughout the organization, as
Reactionary, tactical thinking should be the exception,
well as setting significant priorities. If it doesn’t,
not the rule. Mutually finalized strategy and retained
what is the point?
line-of-sight deployment processes enable that. Leaders
• Strategy implementation will build lines of sight who consistently voice strategic considerations in
among all levels of the organization to strategic priorities and decisions propel the organization forward.
priorities, clarify connections, receive and incorpo-
rate feedback, and define meaningful metrics that
highlight both progress and exceptions.

3 MANUFACTURING MASTERY QUICK-REFERENCE GUIDE

Chapter 8: Overcoming Understanding why you have the current organizational
structure—and why a different structure might better
Obstacles facilitate endurance—is a great place to start.

• By recognizing and eliminating self-induced

obstacles, you will convert external obstacles into
mere bumps in the road.
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eiusmodaliqua.

• Our passion is rarely limited by low expectations, Ut enim ad minim

veniam, quis nostrud

but our progress toward it certainly is. exercitation ullamco

laboris nisi ut.

• Leaders have the tools to manage the many demands

on the business, not by reducing expectations, but
by defining priorities.

Which of the five common self-induced obstacles

described in this chapter is limiting organizational
progress the most in your business? Choose a single
step and begin diminishing that impediment.

Poor
Metrics
Lack of
Mission
Discipline
Slow
Decision-making

Figure 9.1 Circle Organization Structures

Poor
Prioritization
Low
Expectations

Chapter 10: The Evergreen

Manufacturer Begets the
Evergreen Customer
• One of the lasting challenges of an enduring
Figure 8.1 Common Self-Induced Obstacles business is retaining the commitment to passing
the baton of a healthy company.

• Businesses that endure focus on ensuring the

Chapter 9: Strategy Defines future, not on building a bigger today. Perhaps that
Organization distinction is why so few manufacturing businesses
do stand the test of time.
• Organizational structure is a strategic choice and
• The one competency that will underlie your future
should not simply default to “what we’ve always
is that of recognizing and adapting the capabilities
done.”
that tomorrow requires. That competency must be
• Companies are often organized by skill set or a process, not a hope or dream.
primary tasks, not by authority or decision-making
Making more and more money may please you, but
responsibilities. Structures rarely are designed to
the rest of the world really doesn’t care about that.
instill core values or magnify human potential.
Continually delivering increasing value as the mission
• If the executive team of an organization believes it and vision become ever closer gains the active support
has all the expertise it will ever need, endurance of all your constituencies. Some people search for
is not within the realm of possibility. Intentional, meaning; others create meaning by building a successful
lifelong learning should be designed in. and enduring manufacturing business.

4 MANUFACTURING MASTERY QUICK-REFERENCE GUIDE

About the Author
Rebecca A. Morgan is an economist by education and an expert
on the business of manufacturing by experience. Her 14 years
working in large and diverse organizations including Nestlé and
TRW enabled her to live the strategic and tactical thinking and
practices of large manufacturers. Since founding her consulting
business, Fulcrum ConsultingWorks, Inc., in 1990, she has worked
extensively with all organizational levels within a wide variety
of manufacturing industries and company sizes to maximize the
contribution of operations to the business. Her clients represent
a broad spectrum of industries, attesting to the expansive value of
her thinking: Moen, VitaMix, GE Reuter Stokes, Avery Dennison,
Kennametal, Kinetico, Pentair Water Group, PPG, Zimmer, and
more. Her sweet spot is with closely-held mid-size ($100MM-$1B)
manufacturers.

O: 216-486-9570
C: 216-210-9109
www.fulcrumcwi.com
Morgan@fulcrumcwi.com

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