Lean Production Flashcards
1
Q
- Just-in-time (JIT): the essence of Lean
‘Nissan’s £2 billion boost for Sunderland’
A
- investment announced November 2023
- manufacture of electric vehicles
- Nissan plant in Sunderland, UK
- established in 1986
- 7,000 employees and 30,000 in supply chain
2
Q
Operations management: holding stock/inventory
What is stock?
Explaining holding of stock(2)
A
What is stock?
- raw materials
- work-in-progress
- finished goods
Explaining holding of stock
- provision for uncertainty
- production mentality’
3
Q
How much stock to hold?
Cost of high levels of stock?
Cost of low levels of stock?
How to determine the level of stock?
A
Costs of high levels of stock
- money tied up: interest foregone
- storage costs
Costs of low levels of stock
- reorder costs
Determining the level of stock
- calculate the (overall) cost function
- find the optimum (lowest stock cost level)
4
Q
What do we mean by JIT? (2)
A
- ‘final assembly produces goods just-in-time to be sold; sub-assemblies produce goods just-in time for final assembly; and bought-out parts arrive form outside suppliers just-in-time to be fabricated into sub-assemblies.’
(Oliver 1991, p. 19) - ‘Producing or conveying only those units needed, just when they are needed, in just the amount needed’
(Toyota, Financial Times, 1990)
5
Q
Basis of JIT
A
- ‘pull’ not ‘push’: ‘just-in-time’ not ‘just-in-case’
- towards zero stock levels: but `non optimal’?
- but not just a technical/operational concern
6
Q
Origins of JIT
A
- Post-WW2 reconstruction
- Position of Japanese economy
- Use of capital and raw materials
7
Q
Basis of JIT: part of approach/philosophy
A
- Internal production discipline
- Implications for supplier relations
- Implications for marketing
8
Q
‘Japanization’ of British industry
A
- Economic failures of the 1970s/1980s
- What was the ‘secret’ of Japanese success?
- HRM? TQM? QCs? Teams? JIT?
- High-profile inward Japanese investment
- Adoption of Japanese techniques
- 82% of manufacturers by early 1990s
9
Q
Superiority of lean production?
A
- Lean production vs mass production
- The Machine that Changed the World (1990)
- Comparison of Toyota in Japan and GM in the US
- Claimed massive superiority of lean production
- 2 hours’ stock vs 2 weeks’ stock
- Building a car took ‘half the human effort’
- But how was this achieved?
10
Q
Working under JIT/Lean
A
What about the workers?
- Employee production responsibility
- Enhanced employee voice?
- Formation of ‘lean teams’
- Functional flexibility
- Stability of employment
- Seniority-based pay
11
Q
Teamworking under Lean
A
- ‘in the end, it is the dynamic work team that emerges as the heart of the lean factory’ (Womack et al., 1990: 99)
- leader-guided rather than semi-autonomous
- pace of work controlled by the flow of the system
- control of Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs)
- but a different kind of autonomy?
- indirect involvement in SOPs
12
Q
Second-wave Lean
A
- Re-emergence in 21st century
- 5 principles of ‘lean thinking’
- UK application in health/public services
- Carter et al. (2011): HMRC
degradation of work? - Procter & Radnor (2014)
- mean, but is it lean?
13
Q
Controlling the pace of work
A
- Production on ‘pull’ rather than ‘push’ basis
- Pace of work controlled by customer/end-user
- Might actually involve ‘slack’ or under utilisation
- For workers, limits on degree of discretion
- Klein (1989): effect of removal of ‘buffers’ of stock/inventory
- No ‘making out’, ‘bank’ or ‘kitty’
- Lack of ‘discipline’ immediately apparent
14
Q
Power of the panopticon
A
- Jeremy Bentham’s (1791) model prison
- The seen and the seeing
- Surveillance is ‘permanent in its effects, even if its discontinuous in its action’
- Effectiveness means exercise unnecessary
- Extension of idea to other institutions
- Foucault, Discipline and Punish, 1977
15
Q
JIT as panoptic surveillance (Sewell & Wilkinson, 1992)
A
- How do you control output of workers?
- Technical control of assembly line
- Direct control or direct incentives
- JIT a different strategy of control
- Heightened ‘visibility’ of work and worker
- ‘working in a goldfish bowl’
- Internalised/subjective control
