Solectron IndustryWeek Best Plant

Solectron Corp: IW Best Plants by John Teresko

To empower its employee strategy, Columbia (and the rest of Solectron) is dedicated to an ongoing journey of Six Sigma and lean manufacturing, says Petta. For example, several times a year it is not unusual to encounter kaizen events on the plant floor
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before lean arrived at Columbia, WIP typically was five days. After implementation of lean, WIP has been reduced to a half-day to one day. Lean also has cut employee "touches" as measured by the number of times a unit is picked up or transferred from one station to another. On average, "touches" have been reduced from eight to four, Petta says.

Solectron has long been a company focused on management improvement: Baldrige, Six Sigma, Process Improvement, Lean etc. Their stock value sure has not done well however. Partially this is due to the very difficult contract manufacturing competitive landscape.