Developing Self-Assessment Tool For Manufacturing Sector in Palestinian Market
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Date
2013
Authors
Mahmood Shtawy
Adnan Mansour
Majd Hanbali
Layla Arafat
Reem Salameh
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Abstract
Overview: Faced with increasing competition from all parts of the world, almost every industry, business, and service organization is restructuring itself to operate more effectively. Downsizing is becoming a trend. Each segment of these organizations must increase the intensity of its cost reduction, worker safety/health, earnings, and quality improvement efforts while working with a reduced labor force. Cost effectiveness and product reliability without excess capacity are the keys to all areas of business, industry, and government. Each industrial company seeks to survive in markets by enhancing, developing and searching for possible rooms for improvement. Assessment is the essence, and it's an essential step towards any development process that needs to be carefully developed and implemented, in order to identify weaknesses and strengths of any industry, and this is done by hunting the possible rooms for improvement. All industrial companies need this self-assessment process to go with the trend. This project adopts the self-assessment process through developing a self-assessment toolkit to provide a base for the continuous improvement process in the manufacturing sector. Business Excellence (EFQM) Top View defines Self-assessment as a model that offers helpful information and clear answers for the most common questions regarding and organizations current level of excellence in terms of its strengths and areas of improvement on the basis of which top management make their decisions and assist the organization in choosing the right strategy to move forward. Moreover Total Quality Management (TQM) Top View defines it as a process of evaluating an organization against a model based on TQM. Self-assessment is anticipated as a tool for measuring the progress of TQM within an organization. It helps to identify areas of improvement and should serve as basis for future plan of actions. In this way, it provides the input for the quality improvement process. Project objectives This project is adopted to help achieving the following objectives: Developing general self-assessment tools that are applicable to most types of industrial factories and filled by its internal staff. Developing general self-assessment tools that help providing guidance in the consideration of improvement measures. Enhancing the capabilities of the Palestinian manufacturing sector to conduct a self-assessment process that supports the continuous improvement process. Facilitating the assessment of the current status of any facility. Discover the possible rooms for improvement which can be treated to achieve the industries goals. Assessing fundamental approaches of operation analysis which considered being the incentive step towards any improvement process in factories. Encourages the facilities to identify and explore their capabilities, strengths and weaknesses. Project Outcome In order to achieve these objectives a toolkit containing several checklists were selected and chosen to be the generic tool for the self-assessment process. Checklists were designed and developed as a tool for the self-assessment and it should help in assessing the compliance of several fundamental operational approaches in factories which leads to many rooms for improvements. The project resulted in developing a toolkit that is consisting of the following seven checklists: Material Handling Checklist Plant Layout Checklist Material Management Checklist Quality Management Checklist Inventory Management Checklist Safety and ergonomics Checklist Maintenance Checklist Each one of these checklists is used to evaluate and assess the main principles and aspects in each main approach by addressing questions that highlights weaknesses and so working on improving them. Checklists were tested and implemented for efficiency purposes. The toolkit is supported with an excel model and scoring system that helps in shading the light on the possible rooms for improvement, and providing rates and scores for each one of the seven fundamental approaches to work on the gap- between the current stat and the preferred stat- that will be discovered after applying the toolkit.