Cell Production

Although the standards originated in manufacturing, they are now employed across a wide range of other types of organizations. A "product", in ISO vocabulary, can mean a physical object, or services, or software. In fact, according to ISO in 2004,

ISO 9001 certification does not guarantee that the company delivers products of superior (or even decent) quality. It just certifies that the company engages internally in paperwork prescribed by the standard. Indeed, some companies enter the ISO 9001 certification as a marketing tool.

From TextBook :

ISP 9000 is an international standard for quality assurance systems. It is a british standard that is recondised worldwide. It was previously known as BS 5750. Companies who are registered can display BSI symbol

In order to register, companies have to document their business procedures, prepare a quality manual and assess their quality management systems. An inpendant assessor assesses them. After obtaining the award, businesses are visited at regular intervals to ensure compliance. It is necessary that everyone in the organisation follows the processes out-lined in the quality manual.

Firms who have registered say that it has provided a range of benefits to the business. These include:

• Increased competitions
• Increase customer satisfaction
• Less waste
• Cost savings
• Fewer mistakes
• Increased efficiency
• Better motivated employees
• Improved communications
• Increase profits

CELL PRODUCTION

Cell production: the whole production line of, say, 1000 units may be divided into 100 cells each producing 10 units, or at least a particular section of the product. This encourages teamwork and staff can see the end product of their work.

Cell production

In traditional production, products were manufactured in separate areas (each with a responsibility for a different part of the manufacturing process) and many workers would work on their own, as on a production line. In cell production, workers are organised into multi-skilled teams. Each team is responsible for a particular part of the production process including quality control and health and safety. Each cell is made up of several teams who deliver finished items on to the next cell in the production process.

Cell production can lead to efficiency improvements due to increased motivation (team spirit and added responsibility given to cells) and workers sharing their skills and expertise.

Cell production

Cell production has the flow production line split into a number of self-contained units. Each team or ‘cell’ is responsible for a significant part of the finished article and, rather than each person only carrying out only one very specific task, team members are skilled at a number of roles, so it provides a means for job rotation.

Cell production is a form of team working and helps ensure worker commitment, as each cell is responsible for a complete unit of work, which Herzberg sees as part of job enrichment. Cells would usually have responsibility for organising work rosters within the cell, for covering holiday and sickness absences and for identifying recruitment and training needs.

Cells deal with other cells as if they were customers, and take responsibility for quality in their area. Also see notes on Kaizen, under ‘Improving Quality’.

Benefits of cell production

• Closeness of cell members should improve communication, avoiding confusion arising from misunderstood or non-received messages
• Workers become multi-skilled and more adaptable to the future needs of a business
• Greater worker motivation, arising from variety of work, team working and more responsibility
• Quality improvements as each cell has ‘ownership’ for quality on its area

Evaluation

Lean production and cell production can be very effective approaches to improving efficiency in a wide range of businesses. Some possible notes of caution:

• The company culture has to encourage trust and participation, or workers can feel that they are being constantly pushed for more and more output with no respite
• The company may have to invest in new materials handling and ordering systems suitable for cell production
• Cell production may not allow a firm to use its machinery as intensively as in traditional flow production
• Some small scale production lines may not yield enough savings to make a switch cell production economically worthwhile
• The allocation of work to cells has to be efficient so that they have enough work, but not so much that they are unable to cope
• Recruitment and training of staff must support this approach to production.