Agile Manufacturing:
Forging New
Frontiers
Paul T. Kidd
1994, ISBN 0-201-63163-6
5.1 Introduction
What we refer to in this book as traditional
manufacturing has been developing over a long period of time
since the start of the industrial revolution in the middle of
the 18th century. It is our belief that traditional manufacturing
can be characterised by five primary paradigms. The first paradigm
is our traditional management accounting practices, which we
have discussed in Chapter 4. The four other paradigms are: the
organisational paradigm; the control paradigm; the technological
paradigm; and the technological design paradigm.
We treated the management accounting paradigm
separately from the other four paradigms, because we believe
that it is our traditional management accounting paradigm that
is largely responsible for maintaining the four other paradigms.
If we replace our traditional management accounting paradigm
with one that matches the needs of Agile Manufacturing environments,
then it is highly likely that this will enable the replacement
of the remaining four paradigms.
What we will attempt to do in this Chapter
is to describe these four paradigms, and show why they are now
inappropriate and outdated. We will also try to demonstrate the
relationships that exist between these paradigms. We will start
by considering the organisational and control paradigms. |