工业工程专业英语

Lesson 9 Agile Manufacturing Introduction

Businesses are restructuring and re-engineering themselves in response to the challenges and demands of the 21st century. The 21st century business will have to overcome the challenges of customers seeking high-quality, low-cost products, and be responsive to customers? specific unique and rapidly changing needs. Agile enterprises represent a global industrial competition mode for 21st century manufacturing. “Agility” addresses new ways of running companies to meet these challenges. In a changing competitive environment, there is a need to develop organizations and facilities that are significantly more flexible and responsive than existing ones.

Agility requires the capability to survive and prosper in a competitive environment of continuous and unpredictable change by reacting quickly and effectively to changing markets, driven by customer-designed products and services. The key enablers of agile manufacturing include: (i) virtual enterprise formation tools/ metrics; (ii) physically distributed manufacturing architecture and teams; (iii) rapid partnership formation tools/metrics; (iv) concurrent engineering; (v) integrated product/ production/business information system; (vi) rapid prototyping; (vii) electronic commerce.

Agile manufacturing is a vision of manufacturing that is a natural development from the original concept of …lean manufacturing.? In lean manufacturing, the emphasis is on the elimination of waste. The requirement for organizations and facilities to become more flexible and responsive to customers led to the concept of …agile? manufacturing as a differentiation from the …lean? organization. This requirement for manufacturing to be able to respond to unique demands moves the balance back to the situation prior to the introduction of lean production, where manufacturing had to respond to whatever pressures were imposed upon it, with the risks to cost, speed and quality. Agility should be based on not only responsiveness and flexibility, but also the cost and quality of goods and services that the customers are prepared to accept. It is, however, essential to link agile capabilities in manufacturing with product needs in the marketplace. Agility as a concept increases the emphasis on speed of response to new market opportunities. Thus, it is more relevant to a One-of-a-Kind Product (OKP)

than it is to commodity products that compete primarily on price.

Agile manufacturing - definitions

In this section, we explore a variety of definitions and a range of concepts with the objective of developing a new and feasible concept of AM. The reason for analyzing the present conceptions and definitions of AM is to identify the gap between practice and theory in order to enhance the confidence of practitioners. Manufacturing processes based on agile manufacturing are characterized by customer integrated processes for designing, manufacturing, marketing, and support for all products and services; decision-making at functional knowledge points; stable unit costs; flexible manufacturing; easy access to integrated data; and modular production facilities. The focus is on the integration of critical functional areas with the help of advanced design and manufacturing technologies, and alignment between strategies.

The analyses of various definitions and concepts of AM show that all these definitions are polarized in a similar direction. Most definitions and concepts seem to highlight flexibility and responsiveness as well as virtual enterprises and information technologies. However, the question is whether one can achieve agility with minimum investment in technologies and processes. Hence, there is a need to redefine the definition of agility within this context. Figure 9.1 presents the new model for explaining the agile manufacturing paradigm. The model takes into account the characteristics of the market, infrastructure, technologies and strategies. Its purpose is to highlight the new dimension of the definition of the agile manufacturing paradigm. The justifications for the need to redefine the agility are listed below.

? In some cases, flexibility and cost are not complementary. Yet, there is a need to consider the cost aspects of agility. Agility without cost effectiveness is not a real competitive strategy. Therefore, there is a need to consider cost in defining agility. ? The implications of technologies in achieving agility are paramount compared with partnership formation that is based on core competencies in a virtual enterprise. For certain businesses one needs to identify a set of technologies that are more important to the selected market segments, and to product and service requirements. Yet, the implications of integrating complementary core competencies are highly significant. A lack of focus on utilizing core competencies would not improve productivity and quality.

? The nature of a given market certainly defines the characteristics of agile organizations. No organizations can satisfy unlimited product/service requirements of different markets. The characteristics of markets may vary from industry to industry

and from country to country.

? The implications of e -commerce have not been properly addressed in the development of agile manufacturing systems. Direct input from customers, the reduction in response time and the cost of identifying market requirements using Concurrent Engineering principles would certainly reduce the gap between marketing and production.

? Human resources play a significant role in the development of agile manufacturing systems. However, the issue of an agile workforce has not been well addressed. It is still not clear how the agility of the workforce and its characteristics can be defined with reference to changing market requirements and value-adding systems.

? Logistics play an important role , especially in physically distributed virtual enterprises. Therefore, due attention should be paid to the effective management of logistics and, in tum, to supporting agility in manufacturing. Alliances, core

competencies, long

term business plan

Agile Manufacturing Knowledge workers, multifunctional,

multilingual, IT skills

Range of markets,

customers, products

range FMS, CIM,

CAD/CAE, CAPP ,

EDI, Internet, Robots

Strategic planning and objectives

Flexible people Market focus

Flexible technologies

Quality

Cost Flexibility Responsiveness

Figure 9.l Agile manufacturing paradigm

Based on some of these observations, agility in manufacturing may be defined as: The capability of an organization, by proactively establishing virtual manufacturing with an efficient product development system, to (i) meet the changing market requirements, (ii) maximize customer service level and (iii) minimize the cost of

goods, with an objective of being competitive in a global market and for an increased chance of long-term survival and profit potential. This must be supported by flexible people, processes and technologies.

第九课敏捷制造

介绍

企业重组和再造自己以应对21世纪的挑战和要求。21世纪商业必须克服的挑战客户寻求高质量、低成本的产品,对客户的特定的独特的和快速变化的需求。敏捷企业代表了21世纪制造业全球产业竞争模式。“敏捷性”地址运行公司应对这些挑战的新方法。在变化的竞争环境,需要开发组织和设施,比现有技术明显更加灵活和响应更快速的。

敏捷性要求的能力在竞争环境中生存和繁荣的持续和不可预知的变化反应迅速和有效地对不断变化的市场,由于customer-designed产品和服务。敏捷制造的关键环节包括:虚拟企业形成工具/指标;(2)身体分布式制造体系结构和团队;(3)快速合作形成工具/指标;(四)并行工程;(v)集成产品/生产/业务信息系统;(六)快速原型;(七)电子商务。

敏捷制造是制造业的愿景,是一个自然的发展从最初的“精益生产的概念。在精益生产,重点是消除浪费。要求组织和设施变得更加灵活和响应客户导致的敏捷制造的概念,作为“精益”组织的分化。这要求制造业能够应对移动平衡的独特需求,引入精益生产之前,制造业必须应对任何压力强加于它,与风险成本、速度和质量。敏捷性不仅应该基于响应性和灵活性,而且成本和质量的商品和服务,客户是准备接受。然而,必要的链接敏捷能力在制造业产品在市场上的需求。灵活性作为一个概念增加了强调速度应对新的市场机会。因此,更相关的是一个独一无二的产品(OKP)比商品,主要是在价格上竞争。

敏捷制造——定义

在本节中,我们探索多种定义和一系列概念的目的是开发一种新的、可行的概念。原因分析的概念和定义我是识别理论与实践之间的差距,以提高从业人员的信心。基于敏捷制造生产流程的特点是客户集成流程的设计,制造,营销,并支持所有的产品和服务;决策功能知识分;稳定的单位成本;柔性制造,集成数据容易获得,模块化的生产设施。重点是关键功能领域的集成与先进的设计和制造技术的帮助下,和一致性策略。

各种定义和概念的分析表明,这些定义都是极化在类似的方向。大多数定义和概念似乎强调灵活性和响应能力,以及虚拟企业和信息技术。然而,问题在于,一个可以用最小的投资实现敏

捷技术和流程。因此,有必要重新定义敏捷的定义在这个上下文。图9.1给出了新模型解释了敏捷制造模式。该模型考虑市场的特点,基础设施、技术和策略。它的目的是突出的新维度的定义敏捷制造模式。需要重新定义的理由下面列出的灵活性。

?在某些情况下,灵活性和成本不是互补的。然而,有一个需要考虑的成本方面的敏捷性。敏捷没有成本效率并不是一个真正的竞争战略。因此,需要考虑成本定义敏捷性。

?技术实现敏捷性的影响是最重要的与伙伴关系形成基于虚拟企业的核心竞争力。对于某些企业需要识别一组技术更重要的是所选择的细分市场,以及产品和服务的需求。然而,整合互补的核心竞争力的影响是十分重要的。缺乏专注于利用核心竞争力不会提高生产力和质量。?一个给定的市场的性质当然定义敏捷组织的特点。任何组织可以满足无限的产品/服务要求不同的市场。市场可能因行业而异的特点行业和国家。

?电子商务的含义没有妥善解决敏捷制造系统的发展。从客户直接输入,减少响应时间和识别市场需求的成本利用并行工程原理肯定会降低营销和生产之间的差距。

?人力资源发挥重要作用在敏捷制造系统的发展。然而,敏捷的劳动力的问题还没有得到很好的解决。目前仍不清楚员工的灵活性可以参照定义及其特点不断变化的市场需求和增值系统。

?物流起着重要的作用,特别是在身体上的分布式虚拟企业。因此,要注意由于物流的有效管理,在中空的,支持敏捷制造。

图9。l敏捷制造模式

根据这些观察,敏捷制造可以定义为:一个组织的能力,通过主动与一个高效的产品开发体系,建立虚拟制造(i)满足不断变化的市场需求,(2)最大化客户服务水平和(iii)减少货物的成本,与客观的在全球市场的竞争力和增加长期生存和利润潜力的机会。这必须支持灵活的人员、流程和技术。