Operations Management Flashcards
What are the rules of Taylorism?
Science, not rule of thumb
Harmony, not discord (i.e. playing by management’s rules)
Cooperation, not individualism
aximum output, in place of restricted output (“soldiering”)
The development of each man to his greatest physical capability
What are the principles of increase efficiecy according to taylor
- Study, Experiment and Improve (STUDY)
- Standardize Operating Procedures (STANDARDIZE)
- Select Workers and Specialization (SPECIALIZATION
- Develop an Acceptance Level and Paying System. (QUALITY AND PAYING SYSTEM)
What were the implementation problems of Taylorism?
Improvement in productivity never shared with workers.
Worker in satisfaction: Layoffs because improved productivity, Monotony.
Workers withheld job knowledge to protect their jobs and pay.
Workers develop informal work rules that discourage high performance.
What are the characteristics of the fordism?
Deskilling of work and rigid divisions of labor
Hierarchical management structure
Fixation on a mass market
Higher wages in return for high effort, loss of decision making, and less turnover
Reorganization of production departments along flow principles
Curbing of the independent authority of foremen and other low-level supervisors
Assemblers as interchangeable as parts
Activities simplified to the nth degree and controlled from above
Engineering and administrative functions delegated to staff specialists
Exercise of judgment passed up the managerial ranks
Alienated, regimented work conditions
What are the characteristics of the Sociotechnical Systems?
Autonomous work teams (Cells with leaders)
Job Enrichment (Increase Responsibility)
Job Enlargement (Increase number of task, boredom, not specialization)
Job Rotation (Rotation in order to improve knowledge)
Flow: Not flow, people working on the product.
What are the advantage of the Sociothecnical Systems
Innovation versus preserving the status quo
Development of human resources
Awreness of the external environment
Maximizing cooperative effort
Developing commitment and energy
Utilizing social and technical resources effectively
Describre the Toyota’s House?
Goal: Highest Quality, Lowest Cost, Shortest Lead Time
Pilar 1. Just- In Time: Continuous Flow, Tackt Time, Pull System
Pilar 2. Jidoka.. Stop and Notify abnormalities, Separate Man work to Machine Work.
Base: Heijunka, Standardized Work, Kaizen
Describe the JUST IN TIME TECHNIQUES OF:
Pull System
Continuous Flow
7 Wastes
5’s
SMED
Tack Time
Takt Time: The average time between the start of production of one unit and the start of production of the next unit. For example, if a customer wants 10 units per week, then, given a 40-hour work week and steady flow through the production line, the average time between production starts should be 4 hours, yielding 10 units produced per week.
Pull System: Delay production until customer order. Manufacturing system in which production is based on actual daily demand (sales), and where information flows from market to management in a direction opposite to that in traditional (push) systems. (Not forecast, Actual Demand)
Continuous Flow: Reduce Inventories: 5´s, 7 Wastes, Reduction of Lead Times
5S in the US: Sort, Straighten, Sweep, Standardize, Self Disciple
SMED (Single Minute Exchange of Dides): Do as much as you can outside the machine and without interrupt the operation.
Describe the following elements of Jidoka
Poke-Joke
Andon
Andon: Light Singnals Preventing Mistakes
Poke-Yoke (Mistake or Error Proofing) Finding defects, before occur, Finding defects after occur (SPC), Devices in order to prevent errors (Light Sounds, Etc).
What is Kaizen?
PDCA, Continuous Imprvement
Explain what kind of layouts could a production line have According to the volume and Process Type
Fixed Position (Ship Builind) Functional Layout (Heavy Equipment) Bacth Flow (Trucks) Line Flow (Microwave Ovens) Continuous Flow (Oil Refinery)
Exmplain what is a Decoumpling Point and what kind of strategy could we have to manage it?
Make to Stock
Assembly to Order
Make to Order
Enginnering To Order
What is a trade-off and give example of them in Operations Strategy?
Make ot Buy
Small Batch Sizes or Large Batch Sizes
trade-off (or tradeoff) is a situation that involves losing one quality or aspect of something in return for gaining another quality or aspect. More colloquially, if one thing increases, some other thing must decrease
What are the principles of Sociotechnical Systems?
Eric Trist and Ken Bamforth in 1951
Responsible autonomy
Adaptability
Whole tasks
While it may be necessary to be quite precise about what has to be done, it is rarely necessary to be precise about how it is done”.[12] The key factor in minimally critically specifying tasks is the responsible autonomy of the group to decide, based on local conditions, how best to undertake the task in a flexible adaptive manner.
Meaningfulness of tasks
“for each participant the task has total significance and dynamic closure”[4]
What is the main Message of “Beyond World-Class: The New Manufacturing Strategy. Robert H. Hayes and Gary P. Pisano”
3 Letters programs (TQM, JIT, TPM) are not a strategy for using manufacturing as a competivite advantage.
This probam fails because managers look at them as solution of specific problems.
Organizational Capabilities provides more competitive advantages that whatever you can build or buy (Technology, Move Operations to a Low Wage Country etc).
Skinner’s framework for manufacturing strategy is based on the motion of strategic fit: a company’s manufacturing system should reflect its competitive position and strategy. This model is robust but is not able to explain for example when two identical companies apply methodologies such as JIT or TQM and one is successful and the other one not. (Just in Time has banned the Skinner Trade offs)
Whistler a Us consumer electronics company faced a choice in the late 1980´s when it was rapidly losing market share to Asian competitors. The company embarked in a strategy about reducing cost. When they achieved their objective, Asian competitors captured the market because they were able to develop much more products at a relatively low cost. By viewing different improvement programs as targeted solutions to specific competitive problems, managers overlook the true power of these programs: their ability to build new capabilities. Thus, a key role for a company’s manufacturing strategy is to guide the selection of improvement programs.
How to do that:
Identify competitor’s strengths and own weaknesses in order to focus the capabilities a company wants to develop and will differentiate it against the customers (flexibility and Innovativeness) and try to be in the forefront most of the time. The capabilities should be the ones that customer’s value and eve better, they should be the ones that are hard for competitors to duplicate.
The company must develop a plan for building the capabilities it wants to acquire. This is where the question of which manufacturing-improvement approaches to use and in which order come in. Manager should be aware about the capabilities they want to develop by implementing a Improvement program.
Corporate strategy must provide a framework for guiding the selection, development, and exploitation of these capabilities. Since many of the capabilities with the greatest competitive value reside in a company’s manufacturing organization, corporate strategy must become much more explicit about, and reliant on, manufacturing consideration than in the past.
