PRODUCTION MANAGEMENT

Production Management

Production Management

Question 1:

Mass production often generates overproduction, produces bottlenecks in the flow of production, moves work back and forth across the manufacturing plant, retains inefficient processes, maintains large levels of stock-on-hand, permits nonvalue adding movement across production lines, and produces defective goods because of production pressures. An important goal of just-in-time production management is the elimination of these wastes.

Traditional mass production management is based on a push system, whereby marketing forecasts tell the factory what to produce and in what quantity. Raw materials and parts are purchased based on these forecasts, stored and forced into the front end of the production process, and subsequently pushed through each succeeding step of the process. Push-mass production systems produce significant inventories of work-in-progress goods, as well as finished goods. Contrary to traditional mass production, just-in-time production management is a pull system. The just-intime production schedule does not exclusively originate in market forecasts, but from the customer: the demand is made on factory assembly by pulling finished products out of the factory.

Production control in pull manufacturing systems is provided by the use of a kanban, a visual signal, card, or signboard that controls the movement of materials between workstations, as well as replenishing those sent downstream to the next workstation. The Toyota Production System uses two types of kanban to regulate production: a production kanban signals the need to produce more parts, while a conveyance kanban signals the need to withdraw parts from one work center and deliver them to the next workstation.

Question 2:

Just-in-time production management system requires developing durable, more continuous, and longer-term relationships with a small number of key suppliers. In its extreme formulation, suppliers are to be single-sourced. Achieving this may give individual suppliers considerable market power in negotiating better prices and conditions—a situation that could ultimately lead to an abuse of power whereby suppliers extract concessions from manufacturers. To avoid this, high levels of trust and respect must be developed between the supplier and manufacturer.

Some commentators on the just-in-time production management system suggest that its effectiveness is heavily dependent on the organizational culture in which it is established. Just-in-time principles and practices, as incorporated in the Toyota Production System, originated in postwar Japan and ostensibly reflect value systems that are unique to Japan. To date, its performance record over more-traditional mass production systems has been decidedly mixed when independently implemented in Western industrial settings. Nevertheless, the application of just-in-time production management practices achieves optimality in organizations that have more highly advanced total quality approaches in addition to a corporate culture that enables and supports its practices. While many Western manufacturing companies have adopted some type of “lean” initiative, the just-in-time movement has preceded beyond the manufacturing shop floor to white collar and service industries. Unfortunately, many of these efforts at implementing just-in-time practices are often disjointed, fragmented, and piecemeal approaches, motivated to achieve quick fixes aimed at reducing waste or lowering lead times. To be effective, lean applications require a longer-term change perspective, one coupled with a corporate culture ...