Manufacturing Management: Principles and Concepts, P. Gibson, G. Greenhalgh and R. Kerr, Chapman and Hall, 1995. Number of pages: 323. Price: £29.95
✍ Scribed by P. D. T. O'Connor
- Publisher
- John Wiley and Sons
- Year
- 1997
- Tongue
- English
- Weight
- 20 KB
- Volume
- 13
- Category
- Article
- ISSN
- 0748-8017
No coin nor oath required. For personal study only.
✦ Synopsis
The authors have teamed up to create a thoroughly effective and up-to-date book, which covers most of the important This book was produced with support from the UK aspects of manufacturing philosophy and methods.
Design Council. The book's objective is to show how The book is structured into three parts. Part 1 describes several companies, all engaged in design of modern engin-'core concepts', which include strategies for industrial eering products, have applied and benefitted from the competition, added value, waste and design for manufacprinciples of concurrent engineering. ture. Part 2 is concerned with internal manufacturing Concurrent engineering is really the application of commanagement functions, such as material flow, forecasting monsense to the design, development, manufacture and and planning, MRP and OPT, the Toyota production syssupport of a new product. The formal definition quoted tem (including JIT), and total productive maintenance by the editors says that it is 'a systematic approach to the (TPM). Part 3 covers purchasing and distribution, and integrated concurrent design of products and their related Part 4 describes and discusses 'global issues': TQM, manuprocesses including manufacturing and support'. It is interfacturing strategy and performance monitoring.
esting that, before the advent of concurrent (or The chapter on manufacturing strategy is excellent, pro-'simultaneous') engineering, so much engineering design viding well-reasoned wisdom on the selection and appliand development was performed the 'old' way, with differcation of methods in the context of a defined strategy.
ent engineering functions working at arms length from The chapter on performance monitoring is also good, one another. Of course many engineering companies and covering financial aspects and benchmarking. managers still apply functional approaches. Also, as the The authors correctly link the modern, Japaneseeditors stress, the ways that CE should be applied must developed methods (Toyota production system, TQM, take account of the types of products, technologies and TPM) with the management philosophy that superseded markets involved. F. W. Taylor's 'scientific management'. However, they do Therefore, the book serves a useful purpose, and the not describe the new philosophy, or the contributions of case histories described effectively illustrate a range of Drucker and others to its development and application.
applications, including electronic instruments, aero engines, They likewise do not discuss the nature of variation in road vehicles, and others. The organizational and human manufacturing operations, so Deming's crucial contriaspects are also discussed. butions are barely mentioned. On the other hand, they have managed to avoid the 'quick fix' approaches and P. D. T. O'Connor buzzwords so common in recent writings on management, so the book is serious, balanced and authoritative.