Making Common Sense Common Practice

Presenting the best practices of the best manufacturing companies in the world, this book presents proven models for achieving world-class performance. Using a case study of a fictional company called Beta International, Moore illustrates how to increase uptime, lower costs, increase market share, maximize asset utilization, apply benchmarks and best practices, and improve many other aspects that ultimately raise your company's performance to the level of world-class. "Making Common Sense Common Practice" takes a good, hard look at plant design, procurement, parts management, installation and maintenance, training, and implementing a computerized maintenance management system. In discussing the successes and failures of the world's premier manufacturers, Moore outlines a stable path of growth for almost any manufacturing company. In today's tough competitive markets, "Making Common Sense Common Practice" greatly enhances your company's chance to succeed - and profit. The third edition features updating plus new sections on innovation, change management, and leadership. It presents proven models for achieving world-class performance based on real-life case histories. The highly readable, concrete style brings the key points to life through a case study of a fictitious organization, Beta International, which runs throughout the book, based on real case histories.

Table of Contents:
Manufacturing and business excellence; Benchmarks, bottlenecks, and best practices; Integrating the marketing and manufacturing strategies; Plant design and capital project practices; Procurement practices; Stores/parts management practices; Installation practices; Operational practices; Maintenance practices; Optimizing the preventive maintenance process; Implementing a computerized maintenance management system; Effective use of contractors in a manufacturing plant; Total productive and reliability-centered maintenance; Implementation of reliability processes; Leadership and organizational behavior & structure; Training; Performance measurement

About the Author :
Ron Moore, P.E., is the managing partner of The RM Group, Inc., and an internationally recognized authority on reliability, manufacturing, and maintenance strategies. He has also been president of Computational Systems, Inc., a supplier of instruments and software to manufacturing companies. Moore holds BS and MS degrees in mechanical engineering from the University of New Hampshire and an MBA from the University of New Haven and is conversational in Russian.

Review :
"This book is now in its third edition and so clearly its author is doing something right . There are good reasons why it is doing so well. First, it is written in a good, no-nonsense, trade-style, which will undoubtedly appeal to practicing managers - thus it is written in a 'how to' style - for example, there is a section on "Steps to Manufacturing Excellence". Second as well as being written in an engaging manner for practicing managers it alludes to a sufficient range of academic material to please academics who might also be interested in manufacturing. Third, it is timely because it is written at a time of crisis for many countries in terms of the demise of their manufacturing bases. The book is written in an interesting style, combining in-depth insights where necessary and more succinct, bullet-style approaches, where appropriate. Ron Moore has used life-like (though not real) cases as a core theme that runs through each of the chapters and this device works well. It brings cohesion and integration to the range of topic areas." - Steve Brown, School of Business and Economics, University of Exeter, UK, April 2006