Keeping high-tech Valley jobs with Lean and Six Sigma

East Valley Tribune | Daily Arizona news for Chandler, Gilbert, Tempe, Mesa, Scottsdale

It's not often we read about manufacturing work coming back from Asia to the U.S. (my now-former home of Phoenix). ON Semiconductor named a number of factors, including lean and six sigma making the plant more competitive.

Engineers achieved that by changing the layout in the fab and reducing losses in the manufacturing process, Hall said. And employees were trained in Six Sigma quality improvement techniques, he said.

"A few years ago, Phoenix was not competitive," Hall said. "Now we’ve gotten to the point where productivity is not as big an issue."

The article also mentions in a by-the-way manner that the U.S. factory was also cheaper. Some of that probably comes from scale (the U.S. plant is larger), but the plant is operating better than earlier when ON thought the plant was not cost competitive.