A Successful MDC Implementation

As you know, the real success of implementing any new idea or method needs a rigorous implementation plan. In this context, there is a normal and pertinent question:

What are the key points of a successful MDC implementation for getting uncommon results for productivity and/ or profitability?

To answer this question, for a successful MDC project, four points are recommended to follow:

1. top down activities,
2. design approach,
3. full time project teams and top down steering organization and
4. professional consultants.

I will briefly detail each of them:

a) Top management always makes important efforts to gain productivity improvement values. The figure shows that the results of project activities (left circle) do not connect to productivity gain as real improvement activities (left circle). Top management’s concern for project activities is always a single key point to success. The results are not simply obtained with adopted technique such as MDC or any other improvement approaches but the passion of top management for the project activities is much more important to success.

b) Engineered based approach left from present methods rather than the endless MUDA reducing, wastes improvement or participation based improvement. MDC is a tool for industrial engineers as professional, not amateur who are interested in present methods.

c) Specially organized project team with full time members. It is not easy to organize some amount size of project team, but you should do it.  The size depends on the object areas and/ or organization size. The rough estimation of a MDC project team is 10 percent of the employees from the area. This size can meet MDC project activities within 3 years. So, 30 or 50 engineers are not unusual amount of employees for such projects.

d) Then, the professional management consultants who well experienced to MDC are also significant to get excellent productivity improvement results. Although MDC consultants are just supporter for company requirement, remember that “changing a business requires dynamite and it’s a consultant who light the fuse”. The top management who hires the consultants always should be a key person and the eagerness of top management directly leads to uncommon results with consultants’ support.

How do you think you can achieve exceptional and sustainable results at the level of productivity and profitability using MDC in your company?

1. Manufacturing Cost Policy Deployment(MCPD) and Methods Design Concept(MDC), The Path to Competitiveness,  Alin Posteuca and Shigeyasu Sakamoto, CRC Press, USA, 2017.

2. Beyond World-Class Productivity, Industrial Engineering Practice and Theory, Shigeyasu Sakamoto, Springer, UK, 2010.

3. Design concept for methods engineering in Maynard Industrial Engineering Handbook, the Fourth ed. Hodson, Shigeyasu Sakamoto, McGraw Hill, 1992.