Wednesday 11 April 2012

I'VE SEEN THE LIGHT


...and the tyre and the steering wheel and the ...

The Jaguabore is a little known creature who, like me, has toured the Jaguar factory in Castle Bromwich, Birmingham and been so impressed by what he saw that he spouts random facts to anyone who'll listen and sometimes to those who won't.

Their management style is so efficient that they are regularly visited by the management of companies such as Tesco to see how they do it. A couple of examples ...

The production line area is spotlessly clean. Given that they employ around 3000 workers on the site, how many cleaners are employed in the production area? The answer is none since all production workers have to keep their work stations clean. This means no need to employ cleaners for the area and also that no-one throws rubbish on the floor for others to pick up because they will be picking it up themselves.

A new Jaguar car comes off the end of the line every 2 and a half minutes which is the same time that the human workers have to perform their job as the part-built cars come past. A car takes about 35 production hours to make from scratch. All cars being built are already ordered so already belong to someone somewhere in the world.

Obviously each worker is dependant on the part which he or she is about to fit being there. How do Jaguar ensure that their suppliers deliver those parts so they will be available when needed? They fine their suppliers £10,000 per minute that the production line is stopped because of lack of parts. This gets their attention!

I could go on but I'll spare you. As you can tell, my gob is utterly smacked.




Image courtesy of Paul Martin Eldridge

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