Short Production Cycle Research Articles

The origins and dynamics of production networks in Silicon Valley

Computer systems firms in Silicon Valley are responding to rising costs of product development, shorter product cycles and rapid technological change by focusing and building partnerships with suppliers, both within and outside of the region. Well-known firms like Hewlett-Packard and Apple Computers and lesser known ones like Silicon Graphics and Pyramid Technology are organized to combine the components and sub-systems made by specialist suppliers into new computer systems. As these firms collaborate to both define and manufacture new systems, they are institutionalizing their capacity to learn from one another. Three cases a contract manufacturer, a silicon foundry, and the joint development of a microprocessor - illustrate how inter-firm networks help account for the sustained technological dynamism of the regional economy.

Manufacturing as a service business: CIM in the 21st century

The long term future impact of CIM upon our society as a whole will be to make a wider variety of products available at reasonable prices combined with high levels of variety, customization, timeliness, newness and quality. CIM changes manufacturing from a physical and mechanical system into an information and knowledge work activity subject to the laws of economy of “scope” as well as “scale”. This means that the factory will no longer be an economic barrier to rapid rates of innovation; and sophisticated, complex and intimate vendor-customer relations. However, in addition to investing in new technology, the firm will need to develop new strategies for each business area and new tactics for marketing; more flexible organizational structures designed to implement strategies based on timeliness, innovation, variety, niche markets and product augmentation; sophisticated policies for human resource management; and very different accounting systems and financial analysis algorithms. The ultimate result of CIM will be new ways for the manufacturing industries to serve society and a new style of competition in the global marketplace. Wage rates will be irrelevant in most industry sectors, as will scale economies. CIM will “level the playing field” but as the technology for achieving flexible, low cost, high quality production becomes available to all competitors the real competitive advantages will shift from production economies to innovation—the skills needed to: identify a market niche and its special needs; to design a “product/service” that will meet that need better than anyone else can meet it and in a way that is hard to copy; to quickly design, produce and distribute the product, to be able to quickly move onto the next product; and to be able to manage the complexity of many different products and many different customers being served from the same facility and at the same time. The benefits to society will come from changes in the nature of manufacturing work as well as the greater variety of reasonably priced products available. Manufacturing firms will have to learn how to recruit, train, mange, evaluate and reward “knowledge workers”, as machines and electronic controls take over the traditional “touch labor” and even most of the plant floor “skilled” labor of the past. Firms will also need to change their concepts of strategic thinking—from a focus on products and markets to a focus on competitive advantage in terms of process technology and systems and the institutional learning that allows the firm to effectively and efficiently utilized advanced technology—in effect an experience curve based upon a succession of non-repetitive (but conceptually similar) events. This will lead to business strategies based upon complexity (rather than the tactics of simplification popular in the 1980's); in terms of short product life cycles, customization, rapid design and production cycles and close coupling with the customer over an extended period of time. From an historical perspective this might be seen as the “deindustrialization” of manufacturing; a situation that can be called “the automation of custom manufacture” where the “client” has an opportunity to participate to at least some degree in the design of the product; and to decide how much “service” in terms of custom features and speed of delivery he is willing to pay for. This new concept of manufacturing as a service will be difficult for competitors to copy—especially if it is a one-time-only custom event. In effect, institutional learning of CIM utilization skills will be the competitive advantage of the firm, the switching cost to customers, and the barrier to entry for competitors.

EFFETS À LONG TERME DE L’ENRICHISSEMENT CARBONÉ ET D’UN APPOINT DE LUMIÈRE SUR LA PRODUCTIVITÉ DE LA ROSE CULTIVÉE EN SERRE

Roses (Rosa hybrida ’Royalty’) were grown at atmospheric CO2 concentrations of 330, 900 or 1500 ppm with or without supplemental lighting of 50 μmol m−2s−1 (PAR) provided by high pressure sodium lamps (HPS). Supplementary lighting and CO2 enrichment increased total yields of marketable flowers by 34 and 26%, respectively, compared with the control plants (natural lighting and CO2 concentration conditions). The combined effects of these treatments increased yield by 69% compared with the control. Improved flower quality and shortened production cycles were also observed. Flower stem length and diameter were not significantly affected by the treatments. The increased production levels obtained with CO2 enrichment and supplementary lighting were maintained throughout the treatment and post-treatment periods. These results indicate that rose plants respond positively to long-term CO2 enrichment and show beneficial residual effects to the treatments.Key words: Carbon dioxide, supplemental lighting, roses, growth, productivity

Prices, costs, and competition at the technology frontier: A model for semiconductor memories

Economic competition, both internationally and within national borders, is being profoundly affected by relative ability to participate in markets with short product cycles and significant learning periods. However, effective tools for examining policies in this context have yet to be developed. This paper attempts a first step by presenting an empirical model for the semiconductor memory industry. As an illustration, the model is used to analyze recent developments in the competition between U.S. and Japanese producers.

A short-cycle product aggregate planning model incorporating improvement curve productivity

A model and a solution methodology are developed to incorporate the effects of operator learning, retrogression and manufacturing progress function into the aggregate production planning of short-cycle products. The model provides information regarding the formation and the nature of worker experience classes in each period of the planning horizon, and allows for building more realistic cost models in which regular time, overtime, and idle time payrolls for each class can be expressed more realistically.

From the industrial robot welding cell to the industrial robot welding system

The past few years have witnessed a vigorous upsurge in the use of industrial robots for welded parts manufacturing, particularly in small- and medium-size companies. Notable reasons for the sharp increase in flexible automation with industrial robots are the shorter product cycles, shrinking batch sizes and a steadily rising level of wage costs. Whereas up to now single industrial robots for automated welding manufacturing have been generally used in closed working areas, manually loaded and unloaded by an operator, today a trend towards more complex systems can be recognised. A linking of several single stations by means of material and information flow makes it possible to concentrate manual operations in a central station for loading and unloading, and moreover to have integrated storage facilities.

A short-cycle product aggregate planning model incorporating improvement curve productivity

A model and a solution methodology are developed to incorporate the effects of operator learning, retrogression and manufacturing progress function into the aggregate production planning of short-cycle products. The model provides information regarding the formation and the nature of worker experience classes in each period of the planning horizon, and allows for building more realistic cost models in which regular time, overtime, and idle time payrolls for each class can be expressed more realistically.

Development Trends in Automation; Benefits to small- and medium-sized Manufacturing Enterprises

Summary Pressures of various types, for example, increased pressure of competition, shorter production cycles or increasing labor costs result in increasing demands on small- and medium-sized enterprises with regard to flexibility and profitability. In production engineering these demands can be met mainly by increased automation of production equipment and introduction of new production systems, as well as by computer aid in development, planning and control. In the following, possible solutions both for the technical and organizational fields are described and, where possible, their benefit is analyzed.