LibGuides: Advanced Reading: Manufacturing

More Article Choices for Manufacturing

Abolhassani, Amir, Ky Layfield, and Bhaskaran Gopalakrishnan. "Lean and US Manufacturing Industry: Popularity of Practices and Implementation Barriers." International Journal of Productivity and Performance Management, vol. 65, no. 7, 2016, pp. 875-897. P The purpose of this paper is to analyze lean strategic practices being implemented in manufacturing facilities throughout Pennsylvania and West Virginia and identify the difficulty in implementing those lean practices. Lean manufacturing is a widely recognized and practiced business philosophy as a significant percentage of manufacturers have implemented some variation of practice. However, the extent of knowledge does not mirror awareness. The application of lean manufacturing practices is not readily appropriate for every company, but adopting the concept of customer-focussed waste reduction to maximize value can be universally applied as waste reduction was the most prominent practice pursued. Lean practitioners found that poka-yoke and installing new process equipment have the highest degree of benefits from implementation while 5S and eliminating waste were the least difficult practices to implement. In general, the management personnel of the companies have an influential effect on lean manufacturing pursuance. This is illustrated by the fact of high agreement between facilities that resistance to change from employees is the most prominent difficulty for implementation followed by limited technical knowledge of lean manufacturing at operational and conceptual levels.
Chen, Zhen. "The Influence of 3D Printing on Global Container Multimodal Transport System." Complexity, vol. 2017, 2017, pp. 19. ProQuest Container multimodal transport system was an important promoter of postwar globalization. But in the future, part of global manufacturing may change from centralized to distributed due to 3D printing. To evaluate its impact, this research established a system dynamics model of sneakers supply chain firstly. The modeling showed that the total demand of international transport would decline after the application of 3D printing. For consumer country, the return of manufacturing would increase its container business. And that of producer country would reduce correspondingly. But for resource country, its resource exports would decline, while its container business may grow for the local processing of printing filaments. Secondly, the evaluations based on the data of Guangzhou port suggest that the 3D printing of sneakers was not enough to subvert the existing system. It would be broken only after the 3D printing of electrical products. By then, more manufacturing activities would transfer to the end of supply chain. On the other hand, producer country may actively respond to maintain its advantage in incumbent industrial pattern, such as Belt and Road initiative proposed by China. Deglobalization, caused by 3D printing, and globalization strengthening, caused by trade cooperation, will affect this system simultaneously.
Laufer, Alexander, et al. "What Successful Project Managers do." MIT Sloan Management Review, vol. 56, no. 3, 2015, pp. 43-51. ProQuest Coping with frequent unexpected events requires an organizational culture that allows the project manager to exercise a great amount of flexibility. The authors' studies, employing experiential data collected from more than 150 successful project managers affiliated with more than 20 organizations, indicate that today's successful project managers cope with unexpected events by a combination of the traditional and agile approaches, assuming four roles. Developing collaboration requires project managers to be people-oriented. Integrating planning and review with learning requires them to be information-oriented. Preventing major disruptions requires them to be action-oriented. Finally, maintaining forward momentum, which is pursued throughout a project, requires them to adopt all three orientations.
Liu, Mi, et al. "Disruption Management for Predictable New Job Arrivals in Cloud Manufacturing." Journal of Intelligent Systems, vol. 26, no. 4, 2017, pp. 683-695. ProQuest
Steenhuis, Harm-Jan, and Leon Pretorius. "The Additive Manufacturing Innovation: A Range of Implications." Journal of Manufacturing Technology Management, vol. 28, no. 1, 2017, pp. 122-143. ProQuest The purpose of this paper is to gain insight into whether additive manufacturing (AM) represents incremental, radical, disruptive innovation or an industrial revolution and its implications. It was found that AM represents different innovations in different settings, while it represents incremental innovation in one industry, it has led to radical changes in other industries. There are also indications that it has a disruptive nature and some of the developments appear to be of the industrial revolutionary type, i.e. they cause fundamental shifts in society. Some explanation for the observed differences can come from different performance objectives. AM has an impact on many aspects of society because it affects many industries and enables household manufacturing. It has also affected education, i.e. the current generation of students in terms of skill requirements, and leads to legal difficulties in terms of intellectual property.