Problem: Develop Your Career Potential

Take a Factory Tour Imagine that you arrive back at your dorm room one afternoon to find your roommate watching a Mister Rogers rerun. When asked why, your roommate replies, "Management homework." That may not be as crazy as it sounds. The late Fred Rogers, host of PBS's Mr. Rogers' Neighborhood, may well hold the record for factory tours. During his long career, he broadcast footage to millions of children showing how Cheerios, plastic drinking straws, raincoats, pasta, blue jeans, spoons, and a host of other products are made. He was even at Crayola when the one- billionth crayon rolled off the production line. (He also broadcast footage of how Crayola crayons are made and packaged.) For years, John Ratzenberger (known for his role as Cliff Clavin on Cheers and as a regular voice in Pixar animated feature movies (most recently Mustafa the waiter in Ratatouille), hosted a cable television program titled Made in America that features nothing but factory tours around the United States. The Food Network also broadcasts a program that describes how all kinds of food products are manufactured. Beyond the world of television, however, each year thousands of people visit corporate facilities like these:

• The Boeing Everett Tour Center outside Seattle introduces visitors to how Boeing makes its 747, 767, and 777 passenger jets.

• Steinway & Sons in Queens, New York, offers a 2½-hour tour that is like a master class. Each Steinway piano takes about a year to build, so you will be able to see pianos at every stage of the production process.

• Ben & Jerry's in Waterbury, Vermont, offers tours accompanied with a scoop of whatever flavor ice cream was made that day.

• Tabasco Factory on Avery Island, Louisiana, is part factory tour, part nature preserve. You can see how the pepper sauce is aged in oak barrels and then step outside to see Bird City, a special structure devised by E. A. McIlhenny to provide a sanctuary for snowy egrets.

• Mack Truck has an assembly plant in Macungie, Pennsylvania. The production line is a mile and a half long, so wear comfortable shoes!

• Yuengling Brewery in Pottsville, Pennsylvania, also offers tours, which include a trip to the cave where the nation's oldest brewery used to age its beer.

• Louisville Slugger in Louisville, Kentucky (where else?), offers a factory tour at the end of which you receive a miniature Slugger bat to take home.

• Harley-Davidson plants in Milwaukee, Kansas City, and York, Pennsylvania, offer factory tours for teens and adults.

• Carousel Magic in Mansfield, Ohio, is one of the few remaining carousel horse manufacturers and restorers. Many companies no longer open their factories for tours. Kellogg's in Battle Creek, Michigan, ceased giving factory tours in 1986, but now the company operates a museum/activity center called Cereal City. Other companies say they offer factory tours, but in reality the tour is just a marketing device. Budweiser in St. Louis has an enormous visitor center for its tours, but you won't be able to see any of the actual production-just videos and the various outbuildings on the Anheuser-Busch campus. Still other companies offer virtual tours of their operations. Just Born, maker of Marshmallow Peeps, Mike & Ikes, and Hot Tamales, offers a static tour of the Peep production line.

Hershey Foods also has an online tour. Your assignment is to take a factory tour. Use the Internet or other resources to locate a factory tour near you. The site Factory Tours USA organizes tours by state, so locating something interesting is easy.

Questions: 1. What steps or procedures does the company take to ensure the quality of its products?

2. How does the company measure productivity, and how does its productivity compare with others in the industry?

3. Using the vocabulary from the chapter, describe the basic steps used to make the finished products in this factory.

4. What did you find most impressive about this company or its manufacturing processes? Based on what you read in the chapter, describe one thing the company could do differently to improve quality, increase productivity, or reduce inventory.