Measuring Manufacturing Effectiveness – Chapter 2: Manufacturing Time as a System

Over the past several years, I’ve been discovering a structured framework for understanding and improving how manufacturing organizations define, measure, and interpret “effectiveness.”

Not efficiency. Not productivity in isolation. Not isolated KPIs. But manufacturing effectiveness as a system that integrates operations, quality, reliability, capacity, flow, decision-making, and management behavior into a coherent measurement model. It may sound like a lofty goal. But please stay with me.

This article is drawn from Chapter 2 of my book, Measuring Manufacturing Effectiveness, which focuses on understanding time as a resource that is systematically reduced by cumulative and irreversible losses, at the end of which remains the time needed to manufacture good parts.

Finding Weaknesses Before the Customer Does

Co-authored with Mike Vella

One of the most effective analytical tools in reliability and quality engineering is Environmental Stress Screening (ESS).

ESS is a process designed to force latent defects to reveal themselves. It does this by applying controlled environmental stresses to hardware, accelerating the transition from hidden weakness to detectable failure.

The goal is not to test whether a product meets specifications. The goal is to flush out defects that already exist but have not yet developed into failures under normal conditions.

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Why “Good Enough” Assumptions Often Are

Co-authored with Mike Vella

If you’ve spent any time working with real manufacturing, reliability, or field data, you already know an uncomfortable truth:

Most statistical models assume ideal conditions that rarely exist in practice.

Textbooks often begin with assumptions like perfectly normal distributions, clean random samples, and well-behaved processes. Meanwhile, engineers are dealing with skewed cycle times, mixed populations, censored failure data, process shifts, and the occasional mystery outlier that refuses to explain itself.

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Turning Uncertainty into Informed Action

Co-authored by Mike Vella

At its core, risk management exists to protect us. It aims to reduce both the likelihood and the consequences of adverse events, whether those events affect safety, quality, cost, equipment, or project schedules.

Good risk management is not reactive. It is proactive. It assumes that future events can be influenced and, to some degree, controlled. That belief alone fundamentally changes how organizations plan, design, and operate.

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