AN AUTO PARTS MANUFACTURER in Northern Europe started to slip in profitability. For historical reasons, manufacturing was organized in a very disjointed way with facilities scattered over the countryside, each managed independently and concentrating on only a part of the full production process.
I CAN DEFINE MY TOPIC of concern best by reviewing very briefly the kinds of issues upon which I have focused my research over the last several years.
SEVERAL STUDIES published in the 1980s indicated that Japanese firms, led by Toyota, have achieved the highest levels of manufacturing efficiency in the world automobile industry. Physical productivity, which reflects the “throughput” speed for completing products and the amount of labor required, has been significantly higher than in most U.S.