Factory Physics Author: Amazon Prime | Language: English | ISBN:
1577667395 | Format: EPUB
Factory Physics Description
Our economy and future way of life depend on how well American manufacturing managers adapt to the dynamic, globally competitive landscape and evolve their firms to keep pace. A major challenge is how to structure the firm s environment so that it attains the speed and low cost of high-volume flow lines while retaining the flexibility and customization potential of a low-volume job shop.
The book's three parts are organized according to three categories of skills required by managers and engineers: basics, intuition, and synthesis. Part I reviews traditional operations management techniques and identifies the necessary components of the science of manufacturing. Part II presents the core concepts of the book, beginning with the structure of the science of manufacturing and a discussion of the systems approach to problem solving. Other topics include behavioral tendencies of manufacturing plants, push and pull production systems, the human element in operations management, and the relationship between quality and operations. Chapter conclusions include main points and observations framed as manufacturing laws. In Part III, the lessons of Part I and the laws of Part II are applied to address specific manufacturing management issues in detail. The authors compare and contrast common problems, including shop floor control, long-range aggregate planning, workforce planning, and capacity management. A main focus in Part III is to help readers visualize how general concepts in Part II can be applied to specific problems.
Written for both engineering and management students, the authors demonstrate the effectiveness of a rule-based and data driven approach to operations planning and control. They advance an organized framework from which to evaluate management practices and develop useful intuition about manufacturing systems.
Table of Contents 0. Factory Physics? I: THE LESSONS OF HISTORY 1. Manufacturing in America, 2. Inventory Control: From EOQ to ROP, 3. The MRP Crusade, 4. From the JIT Revolution to Lean Manufacturing, 5. What Went Wrong? II: FACTORY PHYSICS 6. A Science of Manufacturing, 7. Basic Factory Dynamics, 8. Variability Basics, 9. The Corrupting Influence of Variability, 10. Push and Pull Production Systems, 11. The Human Element in Operations Management, 12. Total Quality Manufacturing III: PRINCIPLES IN PRACTICE 13. A Pull Planning Framework, 14. Shop Floor Control, 15. Production Scheduling, 16. Aggregate and Workforce Planning, 17. Supply Chain Management, 18. Capacity Management, 19. Synthesis--Putting It All Together
Title of related interest also from Waveland Press: Hopp, Supply Chain Science (ISBN 9781577667384).
- Hardcover: 720 pages
- Publisher: Waveland Pr Inc; 3 edition (August 31, 2011)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 1577667395
- ISBN-13: 978-1577667391
- Product Dimensions: 1.8 x 8 x 10 inches
- Shipping Weight: 3.9 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
I am a researcher and statistician with a background of 20 years experience in applied business and academics. One day I stumbled over Spearman and Hopps "Factory Physics". Literally... The book consists of three parts: An interesting historical and technical introduction to the development of SCM as a science ("Origin of SCM"), followed by the elaboration as a framework ("Factory Physics"), and finally "Principles in Practice" as the third part. The more I read the book, the longer got my list of fundamental criticisms:
1) The main formulas fit on four (!) pages, the inner sides of the front and back cover. The remaining over 700+ (!) pages are used to explain the formulas. This book is incredibly long-winded, repeating all over, and still could have explained a lot shorter and better. Not to mention the lack of definitions, symbols not explained, and also the usual typos and errors.
2) The formulas celebrated as "physics" are nothing more than simple mathematical formulas. From this follow several problems met also in corporate practice: Complex SCM practice processes can not be modeled by simple mathematical formulas and EXCEL. One reason are the formulas themselves: Several researchers have demonstrated that the "Factory Physics" formulas are not suitable for complex SCM processes, for example Chen and Ye (2002): "Our analysis suggests that we should be very cautious about the applicability of these laws". From this again follows that companies will be faced with massive problems optimize their SCM processes with the "Factory Physics" approach.
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