What are you doing to improve new product throughput and to get more high-impact new products to market in less time?
You’re sitting in a senior leadership team meeting and someone asks the vice president of manufacturing what the improvement goals are for this coming fiscal period. “How much can we expect to reduce production costs and improve quality?” She looks across the table and responds “We’ve had a pretty good run at this continuous improvement thing, but I’m afraid we’re all tapped out.”
There are few manufacturing companies where the next question wouldn’t be, “How long will it take to find a new manufacturing VP?” Continuous improvement has become so critical that ignoring it is no longer an option.
Now ask the same company what it is doing to get more out of its investment in new product innovation and you’ll hear a different story.
