Paralelismos (parte V?) talvez não

Na série de postais com o título Paralelismos tenho referido o artigo "The Focused Factory" de Wickham Skinner publicado no primeiro de Maio de 1974 pela Harvard Business Review.
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Todos os dias, quase sempre da Ásia, hoje foi da Tailândia e de Taiwan, chegam a este blogue, encaminhados pelo Google, internautas que procuram o acrónimo "PWP.
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PWP = Plant-Within-Plant
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Skinner propôs que as unidades fabris não se dispersem a produzir tudo e mais alguma coisa, propôs que sejam máquinas de guerra dedicadas a produzir uma gama apertada de produtos.
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Para as empresas que não possam ter mais do que uma unidade fabril, Skinner propunha traçar uma linha no chão da fábrica e dedicar cada uma das partes à produção de cada gama de produtos, como pessoas e máquinas dedicadas.
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Trecho retirado do artigo de Skinner:
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"For example, if the company is currently involved in five different products, technologies, markets, or volumes, does it need five plants, five sets of equipment, five processes, five technologies, and five organizational structures? The answer is probably yes. But the practical solution need not involve selling the big multipurpose facility and decentralizing into five small facilities.
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In fact, the few companies that have adopted the focused plant concept have approached the solution quite differently. There is no need to build five plants, which would involve unnecessary investment and overhead expenses.
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The more practical approach is the “plant within a plant” (PWP) notion in which the existing facility is divided both organizationally and physically into, in this case, five PWPs. Each PWP has its own facilities in which it can concentrate on its particular manufacturing task, using its own work-force management approaches, production control, organization structure, and so forth. Quality and volume levels are not mixed; worker training and incentives have a clear focus; and engineering of processes, equipment, and materials handling are specialized as needed.
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Each PWP gains experience readily by focusing and concentrating every element of its work on those limited essential objectives which constitute its manufacturing task. Since a manufacturing task is an offspring of a corporate strategy and marketing program, it is susceptible to either gradual or sweeping change. The PWP approach makes it easier to perform realignment of essential operations and system elements over time as the task changes."
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Pois bem, este mês de Setembro a Harvard Business Review publica um artigo com algumas dicas sobre o uso do PWP, "Are You Having Trouble Keeping Your Operations Focused?" de Robert Huckman.
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Continua.