Manufacturing management of advanced technologies

Abstract

This Thesis is published for the Mechanical Engineering Department of the University of Adelaide as a requirement for a Master of Engineering Science Degree. The focus of the research is based on Management of Advanced Manufacturing Technology. The Thesis was compiled on a part-time basis from 1990 to 1994. During this period rapid changes to Australia's economy occurred as Australia continued to disengage itself from European connections and commenced to attached itself to the Asian and Pacific Rim nations. Also the O.E.C.D. countries experienced a massive downturn in demand and Australia experienced the "Recession we had to have", as stated by our Prime Minister, Mr Paul Keating who at the time of the statement was the Federal Treasurer of the Australian Government. These factors plus the globalisation of competition put immense strains on Australia's manufacturers, and their competitive situation deteriorated seriously. This Thesis researches some aspects of management of Advance Manufacturing Technologies (AMT) that manufacturers should consider to help them become competitive in a global market. To get a perspective on the importance of Manufacturing Trade to Australia, statistics from the Balance of Payments (BOP) and the Manufacturing Trade Balance are discussed. A typical listing of AMT's is described and two additional technologies are introduced, Activity Based Costing (ABC) and Socio Technical Systems (STS). Benchmarking and Best Practice also became prevalent activities in manufacturing circles during the course of study, hence they are also discussed. This Thesis is based on the belief that management (people) are the cause of failure of AMT's, not the AMT itself. Manufacturing Resource Planning (MRPII) was selected as the AMT to review for this Thesis, particularly how it has been managed, how it was selected, who was involved, what functions of the business were involved in making the system work, what depth of knowledge was available to make the MRP installation successful and what basic data was available. People make a system work, most research on MRP focuses on the technical review of the system, this Thesis reviews the people interaction in making a system useable. Functional cross relationships are reviewed together with emphasis on the basic system discipline and type of background people have who install and run systems. Training is important, this is reviewed together with techniques of how training was organised. A questionnaire was developed to assess industry in relationship to MRP management. Also included were some questions on Socio Technical Systems and Activity Based Costing, particularly Self-Managed Workteams (SMWT). The results are published in the text in questionnaire number sequence, followed by comments by the author, plus associated comments from collated written work on the topics from resources in Australia and overseas. The results show that there is a serious credibility gap in understanding the basic requirements of running a successful MRP system. They also show that existing forms of rating a MRP system are too complex for many Australian users and that a much simpler rating system could much more easily define progressive steps to being a successful MRP user. These are shown in the recommendations. Socio technical systems are discussed since installing any form of AMTs without considering people issues is a mistake. Many organisations are changing their current management structure by using SMWT, this is reviewed. Similarly the author believed ABC, was an AMT that would advance the pace of change in manufacturing, the results showed this was not the case. Recommendations are made for MRP users to use their systems and their people more effectively to meet the challenge of global manufacturing and conclusions are drawn that AMT's must be managed with acknowledgement that people's involvement in all phases of the use of the AMT should be a paramount consideration.