Book Review: 12 Principles of Manufacturing Excellence

Explaining how to implement and sustain a top-down strategy for manufacturing excellence, The 12 Principles of Manufacturing Excellence: A Leader’s Guide to Achieving and Sustaining Excellence, by Larry E. Fast (CRC Press, 2011), provides a comprehensive, proven approach for delivering world-class performance while also cultivating the right culture through leadership and mentoring.

Written for operations and manufacturing leaders and supervisors, this book provides a blueprint for virtually anyone that is challenged to find efficiency and profitability in their business. The text's comprehensive approach provides guidance on cultivating the right culture through leadership and mentoring. The author guides readers along the path to achieving organization alignment, both vertically and horizontally, across the entire structure of their organization. He provides readers with a method for tracking progress-plant by plant, and function by function.

Tapping into four decades of leadership experience, 35 years of it in the manufacturing industry, Larry Fast explains how to achieve vertical and horizontal alignment across your organization. He details a clear pathway to excellence via the 12 Principles of Manufacturing Excellence and provides a method for tracking progress—plant by plant and function by function. Emphasizing the importance of using Lean and Six Sigma tools to improve your business, the book chapters:

THE 12 PRINCIPLES OF MANUFACTURING EXCELLENCE

The Manufacturing Excellence Strategy

Manufacturing Principle 1: Safety

Manufacturing Principle 2: Good Housekeeping and Organization

Manufacturing Principle 3: Authorized Formal Systems

Manufacturing Principle 4: Preventive and Predictive Maintenance

Manufacturing Principle 5: Process Capability

Manufacturing Principle 6: Product Quality

Manufacturing Principle 7: Delivery Performance

Manufacturing Principle 8: Visual Management

Manufacturing Principle 9: Continuous Improvement

Manufacturing Principle 10: Communication

Manufacturing Principle 11: Training

Manufacturing Principle 12: Operator-Led Process Control

The Plant Manager’s Role

The Manufacturing Manager’s Role

The Materials Manager’s Role

The Process Engineering Manager’s Role

The Maintenance Manager’s Role

The Quality Manager’s Role

The Human Resource Manager’s Role

The Finance Manager’s Role

Sustaining Manufacturing Excellence

12 Principles of Manufacturing Excellence was a best seller in its category and a 2nd Edition was published Sept. 24, 2015. It features a new Chapter 1 on leadership, various updates of anecdotes, and new electronic tools on the accompanying CD.

This resource-rich book will allow you to spell out leadership expectations and provide your employees and associates with a clear understanding of their individual roles. Helping you keep everyone in your organization focused during the quest towards sustainable manufacturing excellence, the accompanying CD supplies the tools you and your team will need to pursue it with passion, confidence, and urgency.

Fast’s book encompasses most if not all of the areas of manufacturing excellence that are important to our business and leadership culture. It is full of common sense examples of implementations, and ideas that, when embraced by leadership, can be sold to associates that are committed to the journey. The simplicity in which these principles are described and the requirements of various management roles in driving excellence through these principles are of great value to any organization that is serious about driving change and improvement.

I strongly recommend this book to others either thinking about how to begin your journey, or those who may need to re-energize your team that's already on this journey to transform manufacturing!