Companies strive to improve productivity, competitiveness

The majority of National Glass Association member firms are trying to improve operations, adopting a variety of methodologies and practices that increase productivity and competitiveness. Yet 36 percent of NGA members participating in the 2006 NGA Competitiveness Survey are still doing next to nothing. NGA members are most likely to use employee training programs—35 percent of firms already have widely adopted—26 percent use employee teaming/empowerment, 25 percent use benchmarking, and 20 percent use lean thinking/manufacturing methods. Among members in specific business lines, architectural firms are the least likely to be adopting improvement practices; 39 percent report “none of these.”The 2006 NGA Competitiveness Survey, its inaugural glass industry benchmark study, was unveiled at the NGA’s Glazing Executive Forum, which took place in conjunction with GlassBuild America: The Glass, Window and Door Expo in September.

Process improvements had a positive impact on customer service/support functions in 52 percent of NGA firms. Forty-two percent of NGA members cite positive impacts on purchasing, 40 percent on administration, and 33 percent in sales and marketing. Manufacturing surprisingly is an area showing little change from process improvements; 8 percent of members cite positive improvement.

Are improvement strategies/best practices important? Consider that in general 9 percent of members say they have made “no progress” toward high performance, while at the other end of the spectrum 52.9 percent have made “significant progress” or “fully achieved” high performance. Of those members that have not widely deployed any improvement practices, 21 percent have made “no progress” toward high performance and just 25  percent have made “significant progress” toward high performance; none have “fully achieved” high performance. On the other hand, approximately 44 percent of members have widely deployed two or more improvement methods and practices; of this group, not a single firm reports “no progress” toward high performance, and 79 percent report that they have made significant progress or fully achieved high performance with 8 percent reporting fully achieved.

Which type of NGA member are you? 

The author is vice president of Association Services at the NGA, dwalker@glass.org.