Lados positivo, negativo e arriscado

Um lado positivo:

""Um dos nossos principais vetores de sucesso é o desenvolvimento de novos e inovadores produtos,
...
Apesar de a produção nacional estar ao nível dos melhores e a preços competitivos, Manuel Brasil refere que não podem competir só pelo preço ou pela qualidade. "Trabalhar exclusivamente pelo preço é demasiado perigoso e redutor, visto que as mais-valias são muito reduzidas, e porque continuarão a existir países cuja conjuntura local seja mais favorável a este tipo de fabrico", alerta. "A qualidade é algo que tem de ser inato a todos os produtos e serviços. A premissa que deve ser garantida é a de não cair em situações de "excesso" de qualidade, ou seja, tudo aquilo que esteja incluído num produto que não tenha valor para o cliente é de facto um custo para o fabricante.""[Moi ici: A aposta na diferenciação pela inovação]

Um lado negativo:

"Se não for criada e colocada no terreno uma estratégia nacional de formação na indústria de metalomecânica, não sei por quanto tempo este crescimento possa ser sustentado."[Moi ici: O ainda não ter percebido que vão ter de ser as empresas em associação a criar soluções locais e específicas para este problema. Se calhar em conjunto com uma escola privada mais virada para o ensino profissional oficinal, e que agora atravesse um mau momento com o fim dos contratos de associação]

Já agora, a propósito de "O têxtil vive em castelos de areia". Não é o têxtil, é toda a actividade económica privada. Afinal, não foi de ânimo leve que sublinhei: "For an entrepreneur, every day is a crisis". Todas as actividades económicas que dependem de clientes que são livres de escolher a quem comprar, são como os iogurtes, têm um modelo económico que, mais tarde ou mais cedo, e sem avisar, vai ficar obsoleto. Por isso, toda a actividade económica privada vive em castelos de areia, literalmente. E fugir disto é deturpar a economia.

Outro lado positivo:

"Como "não podemos competir pelo preço", o foco está em manter a flexibilidade que permite produzir séries pequenas em espaços de tempo apertados.[Moi ici: Ainda me lembro de quase só o anónimo da província ousar escrever sobre isto]
...
"O crescimento das vendas online dá vantagem a Portugal porque as marcas não podem ir à Ásia buscar mil peças em quatro meses, mas nós fazemo-lo. Cada vez mais, as lojas físicas vão encerrar e o comércio online pede rapidez." 

Um lado arriscado:

""Fizemos um estudo, que só será apresentado no primeiro semestre deste ano, que contabiliza o custo de armazenamento de toneladas de peças de vestuário que as marcas têm guardadas por essa Europa fora. Vamos resolver esse problema: propomos recuperar essas peças e dar-lhe uma vida nova, sem que percam valor."[Moi ici: O modelo que gerou/gera essas peças que não se vendem está a morrer. Por isso, também, é que o reshoring está a acontecer... recuar a Maio de 2006]

• Flexigurança, fiscalidade e competitividade (Janeiro 2007)
• Acerca da competitividade (Dezembro 2010)
• Hora da batota? (Março 2012)
• Como aproveitar a proximidade entre a produção e o consumo? (Julho 2012)
• Rapidez, rapidez, rapidez (Março 2013)
• Escrito nas estrelas (Abril 2013)
• E quem puder dar esse acompanhamento superior (parte III) (Novembro 2014) 
• Uma década à frente da tríade* (Junho de 2017)

Trechos retirados de "Exportações: três histórias de sucesso"

"short-lived consumer trends"

“If you’re selling the same merchandise that’s commonly available, and you’ve got no point of differentiation, you’re dead,” Mr. Rubin said. “It’s just a question of when you die.”

Comecei a perceber como materializar isto com um artigo na revista Business Week em 2005 sobre o fim das linhas de montagem da Canon. E com a leitura em 2006 do livro "How We Compete: What Companies Around the World Are Doing to Make" onde encontrei trechos como este sobre a Kenwood:

"When Kenwood moved production of portable mini-disk players from a factory in Malaysia to their Yamagata, Japan, plant in 2003, they discovered they could exploit short-lived consumer trends."

Em 2017, esta abordagem continua a ser notícia, no país dos gringos:

"When Alejandro Villanueva, a Pittsburgh Steelers offensive lineman, stood for the anthem and the rest of the team stayed in the locker room, his name began trending on Twitter. Fanatics quickly posted a rendering of his No. 78 jersey on its website and on the N.F.L.’s online shop, which it also operates.
.
Sales skyrocketed. Manufacturing facilities in Kentucky and Florida went to work pressing Mr. Villanueva’s name and number onto thousands of blank Pittsburgh jerseys for next-day shipping. Overnight, a player who had never caught a pass or scored a touchdown had the N.F.L.’s best-selling jersey.
.
“That moment happened, people wanted to immediately buy that jersey,” Michael Rubin, the company’s chairman and principal owner said. “A week later, that moment is mostly over.”
.
These micro-moments, as Mr. Rubin calls them, happen all the time in sports: A player reaches a milestone, has a breakout performance or is traded to a new team. Apparel companies have traditionally been poorly positioned to meet the accompanying fan demand as it surges. Fanatics is changing that and, in the process, carving out a lucrative niche in a fiercely competitive online-retail industry largely dominated by Amazon."

Trechos retirados de "Fanatics, Maker of Sports Apparel, Thrives by Seizing the Moment"

Diferenças

Diferentes clientes-alvo, diferentes propostas de valor, diferentes vantagens competitivas, diferentes preocupações e constrangimentos.

De um lado, "O empresário que paga acima da média e não quer horas extra". Antes de ler o artigo, só com o título, fiz uma aposta: Tens de ter marca própria e muito valorizada.

"“A beleza salvará o mundo”. Esta citação do escritor russo Fiódor Dostoiévski aparece na primeira página do site da Brunello Cucinelli, um empresário italiano. Embora menos conhecida do que impérios como a Prada e a Gucci, a Brunello Cucinelli é um ícone da alta moda, que fatura 450 milhões de euros e cresce 10% ao ano."

Bingo!

Do outro lado, "Luís Onofre, patrão do calçado: “O absentismo nos homens é quase zero e muito grande nas mulheres”". Cada vez mais o sector de calçado português tira partido da resposta rápida, da flexibilidade, à medida que os compradores encomendam cada vez mais tarde, cada vez em quantidades mais pequenas seguidas de reposições rápidas do que tiver mais sucesso.

BTW, isto vai ser cada vez mais frequente no futuro, "Líder da ANJE: “Há quem queira investir e fazer fábricas e não tem trabalhadores”".

Fast fashion: resposta rápida + design + clientes

"Firms in the fashion apparel industry—such as Zara, H&M, and Benetton—have increasingly embraced the philosophy of “fast fashion” retailing. Generally speaking, a fast fashion system combines at least two components:

1. short production and distribution lead times, enabling a close matching of supply with uncertain demand (which we refer to as quick response techniques);

1. highly fashionable (“trendy”) product design (which we refer to as enhanced design techniques).

Short lead times are enabled through a combination of localized production, sophisticated information systems that facilitate frequent inventory monitoring and replenishment, and expedited distribution methods.
...
The second component (trendy product design) is made possible by carefully monitoring consumer and industry tastes for unexpected fads and reducing design lead times.
...
the second component of fast fashion systems— creating trendy, highly fashionable products — received far less attention. ... some firms are attempting to focus on design and develop trendier products without reducing their production lead times because of the difficulties (both logistical and cultural) that can accompany drastically redesigning the supply network.
...
We postulate that, all else being equal, enhanced design capabilities result in products that are of greater value to consumers and hence elicit a greater willingness to pay. Consequently, firms may exploit this greater willingness to pay by charging higher prices on “trendy” products than on more conservative products. [Moi ici: De onde virão os markups, perguntam os autores?] Enhanced design capabilities are costly, however: there are typically fixed costs (a large design staff, trend spotters, rapid prototyping capabilities, etc.), and there may be greater variable costs (e.g., because of more labor-intensive production processes or costly local labor). Thus, as with any operational strategy, firms considering enhanced design must trade off the benefits of the strategy (greater consumer willingness to pay) with the costs (fixed and variable).[Moi ici: A tríade assume que o motor é a redução de custos. Pois!]
...
Quick response reduces the chance that inventory will remain to be sold at the clearance price. Enhanced product design, on the other hand, gives customers a trendier product that they value more, making them less willing to risk waiting for a sale if there is any chance that the item will stock out.
.
Thus, whereas quick response decreases the expected future utility of waiting for a price reduction, enhanced design increases the immediate utility of buying the product at the full price. By decreasing consumer incentives to wait for the clearance sale, both enhanced design and quick response allow the firm to set a higher selling price while still inducing consumers to pay the full price.
...
We develop a model of such a system and compare its performance to three alternative systems: quick-response-only systems, enhanced-design-only systems, and traditional systems (which lack both enhanced design and quick response capabilities). In particular, we focus on the impact of each of the four systems on “strategic” or forward-looking consumer purchasing behavior, i.e., the intentional delay in purchasing an item at the full price to obtain it during an end-of-season clearance. We find that enhanced design helps to mitigate strategic behavior by offering consumers a product they value more, making them less willing to risk waiting for a clearance sale and possibly experiencing a stockout. Quick response mitigates strategic behavior through a different mechanism: by better matching supply to demand, it reduces the chance of a clearance sale. Most importantly, we find that although it is possible for quick response and enhanced design to be either complements or substitutes, the complementarity effect tends to dominate. Hence, when both quick response and enhanced design are combined in a fast fashion system, the firm typically enjoys a greater incremental increase in profit than the sum of the increases resulting from employing either system in isolation. Furthermore, complementarity is strongest when customers are very strategic. We conclude that fast fashion systems can be of significant value, particularly when consumers exhibit strategic behavior."

Trechos retirados de "The Value of Fast Fashion: Quick Response, Enhanced Design, and Strategic Consumer Behavior", de Gérard P. Cachon e Robert Swinney, publicado por Management Science, Vol. 57, No. 4, April 2011, pp. 778–795

Decisões de localização (parte II)

Parte I.

Na leitura final de "From Global to Local" de Finbarr Livesey encontrei uma série de trechos sobre decisões de localização com os quais concordo embora com algumas dúvidas:

[Moi ici: Primeiro algo sobre Mongo] "While new production technologies are not going to give us Star Trek like 'replicator' any time soon, they are enabling smaller factories to be  economically viable. They do this by lowering what is referred  to as minimum economic scale, the lowest volume of production for which the investment in the factory is financially viable. [Moi ici: Isto é Mongo a 100%. A democratização da produção]
.
The simple view of production was that bigger is better: you offset large capital costs by having a factory that produces in high volume with extreme efficiency. The case for ever increasing sizes of factory hits barriers of coordination if the factories become too large and the level required to be efficient or cost competitive has fallen as additive manufacturing and other techniques have developed and improved their performance. [Moi ici: BTW, a seu tempo os políticos descobrirão isto mas só depois de provocar muito sofrimento com as escolas-cidade, os hospitais-cidade, os tribunais-cidade, as esquadras-cidade, ...] A key implication of techniques like additive manufacturing is that they remove the need for specialised components such as moulds or forms to be made specific to the product working its way down the assembly line. [Moi ici: Pesquisar a palavra japonesa "seru"] As well as saving cost and time by not having to make these specialised pieces, it also means that a factory can more easily make a variety of products. Rather than thinking of the investment in a factory being tied to one product, the costs can be offset against the income generated from a series of products, hence a lower minimum economic scale for each product. With lower scale, the likelihood of having a greater number of smaller factories instead of a small number of extremely large factories goes up. And as that happens the factories are going to be geographically dispersed, lowering the number of trade movements necessary to get a product to customers in different countries.
...
[Moi ici: Agora sobre decisões de localização] The second level of change is a strengthening of the regionalisation of trade. The temptation is to work at the extremes — everything is global or everything is local. This misses the subtleties that are needed in industrial organisation and the diversity that exists in manufacturing. Regionalisation will be driven by the balance of forces between the scale required to have efficiencies and the desire to reduce time to customer and the costs of being in different countries simultaneously.[Moi ici: Sinto que há muito de verdade neste último trecho. Unidades produtivas muito eficientes a trabalhar para todo o mundo produzindo artigos fáceis de transportar e pouco dependentes da vontade do cliente na sua versão final. Unidades produtivas ágeis e mais pequenas, talvez a trabalhar para mercados até 3/4 dias de camião, mais próximas do lugar de consumo, permitindo produções com séries curtas, reposições rápidas, alterações de design e iterações rápidas. Unidades produtivas junto do consumo para permitir customização, interacção, co-criação ]
.
It is worth noting that even though the declining importance of distance for trade has been accepted as a stylised fact for many years. distance has always moderated trade. [Moi ici: Ghemawat tem um livro com uns gráficos espectaculares que ilustram esta realidade] The further away from one another two countries are, the smaller the level of trade we would expect to see between them. A recent review of over one hundred academic papers on the effect of distance on trade indicates that the average effect means that to per cent increase in distance lowers bilateral trade by about 9 per cent? Distance continues to matter even with absolute transport costs falling and increasing digital interconnection around the world. [Moi ici: Depois disto tudo tenho dúvidas num aspecto. Se a digitalização e a conectividade reduzem as fronteiras, como conciliar tudo isto com a técnica alemã de procurar clientes-alvo independentemente da geografia? Acredito que a diferenciação que trabalha para nichos e que não se baseia na interacção mas antes na vantagem tecnológica ou de design crescerá baseada na conectividade digital sem olhar à geografia]
.
With smaller factories being economically viable and tooling costs falling due to increased use of techniques like additive manufacturing, companies can produce for the different regions of the world independently rather than attempting to have a global product. [Moi ici: Teremos pois, é fácil de prever para os próximos anos, a criação de unidades produtivas de multinacionais para servirem continentes e não o mundo]
...
In a regionalised scenario a company may not have its supply chain and final assembly all in the country in which it will be selling its products. They can organise themselves and their suppliers across the region. However, in some cases that won't be the best way to be organised, for example if time is really an issue. If there cannot be a lag of, say, a week to get goods from Mexico to the east coast of the USA, then the company will need to have at least final assembly in the country of purchase, if not more of the supply chain feeding that assembly process for your product.
...
At the third level within regions we are likely to see agglomeration or clustering effects. These clusters arise as there are positive effects for companies to be close to other companies im similar sectors.
...
As we move into a world where products have shorter journeys to get to us, where factories are smaller and there are more of them, and where is great uncertainty about what work we will be doing, the other elements of globalization will also continue to evolve. Nothing in the trends we have described will by themselves reduce or block digital globalization."

Beyond Lean

Há anos que escrevo aqui sobre o advento de Mongo e o consequente impacte na dança entre produção e consumo:

• mais tribos;
• mais nichos;
• séries mais pequenas;
• mais flexibilidade;
• mais rapidez; 
• mais variedade;
• mais diferenciação;

Em paralelo há anos que se lê com cada vez mais frequência sobre a automatização da produção.

Em Mongo, a produção é muito diferente da do paradigma do século XX com séries longas e planeamento da produção feito com muita antecedência. Em Mongo o planeamento da produção é feito cada vez mais em cima e é mais volátil. Como é que a automatização e as organizações-cidade lidam com Mongo?

"With improvements in living standards and a transformation in people’s ideas of consumption, much of the current electronics manufacturing industry is confronted with market demands characterized by variety and volume fluctuation. Manufacturing system flexibility is useful to address such fluctuated market demands.
...
Seru production has been called beyond lean in Japan and can be considered to be an ideal manufacturing mode to realize mass customization
...
seru production relies on low-cost automation and has little automation. When reconfiguring a conveyor assembly line into serus, expensive large automated equipment is substituted with simple-structure equipment with similar functions. The reconstructed equipment can be easily duplicated and modified at a low cost, so as to avoid equipment-sharing conflicts among multiple serus and reduce investment in equipment.
...
Factories that produce multiple electronics product types in small-lot batches tend to adopt seru production. Compared to mass production, which displays its superiority in the case of a narrow range of product types with high product volumes, seru production would be affected by low efficiency and high cost in such an environment.
...
Using highly automated production systems, mass production factories can attain high production efficiency. However, they usually achieve low production flexibility. As both the variety and volume fluctuations of market demands increase, mass production factories may need to reconfigure their traditional conveyor assembly lines for their survival and development.
...
Seru production is human-centered manufacturing. Multiskilled operators are important resources to implement seru production, more important than in mass production. The equipment used in seru production is simple and not automated. The effect and influence of equipment on the performance of seru production systems is less than that on mass production systems. Accordingly, a practical production planning system for seru production should consider multiskilled operators more than equipment. In a dynamically changing manufacturing environment, a dynamic production planning system is needed"

Anónimo da província mas muito à frente:

• Um mesmo processo automatizado é demasiado rígido para Mongo
• Mongo e a automatização... pois!
• "mas o essencial é que o mercado de massas desapareceu"

Cuidado com os media, desconfie sempre!

Trechos retirados de "An implementation framework for seru production" publicado por Intl. Trans. in Op. Res. 00 (2013) 1–19

Outro festival de blasfémias

Continuado daqui.

Agarre-se às cadeiras, segue-se mais um festival de blasfémias:

"The alternate to costly multipurpose or special-order machines is inexpensive, slower, and fewer-purpose machines, but many of them. Every work cell that needs one gets one and can then function autonomously. Although a multipurpose machine offers high flexibility through quick changeover and rapid production rate, all else equal, conventional fewer-purpose machines might provide even greater flexibility when employed in a number of manufacturing cells. Conventional machines are also simpler to operate and less costly to maintain.”[Moi ici: Pode estar aqui uma oportunidade para os fabricantes portugueses de máquinas?]
Constraining that three-pronged potential, however, is the tendency of manufacturers to retain SP practices in spite of their limited responsiveness. Such dysfunctional decision making ... tends to be chosen for local efficiency rather than effectiveness - remains in force today.
Several authors emphasize the importance of avoiding monument equipment consider the potentially negative impact on responsiveness of smoothing the production schedule as commonly
...
concurrent production relies on multiple, relatively slow-paced, simple, small-footprint, low-cost productive units, sometimes referred to as right-sized
...
As the number of production units increases, so does the degree to which production becomes concurrent with demand; and as the degree to which equipment units are dedicated increases, so does concurrency.
...
“Abolish the Setup,” points to the liabilities of “a single, expensive machine that can produce many kinds of parts,” compared with several less-expensive, dedicated machines.
Small, inexpensive units of capacity can be readily reconfigured, which grows in importance as customer preferences proliferate.
...
CP builds factory infrastructures around multiple product-family or customer-family-focused units - cells, machines, production lines, plants-in-a-plant - with simple, compact, low- cost, “right-sized” equipment and avoidance of monument-sized equipment. The primary objectives of CP are to reduce customer lead times and distribution inventories. Longer-range benefits to the organization as a whole include better customer retention, market penetration, and sales growth. In an era when customers increasingly demand higher variety from manufacturers, CP is timely, making it possible to reap the benefits of responsiveness while keeping production costs low enough for competitiveness."

Trechos retirados de "Missing link in competitive manufacturing research and practice: Customer-responsive concurrent production" publicado por Journal of Operations Management 49-51 (2017) 83-87

O anónimo da província estava certo!

Mais um texto em linha com o que aqui defendemos há anos com base na nossa experiência empírica.  Enquanto os membros da tríade (académicos fechados nas suas torres de marfim, comentadores económicos e políticos) continuam a falar de competitividade com base no século XX e, por isso, estão prisioneiros do eficientismo e das manigâncias com a cotação da moeda, há um outro mundo:

"The manufacturing arm of operations management (OM) has limited itself to a narrow vision of what this key organizational function is supposed to be and do. OM scholars have quibbled about efficiency in factory and supply-chain operations, while giving little attention to tying production forward to end customers. Our view is that this single-minded focus on efficiency has effectively knocked OM research, theory, topics, methods, measures, and practitioner guidance off kilter.
On the industry side, a narrow view of OM mirrors the single- minded focus that we observe in academia. Manufacturers proudly display factories that have been cleared of targeted wastes and are marvels of short flow times, low work-in-process in- ventories, and high capacity utilization. They may also point to similar achievements with key suppliers. A closer look, however, often reveals a supply chain with extended lead times [Moi ici: Aposto que, como eu, não sabia que o Toyota Production System, essa maravilha de organização e eficiência (sem ironia) congela a previsão de produção com 8 semanas de antecedência] and swollen finished-goods inventories that dwarf the low in-plant inventories. The overall supply chain often loses the ability to compete on anything except cost. The resulting vulnerability to low-cost competition leads to offshoring.
Inability to synchronize with downstream demand increases production cost through supply-demand mismatches, delays in addressing quality issues - even mass product recalls, and customer defections. These negative outcomes are commonplace even in factories held up as bastions of “best practices”.
...
A major deterrent to CP [Moi ici: Concurrent production] adoption is the tendency both in companies and among the OM academic community to focus on localized efficiency to the neglect of responsiveness in fulfilling customer needs. Manufacturing people have limited interaction with final users, so the cost of valuing efficiency above responsiveness goes unnoticed. In consequence, manufacturing-improvement efforts tend to be limited to pursuit of within-factory efficiencies: short internal flows, smoothed sched- ules, and high capacity utilization.
...
manufacturers in their quest for operational efficiency prefer factory operatives to be always busy making products. CP, on the other hand, welcomes the situation in which both equipment and its operators are idle for lack of current demand.
...
Another managerial mindset that hinders CP implementation is the assumption that it is better to reduce changeover times on a single piece of equipment than to duplicate that equipment. Along similar lines, we have seen manufacturers replacing multiple units with a single large, flexible piece of equipment. ... done for the sake of “... improved efficiency and productivity”. This way of thinking culminates in “monument” machines: high-speed, multi-functional equipment that gives the impression of being extremely efficient. ... that engineers “... typically think at the process level,” seeking efficiencies “... by combining operations with[in] a single piece of equipment.” This “can cause a disconnect with general management who want to increase sales, make gains in market share, or find new sources of revenue by adding product lines.”"

Agora metam neste cenário os fanáticos da automatização que só pensam no eficientismo e se esquecem de Mongo: rapidez, flexibilidade e variedade crescente para servir tribos cada vez mais exigentes.

Continua.

Trechos retirados de "Missing link in competitive manufacturing research and practice: Customer-responsive concurrent production" publicado por Journal of Operations Management 49-51 (2017) 83-87

Competir pela flexibilidade

No caderno de Economia do semanário Expresso deste fim de semana, no meio do artigo "PAdira ganha músculo financeiro com a Sonae" encontro este trecho:

 Parece retirado deste blogue. Há anos e anos a defender que se não podemos competir pelo custo temos de competir pela flexibilidade, pela co-criação, pela interacção.

Está a entranhar-se. Quantos anos demorará a chegar às sebentas?

Primeira medida Sonae para a Adira? Sugiro tirá-la daquele local, colocá-la em zona industrial e vender o terreno para imobiliário, apesar do cemitério.

Seru (parte II)

Parte I.

"we define a lean operations strategy as one that prioritizes minimization of use of resources through reducing variability and minimizing buffers, and a responsive operations strategy as one that prioritizes the ability to respond to demand volatility (product and quantity), which then requires buffering either with capacity or inventory.
...
Seru is a type of cellular manufacturing (CM).
...
When demand is highly volatile, however, the value of smoothing demand tends to be lower than the value of responsiveness. Similarly, streamlining the operation of an assembly line through use of the takt time is possible when what is produced does not change, but a rapidly changing product mix eliminates such productivity gains. These practices are combined with the tradition within Toyota Production System of freezing the production schedule eight weeks before production begins, which substantially reduces responsiveness. Assembly lines organized according to Toyota Production System practices can be highly efficient when demand volatility is low. As demand volatility increases, however, assembly lines lack the needed responsiveness and lose the stability that is the source of their outstanding efficiency. Seru thus begins with the transformation of assembly lines into cells. Seru cells resemble biological cellular organisms in that they can be easily constructed, modified, dismantled, and reconstructed, hence the name seru, a Japanese word for cellular organism. In contrast to the fixed cells described elsewhere in the literature, seru cells are defined by their configurability, which plays a key role in their responsiveness. These assembly cells - designed to permit orders to flow seamlessly through the factory - represent a choice to prioritize responsiveness over efficiency.
...
[Moi ici: O trecho que se segue é tremendo, quando eu falo de Mongo e muita gente fala de automação. Recordar: "Não acredito nestas relações simplistas" e "In principle, the production of virtually any component or assembly operation could be robotized and moved to high-wage countries—but only so long as demand is great enough, and design specifications stable enough, to justify huge scale and hundreds of millions, if not billions, in upfront investments."] When production is organized into a single assembly line, the cost of large-scale automation may be justified by efficiency gains. When demand volatility is high enough to warrant cellular manufacturing, large and costly automated equipment needs to be replaced by small, flexible, and relatively inexpensive equipment that can be duplicated as needed."

Trechos retirados de "Lessons from seru production on manufacturing competitively in a high cost environment" publicado pelo Journal of Operations Management, 49-51 (2017) 67-76.

Continua.

Seru (parte I)

Em 2005 na revista Business Week encontrei um trecho que nunca mais esqueci e que citei neste postal de 2006, "Deixar de ser uma Arca de Noé":

"Canon is also looking to boost productivity. Already, the company has seen great gains from "cell assembly," where small teams build products from start to finish rather than each worker repeatedly performing a single task on a long assembly line. Canon now has no assembly lines; it ditched the last of its 20 kilometers of conveyor belts in 2002, when a line making ink-jet printers in Thailand was shut down."

Em 2010 no postal "Para quem se queixa da China... (parte IV)" escrevi:

""In the 21st century industry, all successful strategies rely on speed-to-market. Speed-to-market, in turn, can operate only where there exists trust, cooperation and collaboration between customer and supplier. To achieve this, we must change the very nature of our industry strategies." (Moi ici: e as fábricas conseguem guarnecer-se de talento para falarem como parceiros com as marcas e não como recebedoras de encomendas? E os fabricantes de máquinas conseguem agarrar a oportunidade de desenhar as máquinas que permitirão trabalhar com estas séries e frequências? E o lean aqui não será de muito uso, estamos a falar de uma nova organização da produção..."

Agora, passados estes anos todos:

"The past three decades have witnessed waves of offshoring by manufacturers in developed countries pursuing low-cost sources of production. Companies like Canon and Sony provide exceptions to the popular offshoring trend. Recognizing that their markets required responsiveness that extended supply chains could not provide, these companies pioneered a production system known as seru that has made it possible to manufacture competitively and profitably in Japan.
...
Producing locally has then strengthened their capacity to innovate. In ensuing years, hundreds of Japanese companies, especially electronics makers, have adopted seru, touting impressive benefits. The seru experience provides a useful lens for understanding how manufacturing can be competitive in a high-cost economy.
The seru production system is a type of cellular manufacturing that is distinguished first by the cells being configurable rather than fixed; and second by its use of cells for assembly, packaging, and testing rather than fabrication alone. Seru is defined by its prioritization of responsiveness over cost reduction in setting the firm's operations strategy.
...
Seru was developed to cope with high demand volatility and short product life cycles. Innovative manufacturing firms face the challenge of being flexible enough to handle significant process and environment variabilities, yet efficient enough to produce at a competitive cost. A considerable literature suggests that efficient production is best achieved through lean manufacturing, which typically seeks to reduce buffers and to eliminate demand volatility.
...
Interestingly, seru was explicitly developed as an alternative to the Toyota Production System (the precursor to lean). The developer of the seru concept - an expert in the Toyota Production System - concluded that implementing the Toyota Production System would not be appropriate in an innovative industry where the primary objective is to respond to demand volatility and fast product development cycles. Rather than adding agility to leanness ... seru begins with the objective of responsiveness: Seru's originators sought to achieve a smooth flow of a wide variety of products and volumes while using resources frugally."

Trechos retirados de "Lessons from seru production on manufacturing competitively in a high cost environment" publicado pelo Journal of Operations Management, 49-51 (2017) 67-76.

Continua.

Um clássico

Um clássico deste blogue e deste anónimo da província.

De um lado o canto da sereia da eficiência. Afinal que mal é que a eficiência pode trazer?

Mintzberg também coloca a interrogação e também responde "What could possibly be wrong with “efficiency”? Plenty."

A eficiência é má? A minha resposta é: A eficiência não é boa intrinsecamente. Quando os governos constroem hospitais-cidade para aumentarem a eficiência, ou agrupamentos escolares-cidade para aumentarem a eficiência... estão a criar monstros que não vão ser capazes de cumprir a sua missão.

E quem é avaliado pela eficiência fica em rota de colisão com a direcção de Mongo para a flexibilidade e variedade.

"Why Reshore?"

"Why Reshore?.
The top reasons that companies reshore include:
.
Lead time
.
Higher product quality and consistency
.
Rising offshore wages
.
Skilled workforce
.
Freight costs
.
Image of being Made in the USA
.
Lower inventory levels, better turns
.
Better responsiveness to changing customer demands
.
Minimal intellectual property and regulatory compliance risks
.
Improved innovation and product differentiation
.
Local tax incentives"

Trecho retirado de "The Case for Reshoring"

Têxtil e placas tectónicas

Um exemplo português de utilização da Indústria 4.0 em "Adaptarse o morir: la industria 4.0 vuelve a poner en jaque al textil":

"Tras adaptarse a la deslocalización industrial y sobrevivir a la última crisis financiera y de consumo, el textil encara ahora un cambio de paradigma productivo, que vuelve a poner en jaque su continuidad. Si la tercera revolución consistió en la automatización de los procesos para la producción en masa y en serie, la cuarta consiste en digitalizarlos y gestionar los datos para ganar eficiencia y rapidez, y mejorar la rentabilidad, con series cortas y personalizadas.
...
Esta transformación implica replantear de nuevo el modelo productivo de la industria textil y vuelve a redefinir las redes de aprovisionamiento, acercándolas de nuevo. [Moi ici: Outra vez o ranger das placas tectónicas e as oportunidades e ameaças] Esta nueva industria pone en riesgo modelos productivos tradicionales así como los cientos de miles de puestos de trabajo no cualificado, aunque abre el abanico a nuevos perfiles profesionales más técnicos y más creativos. El cambio ha empezado y no hay marcha atrás. Los expertos coinciden: no se puede dar la espalda a la tecnología.
...
El futuro
.
Ahora, la industria de la moda es capaz de colocar en el mercado un diseño en veinte días con normalidad; con proveedores en proximidad, puede forzar las entregas a diez días. Con la digitalización, ¿por qué no en 24 horas? Y con impresoras 3D, desde la misma tienda, ¿por qué no en quince minutos? Los expertos consultados coinciden en que llegará, sólo falta ver cuándo."[Moi ici: Esta aceleração não se compadece com distância nem com complexidade... aquele "poner en jaque al textil" faz pensar em: será que os gigantes vão sobreviver?]

"in two years, it has lost 14.79 per cent of its exports"

"China is the number one textile and clothing exporter to the world, producing more than 43.1per cent of global demand. As per the 13th five-year plan of Chinese Government for the year 2016 to 2020 period, China strategically is moving towards more value adding tech intensive products. The plan is to maintain traditional market share and to grow more on the high value adding product range. But real market data shows that the country is losing its export market drastically from 2015 in almost all product sectors in the textiles and clothing arena.
...
In 2014, Chinese global apparel export was the highest ever and afterwards in two years, it has lost 14.79 per cent of its exports."

Trecho retirado de "IS CHINA LOSING ITS TEXTILE TOUCH?"

Conjugar com "Klaus Huneke (Euratex): “La relocalización será una realidad con la personalización masiva y los plazos cortos”"

Uma década à frente da tríade*

Há quantos anos escrevemos e defendemos isto aqui no blogue?

"A verdade é que cada vez mais fazemos menos quantidade e mais variedade. E isso é urn estímulo para quem gosta de criar.
.
Mas deixar de fazer apenas duas colecções por ano, ou sapatos de verão e de inverno, não é urn problema? [Moi ici: Que formação têm estes colocadores de perguntas? Não percebem o que está a acontecer desde 2006? Não se auto-interrogam? Não procuram respostas por eles próprios? Hello! Estamos em Mongo e a fugir de Magnitograd o mais rápido possível!]
.
É uma adaptação a que o nosso sector está a responder habilmente. Nesse aspecto não temos medo. Até é bom que o mercado siga essa linha, porque somos ágeis e flexíveis. Somos desenrascados, temos capacidade de resposta. E tudo isto pesa tambem numa conjuntura ern que o segmento das vendas online esta em rápido crescimento."

Acerca da inflação de épocas anuais:

• O regresso dos clientes (Maio de 2006)
• E que tal agarrar o destino com ambas as mãos? (Março de 2011)
• 52 épocas por ano? Lá chegaremos (Setembro de 2011)
• "e não gostam de esperar um semestre" (Março de 2017)

Acerca da flexibilidade e rapidez:

• Uma adega? Não uma "boutique" de vinhos! (Junho de 2006)
• Volume is vanity, profit is sanity (Setembro de 2006)
• Flexigurança, fiscalidade e competitividade (Janeiro de 2007)
• Sistematização de ideias (Janeiro de 2012)
• Hora da batota? (Março de 2012)
• As empresas que trabalham connosco não precisam destes estudos (Junho de 2014) 

Trecho retirado de "Este é um bom momento para investirmos em marcas" (revista Exame deste mês de Maio)

* Julgo que foi neste postal, "Uma das minhas inspirações iniciais" de Outubro de 2011 que usei o termo tríade pela primeira vez.

"the key to competitiveness wasn’t simply productivity"

Coisas que muita gente na academia, na política e nos media ainda não percebeu:

"When the economic crisis hit tyre demand in 2009-10, Michelin realised, according to Mr Guillon, that “the key to competitiveness wasn’t simply productivity, it was above all agility”. Starting in January 2013, it began to accelerate the process of freeing teams to operate independently."

Não adianta produzir um produto muito barato mas que não sai do armazém.

Um exemplo do uso do factor rapidez em "Só depois do apito do árbitro é que a 4Teams começa a produzir cachecóis para o Benfica"

Trecho retirado de "Power to the workers: Michelin’s great experiment"

O mundo mudou!

Recordar "What’s Going On With Retail?":

"Macy’s, JC Penny, Nordstrom, and other retailers are vertically integrated operations. They have benefitted (and are now tied up by) supply chains that extend from factories in Asia (or wherever) to their stores in New York City (or wherever), including extremely complex logistics, transport, finance, partnerships, and production. They rely on economies of scale and a predictable market, and a timeframe of months to get ideas to market. However, in the new economy we have careened into — the postnormal — things work differently.
...
the deepest impact of such an economic shift are not immediate, but cumulative. The problems inherent in their complexity make it difficult for them to compete with more agile competitors, such as the niche of ‘fast fashion’. When new fashion trends start to emerge, smaller, more focused and nimble fashion brands can get new products to market in weeks, not months"

E agora um exemplo que parece retirado de uma PME têxtil portuguesa a seguir as orientações deste blogger:

"Reformation is a fast fashion brand, constantly changing its product mix to keep up with the latest trends. But founder Yael Aflalo has upended each step of her supply chain to make it leaner, more nimble, and more environmentally friendly. A team of data scientists keeps track of best-selling outfits and conveys this information to Bailey, who is tasked with producing garments based on real-time demand. This ensures that the brand is delivering products that customers love, while eliminating wasted inventory. “Today, we’re making 300 maxi dresses,” Bailey says. “Yesterday, we were making T-shirts. From a logistical and supply-chain perspective, that’s a very complicated thing to do. It’s a challenge, in the best possible way.”

...
The shift is clear: These days, instead of massive conglomerates making generic products, a wave of tech-savvy startups are choosing to manufacture in America. Their reasons for going local often have little to do with patriotism. They’re primarily searching for better ways to create high-quality, state-of-the-art products and deliver them to customers faster than competitors making merchandise overseas.
...
“The world has changed.”
.
The startups that have committed to U.S.-based manufacturing understand this. They were laying the groundwork for a new phase in American manufacturing long before Trump started campaigning on his America First platform—and they didn’t model their factories on those of the past. They’ve been coming up with new, innovative approaches to production that address current demands and challenges.
...
The question is whether this new generation of startups will remain niche, forever appealing to a small subset of wealthy consumers, or whether they can scale and stay in it for the long haul. [Moi ici: Sempre há a lição alemã] To have an impact on the economy, these brands will need to produce at greater volumes, drive down prices, and employ more workers. They will also have to reckon with the shifting technology landscape, including Amazon’s dominance of the e-commerce market, the shifting rules of engagement with consumers on social media, and advances in automation that are upending manufacturing as we know it. Can they do it?"

Trechos retirados de "The Made in America Movement Driven By Innovation, Not Nationalism"

O típico para as nossas PME

O típico para as nossas PME:

"Conhecida pela marca ROQ, a empresa constrói máquinas customizadas e de alta performance e precisão para a indústria têxtil, com recurso a tecnologia de ponta, nas áreas do corte a laser e da quinagem."

E ainda:

"Aqui conseguimos fazer amostras no tempo que eles pretendem – às vezes temos de fazer amostras em três, quatro dias e em malhas não é fácil. Mas é a amostra que vai trazer o cliente e isso diferencia-nos»" 

Primeiro trecho retirado de "ROQ reforça liderança mundial e cria mais 31 empregos em Famalicão"

Segundo trecho retirados de "A revolução das malhas na TMG"

Flexibilidade e rapidez a alimentar o reshoring

Em "Small U.S. Manufacturers Struggle to Bring Jobs Back Home" encontro vários tópicos que elenco há anos para justificar o reshoring: Mongo, a flexibilidade e a rapidez. (recuar a 2007)

"began moving operations back to the U.S. from Germany three years ago to hold on to customers frustrated by long lead times and shipping delays.
...
For smaller firms, a “Made in the U.S.A.” label can add marketing cachet and strengthen ties to suppliers and customers as demands for quick delivery escalate.
.
But small firms also face particular hurdles. They typically operate with modest cash reserves and can’t always attract top talent or find U.S. suppliers that meet their specifications. Reshoring challenges are especially pronounced for small businesses in sectors where the U.S. ecosystem of manufacturers, suppliers and skilled workers has largely disappeared.
...
Still, the number of firms taking a look at reshoring is growing. Nearly 70 percent of U.S. and European manufacturing and distribution companies said that they were considering moving production closer to their homes, according to a 2016 survey by the consulting firm
.
AlixPartners LLP. That is up from 40 percent in 2015, according to the survey, which included responses from 107 small, midsize and large companies."