30-09-2013, 04:03 PM
Fundamental Productivity Improvement Tools and Techniques for SMEs
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Introduction
Two recent reports highlight future directions for manufacturing industry. The first, UK
Manufacturing: We can make it better, the final report from the Manufacturing 2020
Panel of the UK Foresight Programme, stated:
‘...manufacturing is becoming the provision of complete service over the
whole product lifecycle. This new service provision requires manufacturers
to get much closer to their customers and to operate far more responsively
than they have in the past.'
The second report, Emerging Global Manufacturing Trends - Output from the working
sessions at Informan 2000, prepared by the Institute for Manufacturing at the University
of Cambridge
The Role of SMEs in Supporting Large-Scale Manufacturing Firms
Of the entire 1999 business population of 3.7 million enterprises, only 24,000 were
medium sized (having 50 to 249 employees) and fewer than 7,000 were large (having
250 or more employees). Small businesses, including those without employees,
accounted for over 99% of businesses, 45% of non-government employment and
(excluding the finance sector) 38% of turnover. In contrast, the 7,000 largest
businesses accounted for 45% of non-government employment and 49% of turnover
(Figure 1).
Lean Manufacturing
Many of the ideas behind what is now termed lean thinking were originally developed in
Toyota’s manufacturing operations. The Toyota Production System spread through
their supply base during the 1970s and their distribution and sales operations during
the 1980s.
The term ‘lean manufacturing’ was popularised in the book, The Machine that Changed
the World by Womack, Jones and Roos, which illustrated for the first time the
significant performance gap between the Japanese and western automotive industries.
It described the key elements accounting for this superior performance as lean
production - ‘lean’ because Japanese business methods used less of everything
(human effort, capital investment, facilities, inventories and time) in manufacturing,
product development, parts supply and customer relations.
The Internet
It has been identified (Spectrum Strategy Consultants 1997) that barriers to the
adoption of Internet-based opportunities for SMEs include the following:
• a lack of understanding of the opportunities available to SMEs;
• a lack of understanding of how to implement these techniques;
• a lack of skills amongst the workforce in using them;
• the prices of the technology.
Programmes such as AutoLean, which sought to introduce Internet-based information
and communication technologies (ICT) into the business processes of automotive
component SMEs based in the West Midlands, have been set up to assist SMEs to
exploit the technology available.