Module 4 - AFM 131

Canada today’s focusses and challenges

• Focus:

  • natural resources

    • auto industry

• Challenges:

  • Dependence on U.S.

  • Increasing globalization

    • Strengthening emerging markets like
      India and China

Which companies prepare competitiveness
rankings

World Economic Forum (WEF) and Institute for Management Development (IMD)

Canada’s challenges

Challenges include:
• Inadequate improvement in productivity
• Inadequate education/retraining of work force
• Foreign-owned companies
• Inadequate spending on R&D

Making Canada more competitive

• Innovation, Innovation, Innovation!
• Tax credits and incentives
• Government grants
• Trade policy and regulations that expand trade corridors

Research and development
(R&D)

work directed toward the innovation, introduction, and improvement of products/processes

1. Increase production capability
2. Improve product quality
3. Extend product range

Lean manufacturing

production of goods using less of everything compared to mass production
Less:
• Human effort
• Manufacturing space
• Investment in tools
• Engineering time to develop a new product

Flexible manufacturing

designing machines to do multiple tasks so that they can produce a variety of products

Computer-aided design and manufacturing types

– Computer-aided design (CAD)
– Computer-aided manufacturing (CAM)
– Computer-integrated manufacturing (CIM)

Mass customization

tailoring products to meet the needs of a large number of individual customers

Production

creation of goods/services using the factors of production (Land, Labour, Capital, knowledge, and Entrepreneurship)

Production management

activities that managers do to help their firms create goods

Operations management

transforming resources (including human resources) into goods AND services

Operations management in service and goods industries are…

Involved in making a good product/ service

Operations Managers are responsible for:

– Operations planning
– Operations control
– Quality control

Process manufacturing

physically/chemically changes materials e.g., boiling an egg

Assembly process

put together components e.g., assembling a car or motor

Continuous process

long production runs turn out finished goods over time
• Continuous process: e.g., uniform goods (soda)

Intermittent process

production run is short and the machines are changed frequently to make different products e.g., customized goods

Top reasons for outsourcing

1. Cheap
2. Gain access to external resources
3. Free up internal resources
4. Improve business/customer focus

Will we see more or less outsourcing in the future?

1. Wage rate differences are getting smaller
2. Use of technology
3. Shipping costs rising

Enterprise resource planning (ERP)

a system that allows information to be shared between various functions across a company to manage operations

Materials requirement planning (MRP)

uses sales forecasts to ensure needed parts are available at the right time/place

Site selection

selecting a geographic location for a company’s operations

– Availability of resources and labour
– Time to market (accessibility to transportation)
– Proximity to suppliers
– Proximity to customers
– Government support

Facility Layout

physical arrangement of resources (including people) in the production process

Purchasing

• Searching for best quality material resources
• Best prices
• Best suppliers

Just-in-time (JIT) inventory systems

• Keeping a minimum of inventory on hand with parts/supplies delivered just in time to go on the assembly line
Consider:
• Reliability
• Quality
• Logistics
• Accuracy

Supply chain management

integration and organization of info and logistics across firms in a supply chain to create and deliver goods/services to customers

Logistics

getting the right products to the right place at the right time at the lowest possible cost

Supply chain

sequence of firms that perform activities required to create and deliver goods/services to consumers

work scheduling

1. Identify tasks to be completed
2. Estimate time needed for each task

3. Sequence the tasks
4. Identify the critical path (sequence of tasks that takes the longest time to complete)

PERT chart

• Relationships between tasks and estimated time to complete

• Can be complex/confusing

• Can address complexity of tasks

Gantt chart

• Measures actual progress

• Doesn’t illustrate the dependency of one task with another

• Works well for straight forward projects

Quality

• is consistently producing what the customer wants while reducing errors before/after delivery
• Never-ending process of continuous monitoring, testing and improvement

Six Sigma quality:

a quality measure allowing only 3.4 defects per million events

Costs associated with quality

Prevention, Inspection, Internal Failure, External Failure

Takata Corporation

Massive recall of airbags due to cheaper quality product leading to deaths