July 1996 € Volume 6 € Number 7
Real World
Bose forms JIT II Education and Research Center
The Bose Corp. has established the JIT II Education Center in order to promote
JIT II business practices, which apply to material planning, purchasing,
sales, engineering and logistics. The Center will be affiliated with the
Bose Institute and will donate all revenue in excess of expenses to educational
scholarships. The Center will provide JIT II training programs at the Bose
corporate headquarters in Framingham, Mass., and will support JIT II education
seminars worldwide.
Since 1987, Bose has been using its own refinement of the widely practiced
JIT (Just-in-Time) technique, called JIT II, to streamline and simplify
its operations in virtually every aspect of purchasing -- from materials
to international transportation. JIT II goes a number of steps further than
JIT. JIT II eliminates the salesman, the buyer and the production planner
by bringing certain suppliers in-house on a full-time basis and giving them
the power to function as integral components of the customer's business.
Honeywell, IBM, Foxboro, Intel and other top corporations are now implementing
the Bose plan. Educational institutions, including Harvard University and
the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, are also currently using the
Bose supply management method in teaching business students.
Many manufacturers wary of November election
A national survey of 1,197 business owners, conducted by the George S. May
International Co. (a management consulting firm), reveals that nearly 68
percent of manufacturing respondents claim they will feel more of an effect
from the November elections than will their counterparts in the service,
retail and health care sectors.
Of those manufacturers who expect to be affected, 25 percent foresee positive
changes, 27.7 percent expect negative changes, and 13.3 percent are unsure
of the change. More than 33 percent do not expect their businesses to be
affected by the outcome of the election.
Plant use of bonus system triples
The number of Midwest plants using pay-for-performance bonus systems has
tripled in the past five years, according to a survey of 112 plants in six
Great Lakes states conducted by Iberman and DeForest -- a national management
consultant firm. Pay-for-performance bonus systems, commonly known as gainsharing,
provide bonuses to an entire work force for boosting productivity and quality
output.
The survey covered managers of 112 manufacturing plants in Pennsylvania,
Ohio, Michigan, Indiana, Illinois and Wisconsin.
Among managers reporting favorable use of gainsharing are plant executives
at:
General Electric, TRW, Cummins Consolidated Diesel, Ingersoll-Rand, Whirlpool,
Emerson Electric, Eaton, Wrought Washer Mfg. Co., Bristol-Myers, Rexnord,
Doskocil Foods, Kay Manufacturing, Federal Mogul, and Diversified Precision
Products.
Of the 112 plant managers covered by the survey, 68 used gainsharing bonuses
to reward improved productivity and quality. Most reported satisfactory
results: 18 managers had productivity gains of 18 percent to 28 percent
annually; 21 had gains of 10 percent to 18 percent; and 17 managers had
gains of less than 10 percent. Only 12 reported no success with gainsharing.
"Green" design study of automotive instrument panels
GE Plastics, Pittsfield, Mass., has awarded the University of Rhode Island's
(URI) Industrial and Manufacturing Engineering Department (IME) a contract
for redesign studies of two high-volume automotive instrument panels (IP).
The goal of the research is to explore the potential of advanced thermoplastics
to provide new design alternatives that are environmentally feasible, highly
manufacturable and cost-effective to consumers.
The IME/GE Plastics research will use the latest Design for Assembly, Disassembly
and Environment (DFA/D/E) analyses to quantify the ability of certain thermoplastics
to meet the challenges of environmental design. The project's first objective
is to evaluate the quality of two instrument panel designs from the mid-1980s
and mid-1990s for end-of-life disassembly and material recovery, or safe
disposal. The Department will then assess the design trends in the two IP
systems and quantify the changes through the use of Design for Environment
(DFE) metrics. Finally, the IME will work in collaboration with automotive
industrial designers to develop future concepts for IP designs that incorporate
these environmental, disassembly, cost and manufacturability studies.
GE Plastics is providing the IME with information about material properties,
automotive engineering requirements and the current infrastructure for plastics
recycling. The GE Plastics' project is a one-year $87,000 contract. The
project's life-cycle design and disassembly evaluation will build on existing
research concluded by the IME in 1995 for an Asian-based appliance manufacturer.
It will also test new environmental impact data from TNO Product Centre
in The Netherlands. TNO's system translates the effect of design decisions
into measurable units of material depletion, energy usage and toxicity (MET).
"Shipment from Hell" contest
Roberts Express Inc., which specializes in shipments that are time-critical
or require special care and handling, has introduced a new contest that
focuses on transportation and distribution. This contest, referred to as
the "Shipment from Hell" contest, promises to provide the winner
with a vacation anywhere in the world, including transportation, accommodations,
and $2,000 spending money.
To enter, shippers will be asked to describe real-life horror stories: shipments
that were lost, misrouted, damaged, or, in some other way, fell victim to
exceptionally poor service -- and/or bad luck -- since Jan.1, 1995. Five
second-prize winners will receive $1,000 gift certificates.
Entries must be postmarked no later than Oct. 31, 1996; winners will be
selected by a panel of judges from the transportation industry. For more
information, call Roberts Express at 1-800-856-7920.
Copyright ©
1996 by the American Production and Inventory Control Society Inc. All rights
reserved.
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