Making any one part of a plant work better is difficult, but hardly impossible. The real challenge facing most companies today is how to create a blueprint for an entire plant, or portfolio of plants, that integrates all strategies and processes to function under a single, consolidated plan. In the face of continual change, you need a vision to guide you on the path to achieving this plan. You must know where you want to go, and, just as importantly, how you would like to get there. What do you want your plant to accomplish? How can you coordinate all of its operations to work in concert toward that goal?

Local optimization--focusing on improving just one area--is a losing proposition. To succeed, your plant must improve as a whole, not just in one aspect. To really make a difference in improving the operations of a plant to meet its owner's goals, you have to have a comprehensive vision of what the plant should accomplish and how every aspect of the plant's operations can help in the face of continual change. While each perfect plant meets the needs of its owner in a unique way, at the end of the day, each is still like all the others: every perfect plant is an extension of the financial and business strategy of the company that owns it, and every perfect plant produces certifiable business benefits and does not seek to meet KPIs for their own sake.