Manufacturing in the 1990s - productivity, flexibility and innovation

The article outlines the evolution of large multinationals as a result of the appearance of new market demands. Companies having to meet specific market demands, are shown to possess certain characteristics, related to the market demands concerned. The analysis shows that innovativeness will, in all probability, be the new market demand in the 1990s, in addition to the already existing ones of efficiency, quality and flexibility. Descriptions of ideal types illustrate the evolution of companies as they move from the Efficient Firm to the Quality Firm on to the Flexible Firm to, finally, the Innovative Firm. The phase model also includes the symptoms of crisis, when moving from one phase to another. Skipping phases appears to be difficult, if not impossible. The same holds true for moving to the next phase, while the organization has not finished with the preceding phase

Japanese manufacturing: strategy and practice

A striking characteristic of Japanese factories is the extent of process control: from both the technical and the social viewpoint the labour and production system is controlled down to the very last detail. The characteristics of management and organization which underlie this are closely interwoven with Japanese culture. This explains why the work content, working conditions and working relationships in the factories look so different from those in western cultures. The paper shows why factories in the West cannot and should not copy Japanese factories

Discharge modulation noise in He---Ne laser radiation

Discharge modulation noise in He---Ne laser radiation is considered theoretically, including explicitly the laser oscillator properties. Experiments reported previously by us and other authors are in agreement with our analysis

Power broadening and collision broadening of gas laser transitions

From measured tuning characteristics of the amplitude of laser power modulation in single-mode operation, power broadening as well as collision broadening of the laser transition is shown to be relatively important and can be studied separately. It is also found that the d.c. laser power is proportional to tge square of the gain