TABLE OF CONTENTS It seems that everyone these days is in the process of trying to transfer the improvement methodologies they have used in manufacturing to the office environment. Aircraft Braking Systems Corporation (ABSC) is no exception. The low-hanging fruit of years gone by in the manufacturing sector seems plentiful in the white-collar environment. ABSC's efforts in the office thus far have been targeted and specific. The company is just at the beginning stages of expanding continuous improvement across the entire enterprise.
ABSC is rolling this out across the enterprise within the context of its Look Forward management system. Undertaking enterprise-wide improvement without a holistic management system already in place seems nearly impossible to me. If you want to ingrain improvement into the culture such that it is a way of life and not a project, then you must institutionalize a holistic continuous improvement management method. Whether you do it first or follow up with it just do it.
In this chapter, I will share with you a few examples of the white-collar improvement activities that ABSC has embarked upon to date. We will explore some activities that branched across the supply chain and examine some lessons learned that may be of benefit to you.
Three examples will be addressed in this chapter:
A Look Forward effort to reduce or eliminate delinquencies of military shipments
A concurrent engineering effort to reduce the product development cycle
A Look Forward effort that streamlined the supply chain interaction
