|
AGILE MANUFACTURING: KEY
ISSUES
Paul T. KIDD
Cheshire Henbury
Tamworth House, PO Box 103,
Macclesfield, SK11 8UW, UK
Phone: +44 1625 619313
Fax: +44 1625 619060
Email:paulkidd@cheshirehenbury.com
Website: http://www.cheshirehenbury.com
Abstract. This paper outlines the concept of
Agile Manufacturing. A definition is provided along with a description
of basic concepts. A number of key issues in this new area are
also explored.
1. Introduction
Manufacturing industry may
well be on the verge of a major paradigm shift. This shift is
likely to take us away from mass production, way beyond lean
manufacturing, into a world of Agile Manufacturing. Agile Manufacturing,
however, is a relatively new term, one which was first introduced
with the publication of the Iacocca Institute report 21st Century
Manufacturing Enterprise Strategy [1]. Furthermore, at this point
in time, Agile Manufacturing is not well understood and the conceptual
aspects are still being defined. However, there is a tendency
to view Agile Manufacturing as another programme of the month,
and to use the term Agile Manufacturing as just another way of
describing lean production, flexible manufacturing or CIM.
Many of our corporations today
are under going massive transformations - reengineering business
processes, flattening hierarchies, empowering people, implementing
lean production concepts, etc. The list is almost endless. But
none of these massive transformations, on their own or taken
collectively, constitutes the implementation of Agile Manufacturing.
What Agile Manufacturing really represents is the potential for
a quantum leap forward in manufacturing. Instead of just chasing
after the Japanese by copying their techniques in a prescriptive
fashion, or implementing our own prescriptions such as CIM, in
Agile Manufacturing we should be trying to achieve a competitive
lead by doing something that our competitors are not doing.
Agile Manufacturing is something
that many of our corporations have yet to fully comprehend, never
mind implement. Agile Manufacturing is likely to be the way business
will be conducted in the next century. It is not yet a reality.
Our challenge is to make it a reality, first by more fully defining
the conceptual aspects, and secondly by venturing into the frontier
of implementation.
In this paper we will examine
some of the key issues relevant to the development of Agile Manufacturing.
Owing to space limitations we will only provide a very brief
overview of Agile Manufacturing. The reader is referred to 21st
Century Manufacturing Enterprise Strategy [1] and Agile Manufacturing:
Forging New Frontiers [2] for more detailed information.
2. Definition and Concepts
The problem with a new idea
such as Agile Manufacturing is the lack of a good sound definition
and a set of concepts that most people would agree upon. References
[1] and [2] have a reasonably common understanding of what constitutes
Agile Manufacturing.
Agile Manufacturing should
primarily be seen as a business concept. Its aim is quite simple
- to put our enterprises way out in front of our primary competitors.
In Agile Manufacturing our aim is to develop agile properties.
We will then use this agility for competitive advantage, by being
able to rapidly respond to changes occurring in the market environment
and through our ability to use and exploit a fundamental resource
-knowledge.
One fundamental idea in the
exploitation of this resource is the idea of using technologies
to lever the skills and knowledge of our people. We need to bring
our people together, in dynamic teams formed around clearly identified
market opportunities, so that it becomes possible to lever one
another's knowledge. Through these processes we should seek to
achieve the transformation of knowledge and ideas into new products
and services, as well as improvements to our existing products
and services.
The concept of Agile Manufacturing
is also built around the synthesis of a number of enterprises
that each have some core skills or competencies which they bring
to a joint venturing operation, which is based on using each
partners facilities and resources. For this reason, these joint
venture enterprises are called virtual corporations, because
they do not own significant capital resources of their own. This,
it is believed, will help them to be agile, as they can be formed
and changed very rapidly.
Central to the ability to form
these joint ventures is the deployment of advanced information
technologies and the development of highly nimble organisational
structures to support highly skilled, knowledgeable and empowered
people.
Agile Manufacturing enterprises
are expected to be capable of rapidly responding to changes in
customer demand. They should be able to take advantage of the
windows of opportunities that, from time to time, appear in the
market place. With Agile Manufacturing we should also develop
new ways of interacting with our customers and suppliers. Our
customers will not only be able to gain access to our products
and services, but will also be able to easily assess and exploit
our competencies, so enabling them to use these competencies
to achieve the things that they are seeking.
3. Some Key Issues in Agile
Manufacturing
3.1 The "I am a Horse"
Syndrome
There is an old saying that
hanging a sign on a cow that says "I am a horse" does
not make it a horse. There is a real danger that Agile Manufacturing
will fall prey to the unfortunate tendency in manufacturing circles
to follow fashion and to relabel everything with a new fashionable
label. The dangers in this are two fold. First, it will give
Agile Manufacturing a bad reputation. Second, instead of getting
to grips with the profound implications and issues raised by
Agile Manufacturing, management will only acquire a superficial
understanding, which leaves them vulnerable to those competitors
that take Agile Manufacturing seriously. Of course this is good
news for the competitors!
One sure way to fail with Agile
Manufacturing is to hang a new sign up. Get smart, resist the
temptation, and put the paint brush away.
3.2 The Existing Culture
of Manufacturing
One of the important things
that is likely to hold us back from making a quantum leap forward
and exploring this new frontier of Agile Manufacturing, is the
baggage of our traditions, conventions and our accepted values
and beliefs. A key success factor is, without any doubt, the
ability to master both the soft and hard issues in change management.
However, if we are to achieve agility in our manufacturing enterprises,
we should first try to fully understand the nature of our existing
cultures, values, and traditions. We need to achieve this understanding,
because we need to begin to recognise and come to terms with
the fact that much of what we have taken for granted, probably
no longer applies in the world of Agile Manufacturing. Achieving
this understanding is the first step in facing up to the pain
of consigning our existing culture to the garbage can of historically
redundant ideas.
3.3 Understanding Agility
Agility is defined in dictionaries
as quick moving, nimble and active. This is clearly not the same
as flexibility which implies adaptability and versatility. Agility
and flexibility are therefore different things.
Leanness (as in lean manufacturing
[3]) is also a different concept to agility. Sometimes the terms
lean and agile are used interchangeably, but this is not appropriate.
The term lean is used because lean manufacturing is concerned
with doing everything with less [4]. In other words, the excess
of wasteful activities, unnecessary inventory, long lead times,
etc are cut away through the application of just-in-time manufacturing,
concurrent engineering, overhead cost reduction, improved supplier
and customer relationships, total quality management, etc.
We can also consider CIM in
the same light. When we link computers across applications, across
functions and across enterprises we do not achieve agility. We
might achieve a necessary condition for agility, that is, rapid
communications and the exchange and reuse use of data, but we
do not achieve agility.
Thus agility is not the same
as flexibility, leanness or CIM. Understanding this point is
very important. But if agility is none of these things, then
what is it? This is a good question, and not one easily answered.
Yet most of us would recognise agility if we saw it.
For example, we would not say
the a Sumo wrestler was agile. Nor would we think that 50 Sumo
wrestlers, tied together by a complex web of chains and ropes,
all pulling in different directions, as agile. Quite the contrary.
We would see them as lumbering, slow and unresponsive. However,
we would all recognise a ballet dancer as agile. We would also
think of a stage full of ballet dancers as agile, because what
binds them together is something quite different.
This analogy between Sumo wrestlers
and ballet dancers is very relevant to understanding the property
of agility. Many of our corporations, to varying degrees, resemble
Sumo wrestlers, tied together, but all pulling in different directions.
If we want to develop agile properties, we need to understand
what causes agility and what hinders agility. Only when we have
developed this understanding can we begin to think about designing
an agile enterprise. For, when we have such an understanding
of the causes of agility, we can start to audit out current situation,
and identify what needs to be changed.
4. Concluding Remarks
We have spent much time copying
the Japanese. Now we may be about to teach the Japanese something.
For a change, US manufacturing industry is realising that it
has very little to gain, in the long term, by copying what other
people are doing. There is now a growing realisation that global
preeminence in manufacturing can only be achieved through innovation.
We can learn from others, but in a highly competitive world we
can only become world leaders if we develop new ideas that take
us beyond the state-of-the-art. Basically, the issue is, should
we adopt lean manufacturing in our own enterprises, i.e. should
we mimic the Japanese, or should we do something different and
better?
Without doubt there are a significant
number of people who believe that we have to adopt lean manufacturing.
But in adopting this approach we run the risk of forever chasing
after a moving target. The Japanese will keep innovating. Thus,
adopting lean manufacturing can only be a short term measure
aimed doing something to close the competitive gap. In the longer
term, if we want to catch up with and overtake the Japanese,
lean manufacturing is not the answer. What we need to do, is
something which the Japanese cannot do. That something may well
be Agile Manufacturing.
References
[1] Iacocca Institute, 21st
Century Manufacturing Enterprise Strategy. An Industry-Led View.
Volumes 1 & 2. Iacocca Institute, Bethlehem, PA, 1991.
[2] Paul T. Kidd, Agile Manufacturing:
Forging New Frontiers. Addison-Wesley, 1994.
[3] J.P. Womack, D.T. Jones
and D. Roos, The Machine that Changed the World. Rawson Associates,
New York, 1990.
[4] D.T. Jones, Beyond the
Toyota Production System: The Era of Lean Production. In: C.A.
Voss (Ed.), Manufacturing Strategy: Process and Content. Chapman
& Hall, London, 1992, pp 189-210. |
