Lean Manufacturing in the US Automobile Industry

The setting of the problem investigated through the context of this study is an automobile assembly plant of the TBC Company. This assembly plant is but one of many manufacturing facilities operated by the TBC Company.

Automobile assembly operations at the TBC Company are based on mass production concepts and strategies. Over 40 years ago, a more efficient and productive set of manufacturing concepts and strategies was introduced in the automobile manufacturing industry in Japan (Klier, 1995). The Japanese refer to this approach to manufacturing as the khan bhan production system. The khan bhan approach is, essentially, a supply-chain management approach that incorporates such concepts as just-in-time (JIT) management and cycle-time reduction. The khan bhan approach also emphasized the use of work teams and flexibility in the assignment of work tasks to production employees (Tanabe, 1992).

Automobile manufacturers in the United States resisted the adoption of the khan bhan appro

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Manufacturers began to realize that they could reduce substantially the make/ship-loop cycle time. As the manufacturing cycle time started to decrease, it became apparent that the cycle-time for processing a customer's purchase order was greater than the time it took to manufacture the product. This outcome "was not surprising because in the traditional environment of long manufacturing cycle time there is no incentive to rush the customer-order paperwork through" (Northey & Southway, 1993, p. 12). The complexities associated with the distribution loop vary from business-to-business. The issue, however, "is not how many hands the order goes through, but what essential role these hands play in the process and how long the process takes. For example, distributors may not be providing timely sales information because they are using the order-point method of signaling their needs. This can delay arrival of the information to the manufacturing process for several days" (Northey & Southway, 1993, p. 11). Although the supply loop is a significant contributor to the total business cycle time, most companies are powerless to force suppliers to reduce their cycle times. Only the largest companies have had enough clout to insis
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Approximate Word count = 8264
Approximate Pages = 33 (250 words per page)

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