Some implementation experiences with just-in-time manufacturing

A case study on the implementation of a just-in-time (JIT) production system by a Canadian manufacturer in the heavy machinery industry is presented. Many hurdles and difficulties were encountered during implementation and the way in which these problems were resolved is reported. While the successful implementation of a JIT system depends on a host of technical and human factors, this study suggests that the people involvement factor is the most crucial. It is seen that the key elements to securing people involvement are institution leadership, company-wide education and training and mutual understanding, trust and respect among employees. The moral of this study is that without employee involvement nothing will happen and no result will be achieved.     

Promoting Children's Welfare by Inter‐professional Practice and Learning in Social Work and Primary Care

Social work in the United Kingdom is an activity that benefits from, and often requires, co‐operation between different staff and across different professions. How this is to be achieved has been a central dilemma for practice and policy for many years. Primary care health services often play a key role. New policy and practice developments are designed to promote inter‐professional working with children, where research has shown significant problems in the community‐based health care of looked after children, children leaving care, and children at serious risk. There is, however, little evidence from research that supports current developments in inter‐professional practice; analysis of the particular nature of the inter‐professional problems is lacking, as are therefore the relevant inter‐professional solutions. A framework for better analysis, linked to developments in practice‐based research, one that would yield significant improvements for children's welfare, is presented here.     

An evaluation of product commonality and group technology production methods in a pre-defined multiple-machine scenario

Group technology has been used successfully for a number of years as a setup reduction tool. It is especially valuable in low-volume high-mix manufacturing environments where products and machines may be partitioned into product families and machine cells. The partitioning of machines or processes into cells may be limited by practical constraints, and the partitioning of products is complicated as the number of products and processes increases. In this paper, the authors examine the behaviour of various grouping strategies lauded as being appropriate in situations where machine partitioning and product routeing are determined by technological constraints. Of specific experimental concern in this paper is the effect of the mean and variance of component part commonality between products on system performance under various grouping strategies in a multiple-machine environment.     

Shop floor control system for tool rooms

A shop floor control system (SFCS), which is the most important component of any production control system, ff has a direct e ect on the productivity of a tool room. The SFCS presented in this paper aims at streamlining various tool room activities, such as process planning, operations scheduling, loading, progress monitoring, and performance monitoring. The system discussed in this paper is characterized by simplicity and is user friendly. Basic information, consisting of three types of information (order details, process details, and part details), is input through interactive dialogue sessions. On-line updating of the process information is carried out, again through interactive dialogue sessions. The basic input to the system along with the on-line updating enables a number of useful and important reports and documents to be generated ff by the system for e ective control of the shop floor. The reports generated include operations scheduling, process sheet, part list, ffi job card, load pending report, e ciency report, etc. This SFCS is developed for a medium sized tool room in an automotive company and its successful implemention reduced paperwork and improved resource management and has resulted in productivity. It can be said that this system offers a first venture into computer integrated manufacturing (CIM) for a tool room.     

Trade-off between quoted lead time and price

In a make-to-order environment, lead time and price can play a crucial role in determining the financial success of a firm. Their importance increases when demand is sensitive to the quoted lead time and price. A model is presented which uses the quoted lead time and price as a mechanism to determine the optimal demand level. The relationships between the model parameters and their impacts on the firm's profit is also analysed. In addition, the effect of the number of job requests, and the mean processing time are examined. Based on the results presented in this paper, there is clear indication that the firm's profit is sensitive to the inventory holding rate, and that the inventory holding cost component is redundant in the presence of a tardiness cost component.     

A modified hierarchical production planning system integrated with MRP: A case study

In this paper, a hierarchical planning system is proposed which integrates aggregate capacity planning with MRP. This system is to be implemented in a metal box manufacturing company which multi-user MRP system covering manufacturing activities as well as procurement sales order processing and accounting systems. The hierarchical planning system includes a medium-range aggregate planning model adapted to the firm's requirements and strategies. The model consists of a mathematical formulation which covers labour capacity has already installed a constraints and includes certain cost estimations in the objective function. The planning horizon of the medium range planning is taken as twelve months in order to cover sales seasonality. The aggregate production quantities resulting from the optimized medium-range planning model are disaggregated according to procedures already found in the literature. Furthermore, the theoretical infeasibilities pertaining to the disaggregation procedures are also resolved in an heuristic manner. Using the latter modified disaggregation procedure, a feasible disaggregated plan is generated for the whole planning horizon. The proposed plan is compared with the current production policy of the firm and it is observed that the proposed plan leads to backorder reduction.     

Links between informal caregiving and volunteering in Sweden: a 17-year perspective

This article analyses informal caregiving and volunteering in organizations over 17 years in Sweden, with a focus on links between these two forms of unpaid activities. The discussion is based on results from a national survey that was repeated four times in the period 1992–2009. Links were found between the different types of activities. In all four studies a substantial group of the population was involved both in informal caregiving and volunteering. This group of ‘active citizens’ are commonly also engaged in informal social networks. This ‘double active’ group had increased over time and they provide a substantial amount of hours of involvement. Patterns outlined in this article demonstrate that unpaid activities represent a multifaceted phenomenon, and that the boundaries between informal caregiving and volunteering as forms of engagement may be more fluid than has previously been acknowledged. The results challenge the literature in which informal caregiving is viewed as a major obstacle to volunteering. At the same time, however, informal caregiving in general was found to be increasing. There might be reasons to be cautious about the possible risk that too much pressure on citizens for informal caregiving might jeopardize the type of double involvement that is outlined in this article.     

Concurrent consideration of product design,process planning and production planning activities

In manufacturing engineering, product design, process planning and production planning activities are often considered independently. However, in order to effectively respond to changes in business situations, such as changes in demand forecast, product mix and technology, it is desirable to consider them concurrently. For this purpose, a large-scale linear programming model has been developed. The model considers minimization of the sum of processing cost, late shipment cost and inventory holding cost as the objective, and concurrently selects product designs, and generates process plans and production plans. The number of columns in the formulation can be large and, hence, an efficient column generation scheme is developed to solve the model. The model and solution procedure are illustrated with examples.     

我国农村居民生育意愿转变分析

农村居民生育意愿真正开始转变是在全国推行计划生育以后,目前已发生了极大的转变,主要特征是:以期望生育两个孩子且一男一女为主流意识,还有相当比例自愿只生一个,"多子多福"观念基本没有市场,对孩子质量的追求正在替代对数量的追求。生育意愿转变的标准不应是生育政策,而应以符合可持续发展理念的要求为标准。