Seru (parte V)

Parte I, parte II, parte III e parte IV

"Seru Seisan, also called “beyond lean” in many Japanese manufacturing industries, is an innovation of the production management mode in Japan. Although an increasing number of manufacturing enterprises in Japan have been adopting this strategy with great success, it is not popular among manufacturing enterprises and researchers out of Japan.
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Mass production, symbolized by the conveyor line, is a kind of universal production management mode that has been widely adopted by numerous manufacturing enterprises all over the world. The long history and popularity of the conveyor line influenced peoples’ minds. Implementing the conveyor line in manufacturing industries, especially in final assembly processes, became a constant thinking pattern. Hence, people could not imagine that a high performance production management mode was rising in Japan and gradually taking the place of the conveyor line in some manufacturing fields.
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Over the past decade, several Japanese manufacturing enterprises have dismantled their conveyor lines and adopted Seru Seisan.
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Seru Seisan is an innovation of the production management mode in Japan. It emerged from a very complicated environment of mixed factors both in and out of Japan. The main factors are as follows.
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Change of demand to high variety and low volume [Moi ici: Aquilo que caracteriza Mongo]
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Demand changes are embodied in two main aspects: product variety and product volume. From the standpoint of product variety, the diversified and personalized demand leads to high product variety. The shortened product life cycle also results in diversified products. Moreover, fluctuations in customer demand have negative effects on product volume.
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The efficiency of the conveyor line will dramatically decrease when confronted with variable and fluctuating demands. Therefore, highly efficient but less flexible conveyor lines should be urgently replaced by manufacturing organizations pursuing high flexibility. In Japan, Seru Seisan is currently regarded as the most powerful approach in some manufacturing industries to deal with the dynamic environment with high product variety and low product volume.
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Low flexibility of the conveyor line.
The conveyor line is popular in the final assembly processes of mass production systems due to its high efficiency. Its other advantages include high productivity, superior product quality, low product cost owing to economy of scale, and low labor cost by low-skilled workers. ... The major demerit of the conveyor line centers on its lack of flexibility. Almost every conveyor line is designed for one or several specific product types. Therefore, measures should be taken to reconstruct the line when the product type changes. Meanwhile, it is essential to adjust the line in order to obtain high performance against the fluctuating demand volume.
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Long period of economic stagnation in Japan after 1991.
The expansion of automation was curbed in the 1990s because manufacturing enterprises could not afford the additional enormous amount of capital investment required for automation during the economic recession. Moreover, managers gradually realized that high-cost automation could not always bring the sound effect as expected because of unstable customer demand. Therefore, the requirement for low-cost but highly efficient systems arose reasonably under the influence of an external economic factor and an internal performance factor.
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The economic stagnation of the 1990s prompted Japanese manufacturing enterprises to dismantle their highly efficient conveyor lines and begin to innovate on their production management mode."

Trechos retirados de "Seru Seisan- An Innovation of the Production Management Mode in Japan" publicado por Asian Journal of Technology Innovation 18, 2 (2010)