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ARTICLE IN PRESS
doi:10.1016/j.te
Technovation 27 (2007) 89–90
www.elsevier.com/locate/technovation
Book Review
Ron Moore, Making common sense common practice—
models for manufacturing excellence, Elsevier, Amsterdam,
2004 (£24.99, 478pp.).
This book is now in its third edition and so clearly itsauthor is doing something right, certainly enough for thepublisher to request an update. There are good reasonswhy it is doing well.
First it is written in a good, no-nonsense, trade-style,which will undoubtedly appeal to practicing managers—thus it is written in a ‘how to’ style—for example there is asection on ‘‘Steps to Manufacturing Excellence’’. Second,as well as being written in an engaging manner forpracticing managers it alludes to a sufficient range ofacademic material to please academics who might also beinterested in manufacturing. Third, it is timely because it iswritten at a time of crisis for many countries in terms of thedemise of their manufacturing bases. For example,according to Business Week, ‘‘Since the manufacturingsector tipped into recession in mid-2000, it has shed 2.1million jobs, leaving fewer industrial workers in the USthan at any time since the early 1960s’’ (source: ‘‘TheFlexible Factory’’, Business Week, 5th May 2003). Thenumber of job losses has increased to around 3 million inthe USA as of January 2006. Industry Week noted how‘‘Manufacturing is at a crossroadsy. We face fundamentalchanges, which if left unaddressed, could result in hugeeconomic losses and the erosion of our industrial leader-ship’’ (source: ‘‘Manufacturing’s Global Future’’, Industry
Week, 30th May 2003). So a book on how manufacturingmanagers can improve their businesses is pertinent.
The book is written in an interesting style, combining in-depth insights where necessary and more succinct, bullet-style approaches, where appropriate. Each chapter focuseson key areas of the manufacturing manager’s task. Thechapters are:
1.
Manufacturing and Business Excellence 2. Benchmarks, Bottleneck and Best practices 3. Aligning the Marketing and Manufacturing Strategies 4. Plant Design and Capital Practices 5. Procurement Practices 6. Stores/Parts Management Practices 7. Installation Practices 8. Operational Practices 9. Maintenance Practices10.
Optimizing the Preventive Maintenance Processchnovation.2006.02.003
11.
Implementing a Computerized Maintenance Manage-ment System12.
Effective Use of Contractors in a Manufacturing Plant 13. Total Productive and Reliability Centered Mainte-nance
14. Implementation and Reliability Processes 15. Leadership and Organizational Behavior and Structure 16. Training 17. Performance Measurement 18. Epilogue, including a section on World Class Manu-facturing
Ron Moore has used life-like (though not real) cases as acore theme that runs through each of the chapters and thisdevice work well. It brings cohesion and integration to therange of topic areas. Thus, key areas of manufacturing areaddressed although some are done so in more depth thanothers. An omission is how manufacturing can be a keydriver in the innovation process and this is a weakness inthe book. Another is the focus on operations on a tacticallevel rather than within the strategic levels of the firm.Admittedly, Chapter 2 deals with strategic issues but thiswas not sufficient. The key issue was nicely stated byRidderstrale and Nordstrom in their book, Funky Business:‘‘Let us tell you what all customers want. Any customer, inany industry, in any market wants stuff that is bothcheaper and better, and they want it yesterday’’ Ridder-strale and Nordstrom Funky Business (2000, p. 157). Theproblem with this is that although this is good forcustomers it becomes a massive strategic challenge formanufacturing firms and a strategy is necessary to addressthe issue of ‘how to do this’. However, such a discussiondoes not take place within this book other than on asuperficial level.Ron Moore makes a good case throughout for not
pursuing pure cost-cutting strategies but to focus insteadon improving operations across a range of parameters.This is sensible and convincing but the lack of sufficientengagement at strategic level might mean that the bookfalls on deaf ears. The average tenure of a CEO incorporate US and UK firms is 2–3 years. With that in mindit is hardly surprising that many CEOs have focused onoutsourcing and downsizing in the name of cost-cutting.This has led practitioners and academics alike to state howhopelessly short-sighted this can be.Lastly, in private correspondence addressed to me, Sir
John Harvey Jones once stated: ‘poor old industry needs all
ARTICLE IN PRESSBook Review / Technovation 27 (2007) 89–9090
the help it can get’. This book makes a good contributionand might just help ‘poor old industry’ although its focuson operations management rather than operations strategyis a weakness. For practicing managers, though, this willmake an interesting and possibly important addition totheir bookshelves.
Steve BrownSchool of Business and Economics,
University of Exeter, UK
E-mail address: [email protected]
