Given rising production costs and decreasing product prices coupled with higher customer requirements, it is only through improved industrial productivity, as well as safety and social compliance, that manufacturers can be competitive. A significant number of well-known companies have been able to achieve significant positive change by aligning the entire workforce of their organizations to common goals. Each element has well-defined roles and responsibilities and is engaged in the drive towards change. The organization invests heavily in ongoing development in order to reach their desired goals.
However, many companies still believe in a piecemeal approach, only addressing change in specific areas without aligning the entire improvement effortwhich in turn limits overall profitability. Profitability is the result of the combined performance in every department, from manufacturing to administration, from operational overheads to raw materials costs. Often a factory arbitrarily sets productivity goals as the primary objective of a sewing line since it is then easy to calculate daily revenue. Supervisors are expected to manage the lines and somehow achieve those daily totals. But only monitoring pieces at the end of the line is too late to identify problems and improve performance. There are many other deficiencies throughout the production process which can also cause problems for which sewing operators cannot compensate. This is why many companies are still struggling with financial performance.
In order to drive positive change. companies require an overall improvement strategy derived from an in-depth analysis of the entire organization. The strategy is then broken down into mini-strategies aligning every person working in the company – managers, office staff, line workers – to the company´s common goals. Unfortunately, many senior managers today simply have no strategy and focus only on disconnected incremental change.
Furthermore, over the past two decades, there have been hundreds of programs carried out in the export world aimed at workforce development, industry safety, environmental protection and other ostensibly positive objectives. In practical terms, what have all these programs actually achieved besides some increase in employee theoretical knowledge and satisfaction.
