"He who stops getting better has stopped being good. " Hans Schneider,
General Manager of the Siemens Amberg Electronics Factory, Industrial
Excellence Award overall winner 2007 There is a general perception that
inflexible labor markets and high labor costs are contributing to a
massive displacement of manufacturing jobs and investment from Western
Europe to Eastern Europe and Asia. The debate in Western Europe is
highly charged, but sometimes ill-informed. It is true that some
low-skilled jobs are moving into low labor cost countries. On the other
hand, many more highly skilled jobs are actually being created in the
highly developed countries. The total impact on Western economies is
much more complicated, and there is some evidence of important benefits.
In this book, we showcase examples of excellent industrial management
that has managed to create substantial job growth in manufacturing. This
book is based on 14 years' observation of the Industrial Excellence
Award (IEA) in Germany and France, the first ten years of which we
summarized in our previous book, Industrial Excellence (Springer 2003),
and on an additional five years of obser- tion between 2002 and 2007. We
have seen that management's first and noble responsibility to society is
to achieve competitiveness. Competitive organizations create growth and
jobs, even in Western Europe. Competitiveness requires clearly
articulated strategic positioning, together with excellent execution,
and mobili- tion of all employees to apply their abilities and to pull
in one direction.
