A pilot study for the application of World Class Manufacturing techniques in the fibre-cement industry
Date
1991
Authors
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Stellenbosch : Stellenbosch University
Abstract
ENGLISH ABSTRACT: World Class Manufacturing(WCM) is a set of management
strategies developed in Japan. These strategies have helped
Japan to become the world leaders in manufacturing. This is
obvious when the quality, price, availability and range of
Japanese products are compared to those produced elsewhere.
This thesis consists of two sections, namely, a literature
survey discussing the various components of WCM, and a
description of an application of some of these techniques.
WCM consists of four seperate building blocks, namely, Just-in-
Time(JIT), Total Quality Control(TQC), Total Worker
Involvement and Total Prod11ctive Maintenance. These
building blocks are discussed in the literature survey. The
reason for their importance, their different components and
their inter- relationships are discussed. Suggestions are
also given on how to implement them.
Some of these techniques were implemented in a fibre cement
sheet plant and this is explained in the second part of the
thesis. The most important application was reducing setup
times on one of the machines. In this pilot exercise, setup
times were reduced to 30% of their previous times. The
author is confident that it can reduced even further. An
additional 10% should be the next goal. This makes the complete application of WCM in the plant a very real possibility.
Finally suggestions are made on how to implement the rest of
the pilot study. Once this is completed, the management of
the specific plant will hopefully consider implementing WCM
techniques throughout the plant.
Description
Thesis (M. Eng. (Industrial)) -- University of Stellenbosch, 1991.
Keywords
Everite (Pty) Limited -- Management, Production management -- Japan, Production management -- South Africa, Fiber-reinforced concrete -- Management, Dissertations -- Industrial engineering, UCTD