Steadily breaking through barriers: how Milliken improves performance and innovation

Citation

(2011), "Steadily breaking through barriers: how Milliken improves performance and innovation", Human Resource Management International Digest, Vol. 19 No. 6. https://doi.org/10.1108/hrmid.2011.04419faa.010

Steadily breaking through barriers: how Milliken improves performance and innovation

Article Type: Abstracts From: Human Resource Management International Digest, Volume 19, Issue 6

Haughey L.Industry Week (USA), April 2011 Vol. 260 No. 4, Start page: 37, No. of pages: 3

Describes how Milliken & Company, a multinational group of textile and chemical companies, employs a continuous-improvement philosophy based on the experience gained through the launch of 125 separate corporate initiatives focused on people, process and business excellence, and where the company measured anything that could make it stronger, including safety, customer satisfaction, on-time delivery, quality, and product development. Reports how Milliken customized the Toyota Production System to its own culture and operations, in the form of the Milliken Performance System, and applied the scientific method to new initiatives, examining and experimenting with ways to improve even the smallest aspects of its business. Summarizes the four “brutal truths” governing all efforts at performance improvement, namely: that the majority of performance-improvement programmes fail; organizations will founder unless they cultivate the trusting environment needed to perform honest self-analysis; organizations often count the wrong things; and facts do not lie, but they do not drive change either .ISSN: 0039-0895 Reference: 40AK291

Keywords: Business improvement, Manufacturing systems, Manufacturing, Organizational performance, Industrial performance, Organizations, United States of America, Case studies