From the award-winning developers of Factory Physics—a powerful leadership guide for breakthrough performance A comprehensive guide that cuts through the hodgepodge of copycat initiatives, overblown buzzwords, confusing mathematics, and misguided software, Factory Physics for Managers is a breath of fresh air for operations managers and executives. Written by the leaders and experts behind the bestselling Factory Physics, it’s a brilliant crash course in the practical science of operations designed to help you: Achieve best possible profit, cash flow, and customer service Attain highest return with existing Lean, Six Sigma, and ERP initiatives Manage your capacity, inventory, response time, and variability with high predictability Simplify management of complexity using existing IT systems Use the fundamentals of science to ensure your operation’s success See your company and procedures more clearly Improve intuition, decision making, and strategy execution A strategy of imitation is not much of a strategy. Most every company uses the common continuous improvement initiatives. This highly accessible guide addresses but goes beyond other business approaches such as Lean, Six Sigma, and Theory of Constraints by offering a customizable plan that you can apply to any manufacturing-based industry or supply chain. You’ll discover invaluable tools for developing operations strategy and driving execution by using practical science to assess your procedures, target problems, and find solutions. You’ll learn essential life lessons from the best—and worst—practices of corporate leaders like Toyota and Boeing. You’ll find ingenious new ways to improve your leadership by predictively managing the tradeoffs that every operation faces—whether it’s more or less inventory or capacity, higher or lower customer service, or more or fewer products. Using this approach, you can tackle these natural conflicts in business through a practical, comprehensive science of operations. Factory Physics for Managers makes it easier to choose and execute the best strategy for better productivity—and even bigger profits. Praise for Factory Physics for Managers “Factory Physics for Managers is a proven path to flawless execution and results. Leading vs. following in our industry is predicated on the relentless pursuit of putting order to chaos. Factory Physics science and CSUITE software have given our organization the ability to plan, predict, model, and execute based on explosive growth and rapid-fire, dynamic changes to our business model. In our case, history is not a good predictor of the future, so we need to deploy our resources wisely, and the Factory Physics approach has helped us do just that.” —Larry Doerr, COO, Stratasys “Shows how the science behind Lean initiatives can greatly improve results in terms of productivity and resources.” —Bill Fierle, Vice President and General Manager, TopWorx, Emerson “Brings powerful, accessible science to operations management. The Factory Physics playbook enables me to lead the harnessing of our data more effectively for modeling, planning, control, and feedback. Armed with the concepts, common language, and tools in this book, I can partner with operations’ leadership to impact the bottom line.” —Jeffrey Korman, CIO, Hu-Friedy Mfg LLC, Chicago

Japanese industry is the envy of the world for its efficient and humane management practices. Yet, as William Tsutsui argues, the origins and implications of "Japanese-style management" are poorly understood. Contrary to widespread belief, Japan's acclaimed strategies are not particularly novel or even especially Japanese. Tsutsui traces the roots of these practices to Scientific Management, or Taylorism, an American concept that arrived in Japan at the turn of the century. During subsequent decades, this imported model was embraced--and ultimately transformed--in Japan's industrial workshops. Imitation gave rise to innovation as Japanese managers sought a "revised" Taylorism that combined mechanistic efficiency with respect for the humanity of labor. Tsutsui's groundbreaking study charts Taylorism's Japanese incarnation, from the "efficiency movement" of the 1920s, through Depression-era "rationalization" and wartime mobilization, up to postwar "productivity" drives and quality-control campaigns. Taylorism became more than a management tool; its spread beyond the factory was a potent intellectual template in debates over economic growth, social policy, and political authority in modern Japan. Tsutsui's historical and comparative perspectives reveal the centrality of Japanese Taylorism to ongoing discussions of Japan's government-industry relations and the evolution of Fordist mass production. He compels us to rethink what implications Japanese-style management has for Western industries, as well as the future of Japan itself.

Publisher Description

This book is divided into four sections: invited papers, principles, systems and techniques. The invited papers form an extensive overview of the state-of-the-art of production management. The themes range from the everlasting hunt for better productivity to the implications of CIM architectures (particularly CIM-OSA) for production management. The other three sections of the book look at the various problems affecting production management. One of the characteristics of modern production management is the need for better principles, systems and techniques for interorganizational production management. Another topic of crucial relevance is the necessity to master not only repetitive manufacturing but also one-of-a-kind product manufacturing. From the managerial point of view, the forecast-based make-to-stock principles have proven insufficient, with market forces demanding fast and reliable deliveries of customer-oriented products. The goals of production management have been re-evaluated as a result.