Operational Principles

Setting the Operational Standard
In our world-class manufacturing journey at Magna, employees and management work in partnership to achieve operational excellence based on the following principles.

Employee Focus

  • Recognize that all employees are stakeholders in the business
  • Motivate, energize and empower employees by reinforcing the values of the Employee's Charter
  • Achieve employee satisfaction by focusing on people and taking actions to improve employees' quality of work life

Safe and Healthful Work Environment

  • Ensure that all employees have a safe, clean and healthful work environment
  • Ensure that all equipment and the work environment comply with applicable laws, regulations and policies
  • Constantly work toward our target of Zero Incidents and Zero Lost Days

Pride in Craftsmanship & Total Quality

  • Be customer driven; understand and meet or exceed customer expectations
  • Maintain focus, accountability, and discipline in every process to promote a culture of "Total Quality"
  • Use simple, effective error proofing to support our Zero Defects objective
  • In every job we perform, do not accept, produce or pass-on any defects

Integrity & Respect

  • Act with honesty and integrity in all dealings with employees, customers, suppliers, government officials and others
  • In all activities, respect both the letter and the spirit of Magna's Code of Conduct and Ethics and applicable laws
  • Use common sense and good judgment to determine what constitutes fair and ethical business practice

Operational Effectiveness

  • Focus on efficiency and always meeting production standards and output requirements
  • Clearly display operational goals, objectives and performance on the shop floor so everyone is aware of them and all activities are aligned to their improvement and the Company's targets
  • Ensure that all teams are accountable and participate in the achievement of operational goals and objectives
  • Utilize operational creativity before making any capital expenditure decisions and use Lean methods, as well as employees' process knowledge, to simplify and maintain flexibility
  • Ensure that inventory levels, lead times and material flow are Key Operating Indicators (KOIs) to improve working capital
  • "Go and See" to solve problems where they occur – operational problems cannot be solved in the office

Scrap & Waste Elimination

  • Through Lean methods and Mafact, ensure every step of each process is value-added and prevent defects
  • Eliminate waste with tools such as Value Stream Mapping (VSM), Standardized Work, Quick Changeover, Visual Management, 5S and other Lean tools within Mafact
  • Focus on identifying and eliminating the seven forms of waste – Waiting, Motion, Material Movement, Corrections, Over Production, Inventory, and Processing – and strive for gains in efficiency, floor space availability and inventory reduction

Operational Availability

  • Follow a Total Productive Maintenance program to ensure that equipment is available 100 percent of the time when needed and to improve process capability and reduce maintenance costs
  • Always focus on change-over of production lines, dies, molds, etc.

Communication

  • Communicate respectfully, openly, honestly and in a timely manner
  • Ensure that regular departmental meetings are held to give employees direction and to share information about projects, improvements and daily performance
  • Encourage feedback through frequent interaction with everyone in the facility, the Open Door process and other communication methods

Recognition & Rewards

  • Recognize teams and individuals for a job well done
  • Reward teams and individuals for operational improvement ideas