TECHNOLOGICAL INNOVATIONS:

LORDAN MARTINEZ JEFFREY NEIL BARBA NOLI AVILA

IMPLEMENTATING TECHNOLOGY IN PRODUCTION

In addition in improving products, technology also translate into economic utility through improving manufacturing. However, there are important differences between implementing new technology into manufacturing and implementing it into products and service In implementing technology into products, one aims for large changes in product performance to provide added value to the customer. In implementing technology into production, one aims for small, continuous advances to minimize disruption in the production processes. Manufacturing requires repeated acts of production with each and every detail under tight control. Innovation in a manufacturing system should be incremental or modular to minimize disruption of the system for continually improving it.

ILLUSTRATION General Electrics Refrigerator War

In the 1970s and 1980s, one American manufacturing business after another was assailed by foreign competitors producing equivalent products at lower cost and higher quality. General Electonics (GE) consumer appliances business faced such competition. As a result, GE gave summer appliances business but chose to battle it out in their large appliances business.
Ira C. Magaziner and Mark Patinkin describe the challenge GE then faced: Fifty miles south of Nashvilleis one of the worlds most automated factories. Had it not been built, U.S. households might soon have had yet another product the refrigerator stamped Made in Japan. Instead, here in the heartland, General Electric found a way to build products better and cheaper than those made by foreign workers paid one-tenth American wages.

The GE manufacturing manager who helped implement the improvement was Tom Blaunt. Blunt had only recently joined GEs Major Appliances Business Group (MABG) as chief manufacturing engineer for ranges. Things had to change at GEs Louisville plant, and Blaunt found that other manager at GE had begun to worry about poor state of manufacturing in Louisville. Then GEs managers began talking about the strategy of sourcing rather than producing their compressors.

Blunt did not like that strategy. The compressor was the core technology of the refrigerator, important to performance and energy efficiency. John Truscott, MABGs chief engineer. Agreed The compressor is the heart of the refrigerator. He says. The refrigerator is the heart of the group. I didnt want to give away our heart.

MANUFACTURING CULTURE
This is important if we are to understand how best to implement new technology into manufacturing. To perceive the special aspect of manufacturing activity, one should examine them strategically. For example: 1. Cost, quality, throughput, and safety are the primary values in the manufacturing function

2. Details of manufacturing processes and materials matter very greatly in manufacturing; they are important factors in competitive quality and cost
3. In aggregate, the secondary characteristics of materials and processes (their details) are as important as their primary characteristics to manufacturing cost and quality. 4. in repetitious situations, variation and other problems and endemic so product characteristics will always vary within the same production process no matter how tightly the process is controlled.

5. A kind of Greshams law applies especially to manufacturing managers: Whatever can go wrong in a manufacturing system will go wrong-frequently.
6. A corollary to this also affects manufacturing management: whatever is fixed will go wrong again, for a different reason. 7. There is even a kind of Gremlin law in the experience of implementing technical improvements in manufacturing: Any technical change intended to improve a manufacturing system, no matter how carefully planned, will first bring the system to dead halt. 8. And a collar also applies to technical implementation: After any improvement, the production system cannot be made to operate properly again without more effort and problem solving. 9. Manufacturing is a sociotechnical system that makes people an essential part of the manufacturing system along with equipment and automation, and people are principally the source of both errors and improvements in manufacturing producers.

ILLUSTRATION (CONCLUDED) GE and the Refrigerator war

In 1981, Ira Maganizer had documented a major cost problem for GE. : The cost of the compressor: GEs MABG - $48 Necchi - $32 Mitsubishi - $38 Hitachi and Toshiba - $30 Matsushita - $24 Cheap labor and time to finish compressor: Louisville -$17 per hour 65 minutes per compressor Singapore - $1.70 per hour 35 minutes per compressor Brazil - $1.40 per hour 35 minutes per compressor

GEs only hope is to lay in new design for compressor because it had fewer parts and could therefore be manufactured more cheaply than a reciprocating compressor. Truscott, MABGs chief engineer, assembled a team of product design engineers and came up with a model the team thought could be made cheaply. Blunt assemble a team to produce the compressor. The investment was high, at least $120 million. Millions more would have to spent on redesigning GEs refrigerators to fit around the new compressor. Schipke, Truscott, and Blaunt flew from Kentucky to Connecticut to present the proposal. The CEO of GE was Jack Welch. Welch wanted to keep major appliances as a core business for GE and understood that it would require a major investment to turn things around in manufacturing. He approved the project. We see here a strategic commitment to a core business and a management understanding that only a major investment would keep the company in business. If you cannot produce a product cheaper or at least as cheaply as a competitor, you cannot keep a core business.

Implementing new technology in manufacturing is difficult because even when an engineering problem is solved, the management problem is not yet fixed. An engineering solution which disrupts production creates costs greater than the direct costs of the solution Experience in manufacturing teaches that in any new product design and any new production process, there will be unanticipated bugs. The costs of fixing problems rise exponentially with the risks of new technology. From the perspective of manufacturing, technological innovation should always be incremental and continuous.

QUALITY MANUFACTURING
There are several meaning to the term quality:
1. Quality of product performance - How well does it do the job for the customer? 2. Quality of product durability Does it do the job dependability? 3. Quality of product variability Producing the product in volume without defective copies. Product performance is the primary focus of engineering design. However, in manufacturing, the second and third meanings of quality are the primary foci.

ILLUSTRATION Ford and Mazda Transmissions and Tolerance Stack-up In Product Quality
One way to see how the effects of manufacturing variation and field use interact with each other is through the concept of tolerance stack-up in manufacturing assembly. If each part is produced within a specified tolerance about a specified target mean value, some parts will be produced with specs near the mean and others with specs near the tolerance limit. Since these variation are random, when parts are assembled into a product, some production have (1) parts with specs all near their target mean values, (2) parts with some specs near means and some near tolerance limits, and (3)parts with specs all near tolerance limits. Taguchi and Clausing used an example from Ford and Mazda to illustrate the deleterious effects of tolerance stack up. Consider the case of Ford vs. Mazda.. which unfolded just a few years ago. Ford owns about 25% of Mazda and asked the Japanese company to build transmissions for a car it was selling in the United States. Both Ford and Mazda were supposed to build to identical specifications. Ford adopted zero defects as its standards. Yet after the cars had been on the road for a while, it became clear that Fords transmissions were generating far higher warranty costs and many more customer complaints about noise

Ford then disassembled and measured all the parts in samples of transmissions made by both companies. The parts in transmissions made by ford were all within specifications, but the parts in Mazda were all on the mean targets of the specification. The accuracy of production was the reason Mazda transmissions were produced with less production scrap and reworking and had lower warranty costs. Technological innovations in manufacturing which improve the precision of manufacturing processes contribute to improvement of product quality and customer satisfaction through the improved dependability and durability of the product.

QUALITY-LOSS FUCTION
To focus management attention on production quality from the customers point of view, Taguchi also has advocated use of a quality-loss function for communicating the business cost of poor quality. Taguchi define a quality-loss function as the total costs C as a function of the deviation of product quality from targeted quality T: C=(T- )

For an approximation to a quality-loss function, Taguchi argued that the function need to be symmetric and needs to rise very rapidly as the deviations lay further from a targeted value. Accordingly, Taguchi has used a simple quadratic term:
C=kSUM(T- i)2 Where k is a constant to adjust to appropriate monetary value, is a parameter for the ith quality tolerance. An important use of the quality-loss function is for financial decisions about implementing new technology into manufacturing system.

Design for Manufacturing & Product Life Cycle

Competitive strategies require a focus on product differentiation or manufacturing leadership in low cost and high quality production but these two strategies need not be seen as opposites. Technology strategy should include not only improvement of product performance but also improvement of product quality and lowering of product cost. Technological innovations in design and manufacturing of product which lower its total life cycle costs will contribute to the customer perception of total quality of the product.

Loci of Introduction of New Technologies in Manufacturing Systems:

1. 2. 3.

4.

The boundary of the production system. Unit production processes within the production system Connection between unit processes, such as material handling technologies Production system organization, communication and control

Technological innovation may occur in any part of a production system as:

1.

2.
3. 4.

5. 6.

New or improved unit processes of production New or improved tools or equipment for unit processes New or improved control of unit processes New or improved materials handling subsystem for moving work pieces from unit process to unit process New or improved tools and procedure for production schedule New or improved tools and software for integrating information for design and manufacturing.

Unit processes of production:

Tools or equipment for unit processes:

Control of unit processes:

Materials handling subsystem for moving work pieces from unit process to unit process:

Tools and procedure for production schedule:

Tools and software for integrating information for design and manufacturing.

Unit Process Innovation:

Technological innovation can be implemented in the unit processes of manufacturing system as:
1. New unit processes

2. Improvements in existing unit processes 3. Improved understanding and modeling of the physics and chemistry of unit process 4. Improved control of unit process

Unit Process Control

Research and technological innovation can improve unit process control in two ways: Real-time control through intelligent sensing and control, example:
fuzzy logics Neural network Sensors or signals

Experimental design for processes one cannot presently model

Rules on Innovation :

Technological innovation in control systems for production processes improves quality but should be tested first at a pilot scale before implementation at full scale. Technological innovations in unit processes should be introduced into the production system as discrete modules, previously debugged, into an existing production system.

Technological Change and Manufacturing Complexity:

Production innovations should begin with the simplest application and, as experience and technical skill are gained, grow to more complex applications. In implementing innovation in manufacturing, the sources of the ideas for debugging, customization and problem solving will be the workers, technicians , and engineers who have the most and deepest experience with the particular manufacturing processes

Manufacturing and Economies of Scale and Scope:

Technological innovation in manufacturing can have an impact on competitiveness through economies of scale or scope, and depending on the economic situation, one or the other may provide more competitive benefit Without the proper strategy for the implementation of technology, the economic benefits of technological innovation cannot be gained.

Evaluating benefits of implementing technological improvements in terms of improving

Production quality - reducing rejects and improving production accuracy Production efficiency - reducing material wastage and/or energy usage Production effectiveness - increasing flexibility and variability of production products Production capacity and throughput increasing the volume of production per unit time Production responsiveness decreasing the time of changeover for product change Production cost decreasing the overall cost of a unit product.

Criteria for expressing benefits on improvements:

1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7.

Improved production precision Reduced material waste Improved production flexibility Reduced throughput time Improved production control and scheduling Reduced work-in process inventories Reduced indirect product costs

Innovation Evaluation

Implementing new technology in manufacturing should have the dual goals of improving productivity for the manufacturer and at the same time improving economic value for the customer. A cost/benefit analysis of innovation in manufacturing should measure both reduction of the cost of producing and the costs of nonproducing time.

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