World-Class Manufacturers Use Empowered Teams

Every year Industry Week/IW Magazine and the Manufacturing Performance Institute name "World Class Plants" based on various objective measures of manufacturing plant performance. Their Census of Manufacturers attempts to figure out what separates world-class contenders from mediocre plants. The 2003 survey compared plants that believed they were world-class or making significant progress toward it (25% of the 910 respondents) with those who admitted they had made only some or no progress (49% and 26%, respectively).

The table below summarizes the results related to team development. "High," "Some," and "None" refer to the self-reported progress toward being a high-performance plant, and the numbers represent the percentages of respondents within each category who reported using the listed management practice. For example, in the first row, 41%* of plants claiming to be world-class or nearly so reported that most of their employees were in empowered teams. Only 20% of plants that had made some progress toward being world class, and 17% of those claiming no progress, had that many workers in empowered teams.

*All percentages are rounded.

Reliance on empowered or self-directed teams was one of the biggest differences (by percentage) between top and lower performers in this survey. Note, however, that companies using those teams provide far more training and have better hiring systems to control who gets into those teams.

Source: Taninecz, G. (04), "Long-Term Commitments: Practices and Performances Validate Word-Class Plants," Industry Week/IW, 253(2): 51.