JIT was introduced in other Japanese industries, such as their car industry, and then spreading to other parts of the world such as the USA and Europe. An example to show that JIT is suitable for Western world would be a cooker manufacturer. In the UK, Stoves cooker manufacturer of Liverpool adopted JIT in the early 1990s. Its aim was to ‘produce instantaneously with perfect quality and minimum waste’. The JCB construction vehicle company also uses JIT in its Rochester plant. When JCB excavators are manufactured, every machine on the production line has already been sold. Supplies of components, such as engines from Perkins, and raw materials, such as steel plates, arrive on the day they are needed. JIT helps to reduce the costs of stockholding so more factory space is made available for production use.
Although the implementation of the just-in-time philosophy has been presented as a technique for large manufacturing firms, it has also been very successful in smaller manufacturing firms. In a recent international survey of small manufacturing firms, 75 percent reported that they were successful in implementing the JIT technique. More importantly, 80 percent of these firms were able to report decreases in their materials, 58 percent reported decreases in their work-in-progress inventory, and 56 percent reported a decrease in their finished goods inventory. These results therefore once again prove that JIT works successfully in almost any size of manufacturing firms.
There are, however, some drawbacks of JIT. A lot of faith is placed in the reliability and flexibility of suppliers. In fact, not every firm has enough faith with its suppliers. Also, it is very difficult to cope with sharp increases in demand as all stocks arrive just in time. An assumption of JIT is that the rate of production on the assembly line is fairly steady so that inventory may be ordered and delivered on fairly predictable schedules. Certainly this assumption does not fit all manufacturing firms. Therefore, firms must consider all aspects very carefully before deciding whether to use JIT.
Cellular manufacturing (CM) and workcells are the heart of lean manufacturing. Their benefits are plentiful and varied. Cellular manufacturing is the grouping of similar products for manufacture in discrete multi-machine cells. It has been proven to yield faster production cycles, lower in-process inventory levels, and enhanced product quality. Pioneered on a large scale by Russian, British, and German manufacturers, interest in CM methods has grown steadily over the past decade.
Amitco, the Coventry based manufacturer of vinyl floor coverings is an example of successful cellular manufacturing in the UK. Amitco were the winners of the Best Small Company award in 1996. Amitco excels at the production of base vinyl, many of which closely resembles natural materials such as wood and marble. These are cleverly incorporated into complex designs to produce mosaic-effect floors, complete with borders and motifs. Because of the high quality of their designs and the flexibility which they offer to their customers, they are able to charge a 30 percent price premium. A large part of Amitco’s success in gaining a competitive edge in the market has been the result of changes made in factory. One of these changes involved a switch from flow production to cellular manufacturing. The production of one product called Arden was reorganised along classic JIT lines and the use of cells was employed. Instead of being produced in stages in a flow of materials, beginning in a separate store area and then embracing manufacturing resources in both of their factories, all the materials and resources required to produce Arden were located in a single cell. Once processing begins, workers move directly from process to process (or sit in mini-queues). The result is very fast throughput. Besides, communication is easier since every operator is close to the others leading to improved quality and coordination. Proximity and a common mission enhance teamwork. However, organisations should be aware of the limitations of cellular manufacturing, for instance, processes can be less flexible and it might result in lower utilisation of equipments.
Due to the fact that errors are costly for businesses, the next essential concept I will look at is total quality management (TQM). TQM is another Japanese idea, it is a managerial approach which focuses on quality and aims to improve the effectiveness, flexibility, and competitiveness of the business. It is estimated that about one-third of all the effort of British business is wasted in correcting errors. TQM is a ‘medicine’ for curing errors. TQM is often associated with the phase “Doing the right things right, first time”. It describes a way of managing people and business processes to ensure complete customer satisfaction at every stage. The features of TQM include quality chains, company policies and accountability, control, monitoring the process, teamwork, consumer views and zero defects.
TQM is accepted by international organisations. In the 80’s and 90’s, it was promoted in the USA through the “Baldridge Award” and in Europe through the European Quality Award. There are a number of examples to prove that TQM is appropriate to all types of organisations. The first example would be British Steel, after bring the idea of TQM into the company, it achieved many good results such as lost time from injuries reduced by 23 percent, market share recovered from serious dip in 1980 and significant increase in employee suggestions. More importantly, British Steel won the British Quality Award. Secondly, I would like to introduce the achievement of Federal Express, after using TQM, its revenue from just under $4 billion in 1988 rose to over $7 billion in 1990. As a result at least 91 percent of employees said they were ‘proud to work for Federal Express’. All these achievements prove that TQM helps companies to find improvements and develop measures of performance and focus clearly on the needs of customers and relationships between suppliers and customers. TQM works well in most of the organisations with many successful cases showing that it is an appropriate method to Western organisations.
Unfortunately, there are some problems of using TQM. For example, there will be training and development costs of the new system, it will only work if there is commitment from the entire business and stress is placed on the process and not the product. A study undertaken by A.T. Kearney of over 100 British companies came to the conclusion that 80 percent of quality programmes fail to produce any tangible benefits and the programmes tended to fail because senior managers tend to set unrealistic goals at the outset. Therefore, the conclusion was that the TQM approach is not appropriate to British organisations.
Quality circles are definitely a Japanese idea, but the concept and techniques of quality control for the Japanese are imported from the United States. TQM stresses the importance of teamwork in a business. Many businesses which are using TQM have introduced quality circles into their operations. Quality circles are small groups of staff, usually from the same work area, who meet on a regular and voluntary basis. They meet in the employer’s time and attempt to solve problems and make suggestions about how to improve various aspects of the business.
Quality circles are becoming popular in Britain. The idea gained in popularity in Japan and was taken up by Western businesses. More and more large corporations agree that quality circles are very useful and appropriate operations method to their organisations. Many Western corporations have begun to implement quality circles, including American Airlines, McDonnell Douglas, General Electric and Ford Motor Company. An example of successful achievement in quality circles is Westinghouse Electric Corporation Defense and Electronics Systems Centre in Baltimore. In a brief article entitled “Quality Circles Become Contagious” in Industry Week, Joani Nelson reported that an estimated $636,000 per year is being saved by the purchasing department because over shipments by vendors are being returned at the vendor’s expense. The suggestion for these savings was suggested by a quality circle. The same article reported that General Electric’s room-air-conditioner plant in Columbia, Tennessee launched a quality-circle program. One of the quality circles achieved annual savings of $15,000 by solving a weld-leak problem.
All of these scenarios can provide an overview of what Western firms are achieving with quality circles. The success stories on implemented quality circles are telling us that the quality circles approach is becoming popular and it is truly appropriate to Western organisations as it can bring further achievements. However, quality circles are only likely to work if they have the support of both management and employees. Businesses have to encourage worker participation and involvement in decision making, and set up a structure that supports this. Employees must feel that their views within the circle are valued and must take a contribution to decisions. If most of the employees are passive and do not support quality circles, then it would be inappropriate to use quality circles in the organisations. Unfortunately, a recent survey on the opinions of European workers’ motivation factors shows that a considerable minority do not react well to quality circles. Therefore, quality circles might not be appropriated to all Europe organisations.
Before making a conclusion, I would like to explain the reasons for why Japanese forms of operations management might not be appropriate to Western organisations. The reason is that Japan and Western countries have different management cultures and they are not completely applying the same style of operations management. Many factors can affect the methods they use on operations management, such as, size and nature of organisations, consumer confident and changing in technology. One of the very important differences between Western and Japanese firms is the unofficial hierarchy of the functional divisions in the corporation. In the West, and especially in the United States, the production engineering and manufacturing divisions have a relatively low status in relation to the marketing and finance divisions. In Japan, on the other hand, the production engineering and manufacturing divisions are usually very important, and, in the corporate hierarchy, these two divisions are near the top of the corporate status ladder. This unofficial corporate status phenomenon explains to a considerable extent why Japan and Western organisations have to use different operations management, it is because they are focusing on different divisions. Therefore, some of the Japanese forms of operations management might not be appropriated to Western organisations.
To make my conclusion of the essay, I would say that I strongly disagree that Japanese forms of operations management are inappropriate to Western organisatiosn. Many of the Japanese forms of operations management are developed in a relation to Western organisations. For example, quality circles originated in Japan, although they can be traced to the influences of Drs. Deming and Juran, two American quality control and management experts who lectured extensively in Japan in the 1950s. Today, quality circles are increasingly accepted in Western world and have lost most of their Japanese flavor.
The most important point I would like to bring up is that many Western industrial firms are faced with increased problems in terms of manufacturing control. Just-in-time approach can help firms to solve these problems, JIT is a manufacturing system designed to minimise the costs of holding stocks of raw materials, components, work-in-progress and finished goods by very carefully planned scheduling and flow of resources through the production process. Therefore, JIT is definitely an appropriate system to Western organisations.
Overall in this essay, I use lots of examples of successful achievements in Japanese forms of operations management. This is because I believe that successful examples are the most powerful evidence to support my view. Some failures of applying Japanese forms of operations management to Western world are also included. However, compared with the number of successful cases in using Japanese forms of operations management, those failed cases were only a fraction of the successful ones. Taken as a whole, there are lots of positive evidence proving that Western organisations would be able to gain substantial potential benefits by applying Japanese forms of operations management. Therefore, I strongly disagree that Japanese forms of operation management are inappropriate to Western organisations.
End of essay
Word count: 2732
References:
Slack N, S Chambers, C Harland, A Harrison and R Johnson Operations Management, Pitman, London, 1995.
Hill T J, Manufacturing Strategy: The Strategic Management of the Manufacturing Function (2nd Ed.), MacMillan, London, 1993.
Womack, J. P. and D. T. Jones. 1996. Beyond Toyota: How to root out waste and pursue perfection. Harvard Business Review
Management Today’s Guide to Britain’s Best Factories, DTI, 1997
