Thousands of small and medium scale industries are present in India. All are facing certain problems resulting in shortage of production and quality issues. This case study deals with the kaizen implementation in an industry in an assembly line in India that manufactures front and rear axle for heavy and medium vehicles. Kaizen technique has tremendous effect on operations of a firm, including ...

Companies must develop and maintain a high degree of coherence among competitive priorities, order-winning criteria, and improvement activities due to the competitive market and customer pressures. This paper presents findings of an empirical survey on manufacturing strategies implementation in new industrialized countries (NICs). Data were obtained from 68 and 54 automotive manufacturing compa...

In the current milieu of ISO 9000 certification, just-in-time engineering (JIT), demand flow technology (DFT), and total quality management (TQM), industry is attempting to implement available technology for the creation, control, and delivery of documentation. In most cases, their efforts are in need of outside resources to analyze, develop, propose and implement usable solutions. This paper a...

For reasons well known, change has always been uncomfortable to business systems. There is some resistance and resentment whenever changes are made in the existing set-up more so in the case of technological change. New technologies have often brought structural changes to the business systems, which affect their cultural complexion as well. In recent years, there has been a stream of new innov...

An increasing number of firms are marching to the drumbeat of business process redesign (BPR), alternatively called reengineering. The term reengineering may be new, but the idea of process redesign is familiar to most engineers involved in logistics and production control. Just-in-time (JIT), Total Quality Management (TQM), Flexible Manufacturing Systems (FMS), Computer Integrated Manufacturin...

Given recent increases in global competition, scarce resources, and fluctuating economies, it is not surprising that lean production has become critical to the long-term survival of today’s manufacturing organizations. Lean is a management philosophy focused on identifying and eliminating waste throughout a product’s entire value stream, extending not onlywithin theorganization but also along t...

As Organisations need to adapt to new business conditions and respond to competitive pressures, various change management approaches have been developed. Many studies suggest that the success of business change projects could be increased by developing dynamic models of business processes prior to their radical change. This paper investigates a potential of simulation modelling to be used for m...

‘Survival of the fittest’ is the reality in modern global competition. Organizations around the globe are adopting or willing to embrace just-in-time (JIT) production to reinforce the competitiveness. Even though JIT is the most powerful inventory management methodologies it is not free from barriers. Barriers derail the implementation of JIT production system. One of the most significant tasks...