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The paradigm of mass production has given way to radically new forms of organizing industrial production based primarily on the need to foster continuous redesign of products and processes in the face of intensified competition. This change, which is designed to engender continuous adaptive learning in production systems, requires considerable organizational flexibility. The mass production systems constructed in the early post-war period foundered in the face of new forms of competition which put a premium on learning and flexibility.
Commences with original contributions from a panel of experts regarding the economic, structural and managerial issues of flexible specialization, especially in relation to regional development. Documents experimental experiences in flexible specialization in successful manufacturing economies including Japan, West Germany, Switzerland and Norway. The third section considers a theoretical and empirical examination of service industries using illustrations from the US, UK and The Netherlands. Finally, it explores the opportunities and pitfalls of Eastern Europe's antiquated industrial economies.
Focuses on the period from the early 1970s to the end of the 1980s.
This dissertation is devoted to the study of flexible production systems. Flexibility refers to the ability to make multiple different products on the same production line. It is a key feature that modern manufacturers seek to serve diversified and volatile customer market. However, most of the existing studies focus on investment cost, flexibility measurement, and scheduling. There is a need for a comprehensive study by taking into account of machine reliability, finite inventory, setup times, and inhomogeneous demands. In this work, we study flexibility in a hierarchical framework: at both the operational level and manufacturing plant planning level. At the operational level, we examine flexible serial production lines with multiple unreliable machines and finite buffers in the views of discrete time and continuous time. We derive closed-form solutions for one- and two-machine systems and develop accurate performance evaluation algorithms for systems at a large scale. To extend the methods, we generalize the analytical study of long flexible production lines to those lines with random setup time during product changeovers. Efficient aggregation algorithms are derived to evaluate line performance of such systems. Using the analytical tools developed, we study system bottlenecks, i.e., the machine and product whose improvement will lead to the largest improvement in system throughput. Various types of bottlenecks are visited, and bottleneck indicators are proposed to avoid complicated calculations and provide managerial insights. The tools are used to develop effective control policies for meeting throughput targets and reducing idle time. At the strategic level, we study production system flexibility measures regarding matching production capacities and demands. Closed-form bounds of demand shortfall, as well as an accurate estimate of the service level, are obtained. Sensitivity analyses of service level on reductions in setup time, downtime and cycle time are carried out, and the impact of new product launch and product correlation on system flexibility, are also investigated. Finally, case studies are introduced to illustrate the applicability of the work in this dissertation. The results of this work provide manufacturing enterprise managers and engineers quantitative tools for flexible system operation management and planning.
Stuart A. Rosenfeld presents a timely analysis of the problems the United States and other industrialized countries face as they adjust from economies based on natural resources and goods to economies based on quality of human resources and high-performance, market-oriented organizations. Some of the questions raised include: Will American industry successfully face the competitive challenge of the global economy? Can US manufacturing raise productivity and innovate enough to remain healthy? Have the latest advances in process technology and management practice penetrated the rural industrial base? How can public policy help improve the competitiveness of the crucial manufacturing sector? This book challenges the conventional wisdom in economic development policy. Past state and local industrial policy focused on locational decisions, not on issues of competitiveness. Building the competitive advantage of industry is more important than promoting the competitive advantages of location. Incentives to modernize are more important than subsidies to locate. Competitive Manufacturing uses the rural South, the most industrialized rural region of the nation, to examine the strengths and weaknesses of manufacturing as the basis for economic growth. Using historical analysis, surveys, and intensive case studies, the author analyzes the technological capabilities of rural manufacturing, the factors that influence the decision to modernize, and the effects of technology on education and work. Comparative studies in Denmark and Italy point to new directions for US economic development policy.