Change is a given in manufacturing. Whether you’re meeting customer demands, fulfilling regulatory requirements, seeking ways to improve the bottom line or adapting to new technology, there will always be some aspect of change ongoing within your operations. So the question is not whether you can deal with change—if you couldn’t you wouldn't still be in business—but are you dealing with it effectively?
为了研究当今制造商所面临的挑战，以及在处理技术方面的最佳实践（一家独立的研究公司），对250多家制造商进行了调查，以了解他们如何在工厂变化。调查的答复表明，制造商每月或两次都会进行微小的更改，每年几次中等变化，每年进行一次重大变化。
调查被用来确定的反应top 10 drivers of change in today’s factories (see graphic accompanying this article at top). What’s most interesting about this list of changes is that it’s not just a couple of issues ranking highly with all the others coming in a distant second or third. According to Tech-Clarity, “On average, respondents chose more than six drivers for change per company… [which] leads to the conclusion that each company faces a large variety of reasons to make changes.”
更改的前两名驱动因素（提高产品质量和生产效率/成本）的排名不足为奇，因为它们直接影响了底线节省。正如科技责任所说：这些是制造商通常“必须改变”的原因。
遵循这些底线驱动的问题是与新产品和市场需求变化有关的战略性，市场驱动的问题。这些因素指出了为什么改善变更管理绩效使制造商更具竞争力。
As for the challenges related to implementing these changes, the biggest challenges relate to the difficulty of predicting the results of the change. From encountering problems in determining the true cost of change to being confident in their understanding of the impact of that change, uncertainty about change clearly rules the day for most manufacturers. As Tech-Clarity stated it in their analysis of the findings: “How can companies make good cost-benefit or return on investment decisions related to change in the factory if they can’t accurately determine the cost and other impacts of the change?”
Where the rubber really hits the road is in the business impacts from change. According to Tech-Clarity, these impacts tend to fall into two categories: project impacts and outcome-related impacts.
Tech Clarity’s analysis says: “These impacts often occur when things don’t go as expected, which is frequently according to the issues reported. Perhaps not surprisingly (because of the challenge of predicting costs), cost overruns are relatively common (43 percent). Projects are also late and take too many resources. Well over one-third of companies (42 percent) report unplanned hours or overtime during the project as a significant negative impact and 42 percent miss project due dates. Experience shows that companies are used to these problems and budget for them, but then still frequently miss their contingency budgets and schedules.”
The real problem is these impacts reach beyond missed deadlines and budgets and tend to impact factors such as quality, efficiency and new product introduction.
Tech-Clarity notes “these risks and their consequences are directly in opposition to the business drivers for change, creating a strong need to address the issues that make change in the factory hard to plan and execute.”
Access the full reportto read Tech-Clarity's take on what makes a company a top performer in response to change and the strategies they employed to deal with change-related challenges.
