Flexible Production

5 Key excerpts on "Flexible Production"

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  eBook - PDF

  Business Dynamics in the 21st Century

  • Joao Heitor De Avila Santos(Author)
  • 2020(Publication Date)
  • Society Publishing

    (Publisher)

  Flexible manufacturing includes functionally equivalent machines. Thus, in the event of a failure of one machine, the process flow is directed towards a functionally equivalent machine. 4.3.4.4. Multiple Paths The path in Flexible Production represents the sequence of parts and the necessary fixtures to complete the required operations. In a conventional Business Dynamics in the 21st Century 134 machine environment, there is only one path for a part because a single fixture remains in a single machine. However, this is not the case for Flexible Production systems, where there are multiple pathways. The number of paths present in Flexible Production is a measurement of the point of flexibility. The higher the number of paths, the higher the degree of flexibility is. Flexibility is used at a high rate in Japan’s manufacturing strategy, but not in America. A fully versatile factory will not only produce different kinds of the same vehicle, such as a coupé or station wagon, on a single production line, but also a completely different car. This is what the Japanese factories are going to do. The cost of one factory can be spread over five or ten vehicles. Apart from lower fixed costs, it is also less painful to stop making one of those cars if it does not sell. FMS, as a manufacturing process system can be compared to other processes in terms of the volume of the product it generates and its capacity to create part variations. In the prospect of manufacturing productivity and efficiency, there is a difference between highly flexible machines and high production rate transfer machines. FMS was seen as a viable solution to bridge the gap and as a path to the future automated factory. 4.3.4.5 Process Although the characteristics of this manufacturing innovation process are similar across all types of firms, how they are adopted and implemented depends on the type of product, manufacturing, maintenance, process planning, and quality control processes.

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  Studies on Industrial Productivity

  Selected Works

  • Various Authors(Author)
  • 2018(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  He describes flexibility as the ability to respond effectively to changing circumstances. Carter (1986) defines flexibility as Flexibility is a collection of properties of a manufacturing system that support changes in production activities or capabilities. Flexibility has been defined in different ways by different academics. One consensus is that the flexibility is multi-dimensional. To get a good perception of flexibility, it was broken down into various types. The diversity and conflict that exist in the definitions of various types of flexibilities are evident in the works of Browne et al. (1984), Gupta and Goyal (1989), Carter (1986), Kumar (1986), Sethi and Sethi (1990), Swamidass (1988), Bernardo and Mohamed (1992), Suarez et al. (1991), Slack (1988), and Gerwin (1993) to name a few. Sethi and Sethi (1990), and Gupta and Goyal (1989) provide excellent reviews on various flexibility types that exist in the current studies. Flexibility 17 Different types of flexibility The concept of flexibility is generally used loosely, but several studies have attempted to describe different types of flexibilities. Besides, current definitions are not precise and the same concept is given different names in different studies. These observations become readily apparent in the following discussions. Several studies are discussed; but first, eight types of flexibilities of Browne et al. ( 1984) are given. Machine Flexibility: It refers to the ease of making changes to produce a given set of part types. This flexibility can be attained by (a) technological progress, (b) delivery of part and required tooling together to the machine tool, and (c) proper operation assignment that minimizes tool changes. This flexibility can be measured as a time for replacement of worn or broken tools, time to mount fixtures, tool change time for different production runs, etc.

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  Working in Restructured Workplaces

  Challenges and New Directions for the Sociology of Work

  • Daniel B. Cornfield, Karen Campbell, Holly McCammon(Authors)
  • 2001(Publication Date)
  • SAGE Publications, Inc

    (Publisher)

  The latter falls under the gen-eral rubric of restructuring, where many firms have attempted to reconfigure work places and production systems (flatter hierarchies and lean production systems are two such examples). The presumption is that such changes will en-able a firm to attain the much vaunted “flexibil-ity,” seen by many as crucial to maintaining competitive advantage in the next century. Flex-ible production systems, made possible by these organizational changes and new technologies, permit shortened product development time and allow small batch production that enhances firm responsiveness to more segmented mar-kets. In other words, they permit firms to substi-tute economies of scope for economies of scale, to lessen their reliance on large numbers of un-skilled or semiskilled workers, and to better co-ordinate production so that supply matches de-mand variability. As such, what is being suggested is a new way of organizing produc-tion and a departure from Fordist principles and all that they entail. What is the reality of the transformed work-place if such production changes associated with new technology have occurred? Can firms lower costs and find production flexibility with-out necessarily developing a self-regulated la-bor force of skilled, highly trained workers? In this study, based on an analysis of technological innovation and organizational change in a seg-ment of the U.S. apparel industry, I examine the contradictory tendencies that exist in many ap-parent post-Fordist arrangements. By examin-Lessons From the Clothing Industry 29 From Work and Occupations, Vol. 22, No. 4, November 1995, pp. 412-438. Reprinted by permission. ing managerial implementation of changes dic-tated by heightened competition within the industry, I show how Flexible Production tech-nologies and labor process organization coexist with “rigid” low-skill, low-paid workers.

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  Improving Changeover Performance

  • S. Culley, A. Mileham, R. McIntosh, G. Owen(Authors)
  • 2001(Publication Date)
  • Butterworth-Heinemann

    (Publisher)

  Chapter 4 where it will be argued that the sometimes conflicting potential applications of improved changeover performance need to be quantified if they are to be evaluated properly.

  Defining manufacturing flexibility

  It is useful to reflect on a possible definition of manufacturing flexibility, as this can also contribute to an understanding of what manufacturing flexibility is.

  Physical changeover activity predominantly occurs within the production department of the business and, as has been indicated, may take place for both defensive (reactive) or offensive (proactive) reasons. Some definitions have been provided in the literature that concentrate, typically, on a defensive stance.43 A more useful definition is one that accounts for both offensive and defensive positions, while at the same time also being more explicit than simply describing manufacturing flexibility as the ability of the production facility to ‘change’. One such more comprehensive definition has been provided by Upton,44 where manufacturing flexibility is succinctly described as ‘… the ability to change or react with little penalty in time, effort, cost or performance’.

  This definition alludes to being able to achieve flexible manufacturing performance without recourse to substantial trade-offs in other areas of manufacturing performance.

  45 –47

  The definition is also general in its scope, and does not single out the manufacturing function or manufacturing processes. By not restricting itself in this way the definition need not be confined to the immediate production environment, and might also be taken, for example, to include the work planning and performance reporting systems that the business employs. As will be argued later, many factors can influence process changeover times, including aspects of human attitude and performance, as well as factors that are to do with the physical nature of the manufacturing hardware.48

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  Social Theory For A Changing Society

  • Pierre Bourdieu, James S. Coleman, Zdzislawa Walaszek Coleman(Authors)
  • 2019(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  The surprising result of the work of Ramchandran Jaikumar (1986, pp. 69-76) and John F. Krafcik and John Paul MacDuffie (1989) is that the rigid, low-skill use of the new technology appears to be much more expensive—perhaps prohibitively so—than the context school's finding suggested. These scholars argue that the real choice firms face is between a high-productivity, high-quality, flexible, high-skill system and a low-productivity (because frequently broken), low-quality, low-skill one. But here, too, the focus on a general lesson—that skill is a precondition for the effective use of the new technologies in all settings—has distracted attention from the ways different uses of technologies influence one another. Mechanizing Flexible Production There are two principal methods of mechanizing Flexible Production. Each can be deployed to produce a fixed number of variants of a single product (flexible mass production) to accommodate an unpredictable number of variants of related products (what I will call fully flexible manufacturing or flexible specialization). In some situations, the two methods are fungible, and firms choose the one with which they have had the most experience. In many other situations, however, considerations of cost in relation to various kinds of uncertainty lead firms to prefer one method over the other or a combination of both to either by itself. The first method of mechanizing Flexible Production is by means of versatile or programmable equipment. At its most rigid, this system resembles a programmable variant of the traditional mass-production transfer line: a sequence of single-purpose machines linked by an automatic conveyance system operating at a fixed rhythm. If the individual machines are more versatile and less rigidly coupled, the set-up becomes what is typically called a flexible manufacturing system. These systems are capable of manufacturing a range of parts defined by, say, a common size and prismatic geometry

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