Challenges in the Implementation of Lean Manufacturing in the Wood & Furniture Industry

This study analyses the challenges in implementing lean manufacturing (LM) in the wood & furniture industry. In order to facilitate the smooth implementation of LM practices in this industry, the challenges in terms of its deployment need to be analysed and observed. Realising this importance, this study proposes a model, using PLS-SEM, which focuses on dealing with the challenges faced in the implementation of lean in the wood & furniture industry. The model consists of ten challenges that were determined based on a survey involving 46 SMEs companies in Malaysia. The findings revealed that the implementation of LM is significantly affected by 3 main issues, namely: knowledge, resources, and, culture and human attitude. Furthermore, the analyses also highlighted four dominant challenges which are related to culture and human attitude issues – lack of employee commitment, lack of senior management’s interest and support, difficult to implement, and LM is viewed as “current trend”. Overall, the ability to deal with the challenges involving factors of knowledge, and culture and human attitude, determine the success of LM implementation, especially in companies that have limited resources. This study would help wood & furniture SMEs, government agencies, professional bodies, and academics to better understand the challenges when implementing LM practices. Overall, this study aims at investigating the relationships between the three challenges to better promote LM in the scope under study. Therefore, several activities were proposed to overcome the abovementioned challenges and subsequently contributing to the current body of knowledge.N/

Design of experiments for non-manufacturing processes : benefits, challenges and some examples

Design of Experiments (DoE) is a powerful technique for process optimization that has been widely deployed in almost all types of manufacturing processes and is used extensively in product and process design and development. There have not been as many efforts to apply powerful quality improvement techniques such as DoE to improve non-manufacturing processes. Factor levels often involve changing the way people work and so have to be handled carefully. It is even more important to get everyone working as a team. This paper explores the benefits and challenges in the application of DoE in non-manufacturing contexts. The viewpoints regarding the benefits and challenges of DoE in the non-manufacturing arena are gathered from a number of leading academics and practitioners in the field. The paper also makes an attempt to demystify the fact that DoE is not just applicable to manufacturing industries; rather it is equally applicable to non-manufacturing processes within manufacturing companies. The last part of the paper illustrates some case examples showing the power of the technique in non-manufacturing environments

Global Pressures: Multinational Corporations, International Unionism, and NGOs

[Excerpt] The globalization of product, financial, and labor markets has made it easier for companies to produce many of the goods and services they sell wherever in the world the right skills can be found at the lowest cost. The desire to sell products worldwide has also created incentives for firms to have a presence in multiple countries. Together these facts have made labor relations in many industries global in scope. Globalization is of particular importance to emerging countries. Nearly 50 percent of the world’s manufacturing employment is now located in emerging countries. Globalization poses significant challenges to labor relations practices. Historically the laws, markets, institutions, norms, and practices of labor relations have developed on a national basis. Globalization has weakened, though not eliminated, the role of national systems of labor relations and given rise to a number of new institutions, structures, and processes for dealing with all of the labor relations functions discussed in previous chapters. In this chapter we will discuss these new arrangements and the challenges globalization poses to labor relations. To do so we will use the framework laid out in chapter 1 for analyzing labor relations

Life cycle assessment (LCA) applied to the process industry: a review

Purpose : Life cycle assessment (LCA) methodology is a well-established analytical method to quantify environmental impacts, which has been mainly applied to products. However, recent literature would suggest that it has also the potential as an analysis and design tool for processes, and stresses that one of the biggest challenges of this decade in the field of process systems engineering (PSE) is the development of tools for environmental considerations. Method : This article attempts to give an overview of the integration of LCA methodology in the context of industrial ecology, and focuses on the use of this methodology for environmental considerations concerning process design and optimization. Results : The review identifies that LCA is often used as a multi-objective optimization of processes: practitioners use LCA to obtain the inventory and inject the results into the optimization model. It also shows that most of the LCA studies undertaken on process analysis consider the unit processes as black boxes and build the inventory analysis on fixed operating conditions. Conclusions : The article highlights the interest to better assimilate PSE tools with LCA methodology, in order to produce a more detailed analysis. This will allow optimizing the influence of process operating conditions on environmental impacts and including detailed environmental results into process industry

Entering China : an operations management case study

Market forces and international competition are driving companies to reduce costs. The operations management issues experienced by 50 Australian companies when investing in China were examined. Many experiences were found to be common to most of the participant\u27s industries. Relationships with government, associations, local partners and members of supply chains were considered highly important. Levels of technology in China were not considered to be a significant issue. Access to staff with sufficient technology training (particularly for product development) and technology implementation was an important issue. The paper presents a model relating the various operations management issues identified to one another.<br /

Development of predicting model for safety behaviour based on safety psychology and working environment

The increasing trend of occupational accident due to unsafe act and unsafe condition especially in construction site suggests the need for more proactive safety assessment model. Therefore this research aimed to establish a prediction model of safety behaviour based on safety psychology and working environment factors in construction site. Theory of Planned Behaviour (TpB) was adapted to examine on the prediction model of safety behaviour among construction workers using safety psychology representing unsafe act and working environment factors representing unsafe condition. A modified perception questionnaire named Safety Psychometric Model (SPM) was proposed based on TpB questionnaire and safety attitude questionnaire (SQA). Previously, the approach has successfully applied in health care and manufacturing sector. The questionnaire has been validated by three industrial and academic experts. A total of 554 respondents among 92 construction site were selected as the subjects for analysis. Structural Equation Modelling (SEM) and Statistical Package for the Social Science (SPSS) was use for analysis purpose which involve correlation, regression and structural equation analysis. The results demonstrated that safety psychology and work environment factor was related positively with safety behaviour intention. The elements of workers’ attitude, subjective norm and perceived control that form the safety psychology context found to be significantly has the ability to predict safety behaviour. The demographics variances of personal and education background, working experiences and training background also determine as the factors of safety behaviour of the construction workers. The research also successfully established a safety behaviour prediction model that named Safety Psychometric Model. The model can be benefited by safety practitioners, organizations and researchers to explore the safety behaviour prediction. It also enhanced the knowledge in the area of employee behaviour prediction and modelling

Role of Insurance in Post Disaster Recovery Planning in Business Community

The whole world is facing a substantial of natural disasters which brings severe damages throughout the world. Attention must be given to rehabilitate the business community that is affected by these disasters. However, improper planning for recovering damages in business community becomes a major issue when it obstructs the continuation and development of the business community. Therefore, required measures should be taken to avoid collapsing of development of the business community affected by disasters. In this context, insurance plays a vital role to reinstate the business while reducing the financial consequences of the disaster. This study investigates the role of insurance as a provision to recover the disastrous destruction of the business community in Sri Lanka. To achieve this, the survey method was used as the approach and semi structured interviews carried out within five experts from insurance sector and eight experts from the business community. Content analysis was used to analyze the collected data from the empirical study. The analysis of the findings based on two areas of insurers’ and insured’ perception of insurance. One of the major finding was that the insurance is not extended to any frequent disaster prone area of the country unless accepted by the insured with either higher premium amount or higher amount of deductible. As per the insurer’s side, some issues of the current practice are identified as less awareness, dishonesty and fraudulent practice of the insured which leads to less identification of the insurance as a risk management strategy within the business community. According to the insured, main purposes of obtaining insurance are quick recovery of business and to fulfil the borrowing requirements. Recommendations were developed as increase the awareness, educating and the government participation to increase the insurance penetration to the business community

System implementation: managing project and post project stage - case study in an Indonesian company

The research reported in this paper aims to get a better\ud understanding of how the implementation process of\ud enterprise systems (ES) can be managed, by studying the\ud process from an organisational perspective. A review of\ud the literature on previous research in ES implementation\ud has been carried out and the state of the art of ES\ud implementation research is defined. Using several body of\ud literature, an organisational view on ES implementation is\ud described, explaining that ES implementation involves\ud challenges from triple domain, namely technological\ud challenge, business process related challenge, and\ud organisational challenge. Based on the defined state of the\ud art and the organisational view on ES implementation\ud developed in this research, a research framework is\ud presented, addressing the project as well as the postproject\ud stage, and a number of essential issues within the\ud stages. System alignment, knowledge acquisition, change\ud mobilisation are the essntial issues to be studied in the\ud project stage while institutionalisation effort and\ud continuous improvement facilitation are to be studied in\ud the post-project stage. Case studies in Indonesian\ud companies are used to explain the framework

Exploring the supply chain agility attributes in fast moving consumer goods industry: A case study in the Middle East

During the 1990s, supply chain management and agility have both received great attention. This is due to the fact that the business market place is characterized by being highly dynamic and complex. This paper aims to explore the need and the attributes of supply chain agility in FMCG business industry working in the Middle East markets. A case study of a multinational company working in the Middle East was chosen, where it faces the challenges of its business environment and its rapid changes in its markets. The findings show the case study supply chain working within such type of industry needs to be agile and that the attributes required for achieving agility within FMCGs supply chain includes: responsiveness; Customer service; flexibility; innovation; speed; quality; efficiency; and responsible people thinking