When times are tough, competition is bearing down, and customers are proving impossible to please, it's often tempting to search for the silver bullet — that one quick, easy change that promises to turn things around overnight.
But transforming your business is rarely — if ever — that easy. Just ask the winners of this year's Managing Automation Progressive Manufacturing High Achiever Awards. The nine companies profiled in this issue have proven that it takes much more than implementing a new software solution or adopting a new management slogan to respond successfully to the challenges brought by increasingly intense global competition. It requires a willingness to take on the hard work of forcing often difficult cultural change onto an organization and backing that up with technology investments and process improvements that sometimes go against conventional thinking.
Take Glatfelter, a $1 billion maker of paper products and the winner of the Innovation Mastery High Achiever Award for 2007. Facing increasing pressure from larger, offshore competitors, Glatfelter decided its best bet for survival was to grow through product innovation. The company expanded and centralized its new product development function, standardized NPD processes, invested in technology, and, within four years, increased its annual new product contribution to revenue from 15% to 50%.
Glatfelter and the other seven winners of the 2007 High Achiever awards were recognized — on June 14 in Las Vegas at a ceremony during MA's third annual Progressive Manufacturing Summit Conference — by a group of eight distinguished manufacturing experts who make up the Progressive Manufacturing advisory and judging panel. From all of the nominations for the awards, the panel picked eight manufacturing companies that demonstrated the highest achievement in mastering the eight disciplines that define Progressive Manufacturing: Business Model Mastery, Customer Mastery, Data & Integration Mastery, Education & Training Mastery, Innovation Mastery, Leadership Mastery, Operational Excellence Mastery, and Supply Network Mastery.