When I tour a plant, I like to ask these kinds of questions:

• How is productivity measured? (Hint: If you can’t find it on the income statement or balance sheet then it didn’t happen. Here’s where the finance manager becomes the key staff member to be sure we’re telling each other the truth)

• What is the plant manager’s expectation for annual improvement? It’s important that the leader understands and makes it clear to his team that there is zero productivity improvement until inflation (e.g., increased health care costs, general wages, material costs) has been offset. Productivity must mean year-over-year cost improvement net of inflation.

• How well aligned and intense is the workforce around driving cost reduction through process and materials improvement?

• How well are bottlenecks known and understood?

• How well is the theoretical universe of opportunity understood on material usage, scrap, constraint capacity, and overall equipment effectiveness (OEE)?

• What evidence is there that debottlenecking is a focus?

• Where is the impetus coming from for improvement?

• How well do engineers understand their role in this? Supervisors? Operators? Others?

• What evidence is there that cost reduction is a continuous process as opposed to just being an annual budget exercise?

• What percentage of savings is carryover from the prior year? How much has to come from new projects?

• What is the process for sustaining control of day-to-day performance?

• What evidence is there that Lean teams and Six Sigma Black Belt and Green Belt projects are an integral part of the process?

• Is there evidence of a robust process for internal benchmarking? External benchmarking?

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