Causes and actions related to self-induced variations in manufacturing companies

Abstract

Short-term and stochastic variations can create negative effects on the delivery capability, and companies often adopt their processes accordingly. What is then ignored is the fact that causes for variations are often self-induced and, therefore, possible to affect. Proposed actions in current literature focus mainly on continuous improvement without explicitly emphasizing that certain behaviours, rules and routines have a direct impact on variations affecting the company. In this study, a framework of causes for self-induced variations is established with proposed actions for each cause to reduce the variations. The framework is situated relative to practice for the actions applied at six manufacturing companies. This study sought to increase the understanding of self-induced variations and where companies can apply the proposed framework for an overview of 22 causes and 60 appropriate actions to support the systematic reduction of self-induced variations that can be internally or externally generated.