The White Collar Factory

Beyond the factory floor, there is an even larger opportunity to improve performance. The true world-class competitors have discovered this opportunity and have extended the principles that worked on the factory floor to the upstream processes that feed production, "white collar" factories. They have reorganized their white collar factories, moving away from junctional organization toward process organization to reduce both waiting and setup time. (See Figure 1.) Two of the most important of these processes are: