Japanese Production

Can Japanese System of Flexible Production be adopted



Can Japanese System of Flexible Production be adopted

Introduction

Over the next decade, the main focus of the competition in the industry of manufacturing will be on the ability to rapidly and flexibly give response to varying market conditions. It was found by the manufacturer that product life cycles have been significantly shortened, and market share can not be captured higher profits can be gained by producing large volumes of a standard product for a mass market. The order-fulfillment and customer- acquisition processes needs some techniques and methods which will result in the success of manufacturing processes and manage predictable change with accuracy while providing a flexible and fast response to unexpected changes (Fulkerson, 1997). Challenges are confronted to various companies for bringing change in their strategic orientations in order to meet demands of the current market place. Japan has found these issues to be resolved through the technique of mass customization manufacturing technique (MCM).

Although Japan has other techniques as well which are serving as a helping hand to the production of Japanese manufacturing industries. These techniques will be discussed in this paper as well. Davis (1987) brought the concept of mass customization first which was expounded formally in the book “Future Perfect.” According to Pine (1993), mass customization manufacturing can be defined as “a strategy that sought to exploit the need to support greater product variety and individualization.” Mass customization manufacturing technique aims to deliver and produce the products that are customized hastily while keeping costs at the level of mass-production. After this manufacturing technique, much advancement has been brought to this field and innovative trend of this strategy have been emerged from various related technology and knowledge domains. CAD (computer aided design), PDM (product data management), and networking technology in the recent years have reduced the importance of the mass customization technique. Japan has always emphasized on the flexible techniques of production which have contributed in the success of their manufacturing techniques (Alford, Sackett, Nelder, Geoff, 2000, pp. 99-110).

Discussion

The techniques and production systems have been changing with the passage of the years, from the most primitive to the most sophisticated, through various intermediate stages of equilibrium. It is necessary to know not only the organizations and systems were in effect in the past, but also those that are found in functioning at present in most developed countries and those that are currently being tested elsewhere. In this paper we will refer to the two large production systems push-pull, with a concrete analysis of Japanese methods in matter (Helander, Jiao, Jianxin, 2002, pp. 717-724).

Production Systems

In general, we can say that demand is independent of our operations or dependent thereof. In the first case product finished and spare parts, giving rise to the administration of stock or replenishment of inventory: in the second case is in progress and the raw material giving rise to requirements management. For this last administration was used, not long ago, the traditional reorder point system ...