Every once in a while I go through back issues of Managing Automation to remind myself what the magazine was writing about at various points in time. A recent excursion to March 1990, 20 years ago this issue, revealed some interesting thoughts and predictions about manufacturing, many of which we are still dealing with today.
One, in particular, was a discussion about world-class manufacturing and what would separate winners from losers. Writing that year, Edward A. Miller, who was president of the National Center for Manufacturing Sciences, in Ann Arbor, MI, talked about what we now call business agility and the need for greater speed.
“Successful companies will generate products and processes in tandem in order to respond rapidly to changes in competitive products and markets,” Miller said as the 1990s began. “Flexibility, in terms of design and output, is the ultimate competitive capability in a time-based competitive struggle. Those that can rapidly design and manufacture new products in a flexible, cost-effective, volume-variable manufacturing system will be the winners. In the 1980s, quality was the major differentiating factor. In the 1990s, time-based competitive capabilities will distinguish those companies that can compete from those that will fall by the wayside.”
Sound familiar? As an industry, we are still working toward the goal Miller so accurately envisioned in 1990. But why does it all take so long? Why hasn’t manufacturing already arrived at the state Miller urged?