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Lean Manufacturing in the US Automobile Industry

The context of the problem investigated through the conduct of this study is the contemporary automobile manufacturing industry wherein the competitive environment increasingly is global in character. Each automobile manufacturing operation in a single country is, in effect, in direct competition with counterpart operations in every other country wherein automobile manufacturing occurs.

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 approach outright. Incorporation of some elements of the khan bhan approach into American automobile manufacturing did occur, however, in the late-1980s and early-1990s. The on-rush of economic globalization, however, persuaded all American automobile manufacturers that a completely new approach to manufacturing was required in place of the hodge-podge of mass production and khan bhan techniques that had developed. The result of this conclusion was the development of lean manufacturing, which, in effect, is nothing more than the khan bhan approach with another name ...

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Lean Manufacturing in the US Automobile Industry. (1969, December 31). In LotsofEssays.com. Retrieved 04:06, March 29, 2024, from https://www.lotsofessays.com/viewpaper/1695539.html