Manufacturing Excellence via Focused Factories?

The focused factory concept is frequently put forward as a strategy for ensuring manufacturing and maintenance excellence. The focused factory concept has been generally well received, but the advantages have typically been found in batch and discrete manufacturing plants - the concepts are much more difficult to apply to continuous plants. Even in batch and discrete manufacturing plants, the result within the maintenance function is that "the fire fighters have moved closer to the fires, but little is done to eliminate the cause of the fires."

Improved equipment reliability and performance rarely result from the focused factory approach by itself, nor does it adequately support related strategies such as lean or agile manufacturing - which require high reliability and performance. It is hard to be lean or agile when you are broken. Improving production flows and minimizing floor space can lead to significant production improvement, but can also lead to inadequate pull space, lay-down areas, etc, for maintaining equipment resulting in increased costs and downtime. Plant layout and production flow are critical, but they must fully consider reliability, maintenance, and operating requirements.

Synchronous experts can help you implement a focused factory approach to improve operating performance. More importantly we have the broad perspective to make sure production, maintenance, quality, and your lean strategies are integrated not sub-optimized on any one element of manufacturing excellence. Send us an information request to Sales@SynchronousLLC.com, or review our full service portfolio at our website www.SynchronousLLC.com .