Total cost minimization Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words

Total woo minimization - Essay ExampleThe new communication and information technologies today save made it po cardinaltial to attain sophisticated and continuous sour manufacturing. The automotive industry, for instance, has seen dramatic breakthroughs in technology displacement and reengineering. They like a shot make over fifty wiz million million new automotives every year and ar responsible for the understructure of one out of every twelve jobs in the North American manufacturing industry. Experts predict that japanese possess factories, by the end of this decade, would have the ability to make an automobile in eight hours or less(prenominal)(prenominal) (Dikbas and Scherer 297). This shorter time of production will result in fewer workers being needed for the production line. Japans nine automakers make over twelve million vehicles each year using less than six hundred thousand workers. Automakers in Detroit employ over two and a half million workers in the production of the same number of cars. US automakers, following Japans lead, have started to reengineer their trading operations in the hope that they can increase their productivity, improve product share, reduce labor rolls, and increase their meshwork margin. GM, in 1993, announced plans for the implementation of changes in practices of production that aimed to eliminate as many as cardinal thousand jobs by the late 90s (Dikbas and Scherer 298). These came on top of the quarter million jobs that they had already done absent with in 1978. Other global automotive makers have also reengineered operations to eliminate thousands of employees with German automakers eliminating one in every seven jobs by 1995. The new smart golem generation that is armed with change magnitude flexibility and intelligence has become a mainstay in the market, as factory owner are less likely to substitute them for laborers since they are cost-effective. Each robot replaces four jobs in the global prudence and pays itself off in one year if used twenty-four hours every day. The humankinds robot population was estimated at about 630,000 in 1991, and the number had grown by 3.5 times in 2008 as the machines have become more flexible, versatile, and intelligent (Meiksins et al 202). The steel industry has also had fortunes that closely reflect those of the automotive industry and have led to sweeping changes in production and organization, in the industry. The US was the world leader in production of steel in the 80s. However, this competitive edge has undergone serious erosion because of ruin by companies in the US to keep in step with steel manufacturers in Japan that have made the production of steel a highly continuous and automated operation. This has led to Nippon Steel cut back its production hours to one hour from twelve days (Meiksins et al 203). Increased steel production automation has reduced the amount of labor required in North America. US Steel, the largest steel company in the US, in 1980, employed over 120,000 workers, which decreased to 20,000 in 1990 and 14,000, in 2005, even though it was producing the same yield (National Academy of Engineering 10). These numbers are predicted to drop even further in the coming ten to twenty years as more advanced operations become available in the process of manufacturing in these factories. The highly automated methods of manufacturing have been used in combination with radical management power structure