The impact of management and employees on cellular manufacturing implementation

Abstract

Several empirical studies have dealt with the impact of cellular manufacturing (CM) on employees’ attitudes, job satisfaction, morale, and quality of work life. While the understanding of the impact of CM on these characteristics allows practitioners to identify the undesirable effects to avoid during CM implementation, research is lacking on which desirable sociotechnical job characteristics have significant impacts on the success of CM implementation. This study uses the sociotechnical system (STS) principles to identify three major categories of variables that are likely to impact CM implementation namely top management role, job design for operators, and cross training. Three different exploratory regression models were used to identify subsets of the variables that have the most impact on CM success. The results indicate, among other things, that CM implementation seems to be more successful if top management initiates the CM project, and if employees are cross-trained to run various machines and read blue prints. In addition, CM success seems to be enhanced if jobs are scheduled and tracked within the cells.