About the IndustryWeek Best Plants Program

Candidate facilities are judged by a panel of IndustryWeek editors, who may solicit independent evaluations from manufacturing experts and other knowledgeable persons. The panel looks for evidence of:

• A comprehensive effort to achieve world-class manufacturing capability.
• Management practices geared to motivating achievement of breakthroughs in operating performance and customer satisfaction, as well as cultivating continuous improvement.
• Strong quality systems and results, including evidence of low defect rates and good process-control capability.
• Extensive employee involvement and empowerment programs, especially efforts to create and provide training for high-performance work teams.
• A strong customer focus, including formal customer-satisfaction programs, customer involvement in product design, employee contact with customers, and efforts to reduce customer leadtimes.
• Effective supplier-partnership programs, including efforts to solicit supplier evaluations of plant practices.
• Appropriate use of technology, as required by changing business needs.
• Flexible and/or agile production systems capable of responding quickly to customer needs and shifts in the marketplace. The flexibility may be the result of intelligent automation and information technology, just-in-time/continuous-flow production systems, use of quick-changeover methods, a multiskilled workforce, small-lot production, focused-factory plant design, or other lean initiatives.
• Improvements in manufacturing operations, including shortening of manufacturing cycle times, improvements in productivity, and reduction of inventories.
• Proactive environmental and safety practices.
• Meaningful community involvement and support programs.

Candidates for IndustryWeek's North American Best Plants competition must:

• Be a single manufacturing plant or a combination of related facilities within a specific geographic location (not to exceed a 25-mile distance from plant to plant) and under the direction of a single management team. To qualify as a manufacturing facility, the plant's output should be a physical product representing value-added.
• Have completed at least three years of operation as of January 1, 2008. Plant startup on or before January 1, 2005.
• Be located within the United States or its territories, Mexico, or Canada. Eligibility is not limited to plants owned by U.S.-based parent companies.
• Not have been honored as an IW Best Plants in the previous two years.

Completed applications are reviewed by a judging panel of IW editors. Using a weighted scoring system, the composite ratings of the judges determine the Best Plants finalists. The finalists receive a second questionnaire seeking documentation of achievements and presenting plant-specific follow-up questions.

After a subsequent review of the information submitted in the follow-up questionnaire, along with additional supporting materials, the IW judging panel tentatively selects 10 North American winners, pending validation during site visits. The 10 confirmed winners are publicly recognized. Finalists not chosen among the 10 winners receive plaques recognizing their selection as finalists.

All entrants receive the following: a customized benchmark report; complimentary access to the dynamic online IW Best Plants Benchmarking Database; an IW Best Plants Statistical Profile; and reduced or complimentary registration to the IW Best Plants conference.

• IndustryWeek spotlights the winners and their strategies for success in the IW Best Plants Signature issue, which mails each year in January. Gain national recognition and give your employees a public pat on the back for their hard work.
• Winners receive two years of access to the IW Best Plants Online Database, as well as two complimentary registrations to the annual IW Best Plants conference.
• Finalists receive one-year access to the IW Best Plants Online Database and one complimentary registration to the annual IW Best Plants conference.
• Applicants that do not qualify as a winner or finalist receive one-year access to the IW Best Plants Online Database and 50% off one registration for the annual IW Best Plants conference.
• All applicants also receive customized benchmarking reports that show how their metrics compare with all other applicants (in the aggregate) in 2008. In addition, all participants receive an IW Statistical Profile that provides benchmarking data from five years of Best Plants winners and finalists.

A fee of $1,000 for small companies and $1,500 for medium and large companies must be submitted along with the application. Based on total company-wide employment, not the number of employees at the specific manufacturing location entering the competition, Small companies are defined as independent corporations with fewer than 500 full-time and equivalent hourly and salaried employees. Medium and large companies are defined as corporations with 500 or more full-time and equivalent hourly and salaried employees. There are no additional fees for the validation site visits. Companies that enter five or more plants in the competition receive a 25% discount off of the application fee for each facility.

Click here to download a 2008 IW Best Plants application.

Early 2008	2008 Nominations open
mid-March 2008	2008 Applications available
June 19, 2008	Completed applications due
January 2009 issue	Top 10 Winners announced

For further information, contact Jill Jusko at (216) 931-9311 or jjusko@industryweek.com.