Instant production

Flexible production

Flexibility refers to the ability to "timely" adapt to product variety changes according to the principle of cost-effectiveness. It is generally believed that in order to better cope with the rapid change of market demand, the management of enterprise production system is required to adjust the variety and output of products quickly and flexibly, which is the so-called flexible requirement. In fact, further, the essence of enterprise flexibility is the ability to quickly reconstruct unpredictable factors to adapt to the contemporary and future market environment.

Enterprise flexibility is different from the existing narrow concept of manufacturing equipment flexibility, which means the integration of employees, manufacturing machinery and equipment, instruments and software. In short, enterprise flexibility requires not only the variability of equipment and instruments, but also the flexibility of people and software working in the system; It is the expression of the comprehensive variability of each product production process from market research and planning, design and development to manufacturing, production and marketing; Enterprise flexibility refers to the overall variability, which is the performance of the rapid reconstruction ability of enterprises from organizational management to technical system and supporting environment in order to adapt to the changes of market demand. As far as manufacturing equipment is concerned, flexible enterprises generally adopt flexible units and modular structures, which can be assembled at will or have compatibility to produce multi-variety and small-batch products.

Flexible production mode is a big concept, which is aimed at the whole enterprise. Its concrete operation in the enterprise is based on the integrated management of the above-mentioned series of advanced manufacturing technologies and methods. In 1970s, the concept of computer integrated manufacturing was put forward in the United States, which promoted the development of enterprise integrated management theory and practice (that is, the creative application of integrated ideas and concepts in management practice). The integration of a series of advanced manufacturing technologies and management methods in enterprise application under flexible production mode is a typical representative of integrated management. Lean production (LP), just-in-time production (JIT) and agile manufacturing (AM) management methods.

Lean production (LP) and just-in-time production (JIT)

It is generally believed that lean production refers to Toyota production mode, in which JIT is its typical representative. The core idea of lean production is to rationally allocate and utilize the production factors owned by enterprises from the perspective of overall optimization, eliminate all labor and resources that do not produce added value in the whole production process, pursue perfection, enhance the ability of enterprises to adapt to the diversified needs of the market and obtain higher economic benefits. The core of lean production is actually the basic idea of production planning and control and inventory management, and the group work mode supported by computer network is the basis of implementing lean production.

Lean production is a challenge to the traditional "large-scale production mode", which requires the guiding ideology of investing in management and pursuing benefit economy with few but fine production factors. Its basic goal is zero inventory, high flexibility and no defects. Lean production is characterized by:

First, take the sales department as the starting point of the production process and organize multi-variety and small batch production according to the order contract;

Second, product development has a unique method, similar to "project manager responsibility system". Project managers have great power to organize human and material resources, and will be supported by leaders at all levels to ensure smooth development. Concurrent Engineering (CE) is adopted in the development process, that is, when designing a product, all relevant processes in the whole life cycle of the subsequent product, such as technology, manufacturing, assembly, testing, use, maintenance and service, are considered and designed together, so as to reduce the number of repeated modifications and strive for a success. The project team relies on the team composed of design, technology, manufacturing, marketing and even related personnel including users and suppliers to work together. In the development, various computer-aided technologies are used, and a basic modular design plus multiple variants has become the mainstream. It is the requirement of lean design and development to ensure product quality, cost target and user demand and shorten development cycle.

Third, while applying the benefit principle in supply and marketing management, we should strive to maintain a long-term and stable all-round cooperative relationship with cooperative factories, parts suppliers, sellers and users to form a "community of destiny". In the cooperative supporting field of enterprises, the blood relationship of joint funds can be established by means of equity participation and holding, and the main factory implements hierarchical management of cooperative factories and establishes a pyramid-shaped cooperation system. Establish a unified marketing system in marketing, advocate active sales, and provide good services to satisfy users and form a long-term and stable sales service network. Only with a relatively smooth supply chain and sales network circulation system can a real JIT be formed.

Fourthly, in the production planning and inventory management system, a major feature of lean production is its production planning and inventory management method-JIT. In the era of "only marketable products", JIT is a production criterion that can effectively use various resources and reduce costs. Its meaning is to produce the necessary quantity and perfect quality products and parts at the required time and place, so as to put an end to overproduction, eliminate ineffective labor and waste, and achieve the goal of maximizing output with minimum input. JIT is the main method to shorten production cycle, speed up capital turnover, reduce production cost and realize zero inventory on the basis of eliminating all waste and ineffective labor and optimizing production system. Traditional management implements the "push" management of supply and demand for WIP manufacturing (for example, MRPⅱⅱ is "pushed" by the master production plan, and the required parts are manufactured at the required time and place, and there is a safety stock to cope with the fluctuation of market demand). JIT pursues zero inventory, which is a kind of "pull" management. Just-in-time production first makes annual, quarterly and monthly production plans, and shows the approximate monthly production varieties and quantities to all processes except the last one as a reference for arranging production. Daily on-time production orders only reach the last process. That is to say, spare parts of the previous process are produced only when required by the next process, and the previous process will produce as much as the latter process takes away, and there will never be a backlog. In this way, from the last process to the previous process, parts are collected layer by layer until the raw material supply department connects all processes, and there is no inventory buffer link in the middle, forming a "pull" management. Kanban is the carrier of information transmission between processes. According to the limited capacity plan, the picking instructions and production instructions in the process are transmitted in reverse between processes, and the field operators operate according to "Kanban". JIT implements "one process" management between manufacturing processes (when producing products in each process, only one semi-finished product or finished product is produced in each process), so that the inventory of WIP is zero. Generally speaking, JIT adopts the combination of "pull" management, "one stream" management and "Kanban" management as the core of JIT field control technology to realize lean management in manufacturing industry.

Fifth, in terms of human resources and organizational management, team organization and team work (that is, working groups supported by computer networks can be production teams or teams at different levels including the whole workshop, companies and even cooperative factories and users) are adopted to mobilize the enthusiasm and creativity of all parties through the establishment of team spirit of "common prosperity" and "loyalty", which is an important feature of lean production organization and management. Another feature of organizational management is information communication and full participation in management. Decision-making is carried out from the bottom up, that is, it is first put forward by the employees of the lowest level team, and then reported to the management department at the next higher level after unanimous discussion. Enterprises encourage employees to put forward reasonable suggestions and reward all the work of enterprises. Two-way communication channels between leaders and employees and full participation in democratic management are important factors for the success of lean production. Therefore, cultivating high-quality employees and establishing a learning organization for information communication and sharing are the driving forces of lean production.

Sixth, in the quality control system, lean production adopts total quality management, with full participation, which runs through the whole process from design to manufacturing. The "working group" on the production site generally uses QC team to carry out self-quality inspection and improvement, and cancels the expensive special inspection place and repair processing area, which not only ensures the quality but also reduces the cost, making the production truly "lean".

From the management system of lean production, we can see that its basic purpose is to achieve zero inventory, high flexibility and no defects perfectly in enterprises. "High flexibility" is embodied in organizational flexibility, personnel flexibility and equipment flexibility. Organizational decision-making power is decentralized, not concentrated in the chain of command. It does not adopt a static structure based on functional departments, but a dynamic organizational structure based on project teams. Personnel must be versatile, and their work can be adjusted appropriately when the demand changes to adapt to short-term changes. The equipment adopts appropriate automation and flexible group technology (GT), and pursues the organizational form of relatively centralized working procedures, no fixed beat and unordered transportation of materials, which is close to the high efficiency, low cost and inflexibility achieved by rigid automation in mass production mode. "Zero inventory" requires no inventory of raw materials, no waste in production, no backlog in products and finished products, and regards overproduction as the root of all evils, which is completely different from the traditional view that inventory is an asset. It believes that balancing production with various inventories will not only increase costs, but also cover up various problems in enterprise production (such as horizontal business friction, equipment failure, waste products caused by low quality of work, and production disconnection caused by rework and poor planning). In addition, how to apply JIT method to reduce inventory in supply chain is also the key. "Defect-free" is the best embodiment of the pursuit of perfection in lean production and its ultimate goal. It emphasizes that all employees should establish the concept of "doing things well the first time". It believes that it is a temporary solution rather than a permanent cure for traditional enterprises to set an acceptable percentage of waste products and make up for it with inventory to balance production. Only by eliminating the root causes of unqualified products can we truly realize zero inventory and balanced production. Lean production management thought is a challenge to the limit of enterprise management.

Compared with traditional mass production, the advantages of lean production are as follows: the required human resources are reduced to1/2; New product development cycle is reduced to 1/2 or 2/3; WIP inventory decreased to110; The factory area is reduced to1/2; The inventory of finished products is reduced to1/4; The product quality has been improved by more than 3 times.

It should be pointed out that lean production also has limitations in a sense. For example, engineers and managers are busy improving products and processes in the working group. On the one hand, they can't improve their knowledge in essence; on the other hand, continuous micro-improvement masks the necessity of technological innovation, which leads to Japan falling behind the United States at the advent of the knowledge economy era. But the pursuit of perfection and continuous improvement activities is the fundamental guarantee for the existence and development of lean production.

Lingjie manufacturing (AM)

Agile manufacturing proposed by the United States is based on the development of flexible manufacturing and lean production, which has more sensitive and rapid response ability and good market dynamic adaptability. It is the most representative production mode in multi-variety and small batch flexible production mode. Lingjie manufacturing is defined as a socialized manufacturing system characterized by flexible production technology and dynamic organizational structure, with high-quality and well-coordinated employees as the core and inter-enterprise network technology as the means, thus forming a rapid adaptation to the market. Its basic characteristics are cleverness and agility. Lingjie manufacturing enterprises can always know the market changes more timely than their competitors, introduce new products faster, manufacture many different products on the same production line, and immediately switch from one production to another at low cost. In this way, regardless of the size of the batch, you can get the same profit and force your competitors to follow you in price.

Lean production focuses on the micro-improvement of the enterprise itself and the supply chain, while Lingjie Manufacturing advocates the macro-integration inside and outside the enterprise. With the development of lean production and other production technologies, compared with lean production, Lingjie manufacturing has two biggest characteristics: first, advanced manufacturing technology dominated by information technology and flexible intelligent technology; The second is a flexible, virtual and dynamic organizational structure. The main characteristics of agile manufacturing pursuing intelligence and speed are:

1. Production: Supported by highly integrated, flexible and intelligent manufacturing equipment, a production system for rapidly and flexibly manufacturing any batch of products completely according to market demand is established. Such as: variable structure, measurable modular manufacturing unit or programmable flexible machine tool equipment system composed of it; Intelligent process control device; With the help of sensor detection system, sampler, analyzer and intelligent diagnosis software, the process is monitored or closed-loop monitored.

Second, in the product design and development, the multi-functional cross parallel design group is adopted, and the computer process simulation technology and the organization form of concurrent engineering (CE) are used for rapid development. Such as product design, product feature and state simulation, accurate simulation of product manufacturing process (virtual development), CAD statistical process planning, computer aided engineering and their combination, have greatly shortened the product development cycle.

Third, the company's organizational management: characterized by the flexibility of internal organizations and the dynamic alliance between enterprises. In enterprises, multifunctional task-oriented working groups are often used to organize personnel to respond to users' needs quickly, decentralize decision-making power and reduce management levels. Local decision-making ability is an important determinant of agility. The virtual company or dynamic company established by enterprises is an ideal form of Lingjie manufacturing enterprises (which can also be implemented in large companies). Virtual company is a time-limited cooperative organization composed of two or more member companies (units) under the macro-control of the government. By optimizing various factors of production (people, manufacturing resources, information, capital, etc. ), can quickly respond to the market with the lowest cost and the fastest response speed. Information supported by the Internet is constantly flowing between Lingjie manufacturing enterprises and users, and between Lingjie manufacturing companies and suppliers, and the same company or geographically dispersed and organizationally separated people can cooperate with each other.

4. Market: Lingjie enterprises adhere to the market orientation of user participation, establish various global business subsystems through various cooperative relationships with many countries to gain market opportunities, and provide customers with rich varieties, arbitrary batches, high performance and high quality products with flexible and rapid production.

In addition, Lingjie manufacturing enterprises emphasize the effective integration of organization, personnel and technology, especially the role of people. The competitiveness of enterprises in the future will mainly depend on the knowledge, intelligence and ability of employees to adapt to changes in tasks. Enterprises regard the knowledge, experience and skills of employees as their main assets, implement the policy of respecting employees, and give full play to the enthusiasm and creativity of personnel at all levels. Lingjie Manufacturing also emphasizes eliminating geographical and time difference restrictions, making full and rational use of social resources, paying attention to environmental protection and energy saving, doing green manufacturing and maintaining a good social image.

American Xerox Company, AT & amp； T company has partially introduced Lingjie manufacturing to gain competitive advantage, and the virtual integrated management proposed by Dell is also a movable interpretation of Lingjie manufacturing management thought. Because the production technology and organizational management of Lingjie manufacturing enterprises are highly flexible, they can serve the market and customers quickly. Although no company has really successfully and completely applied Lingjie manufacturing method, it will undoubtedly become the most promising advanced production mode in the future knowledge economy era. Americans predict that by 2006, the entire manufacturing industry in the United States will implement agile manufacturing, regain the manufacturing advantages taken away by Japanese companies, and regain the world leading position.

Thinking: Enterprise Reform Brought by Flexible Production Mode

The brand-new diversified market will inevitably bring about fundamental changes in the mode of production of enterprises. Looking back on the hard course of New World Computer Company in the field of financial information application, it is found that the rapid and changeable personalized demand of users and the meager profit era formed by fierce market competition environment have brought great challenges to the production and operation of enterprises, and it will be the key to establish the comprehensive competitive advantage of enterprises to quickly transform customer demand into high-quality, low-cost and personalized products.

Facing the rapidly changing market demand, the traditional enterprise operation mode is bound to face many problems. Only from the production point of view, it is manifested in: it is difficult to organize multi-variety production according to market requirements because it does not adapt to market changes; The control ability of production planning is weak, so it is difficult to ensure continuous production and reduce costs under high inventory; Using "push" instead of "pull" production mode can not respond to the market sensitively; Non-computerization of production management means; The market is immature, and there is a lack of clear and really close cooperation between enterprises, so it is difficult to establish a standardized business relationship and ensure the timeliness of supply. According to statistics, at present, the products put into production by computer enterprises include terminals, POS and card series machines, and there are hundreds of products with different hardware and software configurations. There is an urgent need to establish a production system with high efficiency, high flexibility and low cost, and carry out rapid production of various varieties and small batches to meet the needs of users. It is imperative to fully introduce flexible production mode (demand-design-manufacturing-sales and service).

The operation of enterprise flexible production mode is based on the integrated management of a series of advanced manufacturing technologies and methods. It has become a challenging task to apply the management essence of advanced ideas such as lean (just-in-time) production and agile manufacturing to the production and operation of enterprises. From the perspective of industrial platform, in fact, the beneficial research and practice of introducing flexible production mode began last year. This year, the establishment of financial products company and the integration of industry and sales platform marked the beginning of a series of major measures for New World Computer Company to meet market challenges. This also creates the best opportunity for the company's production mode reform. The following are my personal views on the operation of the company's flexible production mode:

First of all, we should strengthen the concept training for all employees, deeply understand the essence of flexible production, and enhance employees' awareness of tolerance and participation in new management methods, especially the management needs to have a deep grasp of flexible production mode. The understanding and determination of management is the key to successfully implement the new management model.

Secondly, the flexibility of enterprises needs to realize the overall flexibility of employees, manufacturing machinery, equipment and instruments, and software (that is, organization and management) to meet the rapid and diversified market demand.

First, staff flexibility is the core: the new world has excellent corporate culture and the enterprise concept of pursuing Excellence. The enterprise values centered on "people-oriented, honest and dedicated, customer first, learning and innovation, team spirit" have formed a very harmonious cooperative atmosphere for enterprises. This is the premise of mobilizing the enthusiasm and creativity of employees; Undoubtedly, the company should strengthen the technical training and continuing education for employees, so that more people can be organized to work in multifunctional cross-working groups, and it is a flexible requirement to cultivate a versatile and creative multi-faceted talent; In addition, it is necessary to establish a reasonable and efficient incentive means and a scientific and fair performance appraisal system to improve the enthusiasm of employees. In this regard, the cross-platform and cross-departmental talent training, multi-faceted technical personnel training, 6S and on-site rationalization and improvement activities proposed by the industrial platform have greatly mobilized the enthusiasm and creativity of employees.

Second, the flexibility of manufacturing machinery and equipment is fundamental: in order to change the situation that the original rigid assembly line is not suitable for a variety of small batch production, at the beginning of this year, the industrial platform introduced a flexible production line for the whole machine, adopting a manufacturing unit with a composite pipeline structure made in Japan, becoming the first domestic-funded enterprise to use this production line. A multi-department flexible line promotion team has been established in the platform. At present, the thread body and technology are being improved for the second time, with the focus on cultivating flexible production generalists who master many production skills. After the relocation of the new factory next year, flexible production lines will be fully introduced to build a flexible manufacturing system.

Thirdly, the flexibility of software (that is, organizational management) is the foundation: it is the requirement of high efficiency and flexibility for enterprises to change the static organizational management based solely on functional departments and adopt a dynamic organizational structure with certain decision-making power and project-oriented tasks. Team (group) working style is the basic form of organizational flexibility. Last year, the production and marketing planning and dispatching meeting promoted by the industry and sales platform created a successful mode of cross-platform operation of the company and achieved great benefits.

Combining the management ideas of lean (just-in-time) production and agile manufacturing, we think that the company should involve the whole process of product realization in the flexible change of organizational management:

1. Market reaction and product development: A keen insight into market demand and a deep grasp of customer demand require the marketing department to establish a technical exchange mechanism, interact with customers and train a group of experts who can improve the overall solution. Facing the diversified market demand, ensuring product quality, cost target and user demand and shortening the development cycle have become the direction of R&D platform. Concurrent Engineering (CE) method can be considered in the development process. A multi-functional cross-parallel design team composed of personnel from relevant departments can consider all relevant processes in the whole product life cycle, design together at one time, avoid repeated modification, and strive for a successful product development and easy manufacturing. In the development, modular design is the leading factor, and computer simulation technology, virtual development technology, quality function deployment (QFD), value analysis (VA) and value engineering (VE) are combined to achieve high efficiency, high quality and low cost product design. In addition, the establishment of the engineering department last year also accelerated the rapid transformation of scientific research results.

2. Supply and marketing management: As the two ends of enterprise production and operation, establishing a relatively smooth material supply and product sales system is the key to realize lean and agile production. The operation of the company's production and marketing planning meeting has greatly strengthened the planning of procurement and sales, and is the beginning of the reform of supply and marketing management system. In terms of supply system, supplier evaluation and supply chain channel integration started last year reduced the number of suppliers by half (more than 100), and reduced procurement costs through close cooperation. The flexibility and electronization of supply chain procurement will be the only way for future procurement management. In marketing, we should change the traditional sales model and service model, and establish flexible and effective sales strategies and incentive mechanisms. The establishment of financial products company provides a good opportunity for the transformation of supply and marketing system.

3. Production planning and inventory management: It should be said that this is the most effective system for the company's flexibility research and practice. The production management department established last year has played a great role in this regard. The rolling production plan generated by production and sales scheduling will improve the balance between supply, production and sales, greatly reduce inventory funds, and begin to introduce JIT management ideas into on-site production management. Manufacturing resource planning (MRP) based on production platform is expected to be realized this year, and the allocation of production resources will be further optimized. However, the enterprise information construction from MRPⅱⅱ II II to ERP and even IERP is the inevitable demand of lean and agile production under flexible mode.

In addition, in terms of quality management, it is necessary to truly implement total quality management with full participation; Increase investment in quality prevention costs; Carry out QC group activities to form a bottom-up quality improvement atmosphere.

It should be said that in the era of knowledge economy, speed is more important than scale, enterprise virtualization proposed by Lingjie Manufacturing is to break through the tangible boundaries of enterprises, and it is also an important choice for enterprises to quickly integrate in the future and make up for their disadvantages with external forces.

It is true that the flexible transformation of enterprises and the goal of challenging management limits cannot be achieved overnight. In the process of promoting the construction of flexible production mode in an all-round way, we should use the method of bottleneck management (TOC) and use the limited resources in the most important place (bottleneck) in the whole system to achieve the maximum benefit. Facing the challenge of the new environment, New World Computer Company, which is determined to be "stronger", is fully capable of achieving this goal.