...Apple is moving some of its production facilities back to U.S Why? Apple CEO Tim Cook said in recent interviews confirmed by CNN that his company, which currently does most of its production in China, would invest $100 million to bring some of its Macintosh manufacturing back to the U.S. next year. Apple's move isn't surprising. It follows a continuing pattern of American companies bringing manufacturing back home due to rising labor, supply and production costs in China. "China isn't cheap anymore. And you also worry about the political risks and the environmental cost of doing business there," said Anderson, whose firm creates consumer drone technology. He moved his company's production out of China two years ago, setting up manufacturing facilities in San Diego and Tijuana. Anderson said making his products closer to his customers has actually turned out to be cheaper. Instead of manufacturing in bulk as he did in China, he ramps up production as orders come in. He also saves on shipping and other distribution costs. "Coming back to the U.S. has been a huge win for us," he said. Apple's move may not generate many more new factory jobs, though, since tech manufacturing today is so automated, he said. "It's not like you need workers sitting on workbenches to assemble computers," Free said. Also, since so much of the country's manufacturing base has eroded over the years, finding American workers with the skills to immediately start on the factory floor can be a...
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...factory”. Currently, China is the country where most of Apple’s outsourcing processes are located. Suppliers and subcontractors in China produce most of the iPhones, iPads, iPods that we use in our daily lives. “What would it take to make iPhones in the United States?” President Obama asked former Apple CEO Steve Jobs this question in February 2011 (Duhigg and Bradsher). The reply from Jobs was “Those jobs aren’t coming back”. Is it true that America has lost those jobs for good? What would it take for Apple to bring those manufacturing jobs back to America? What can the government do to help reduce outsourcing and increase insourcing? What are the benefits for Apple to bring jobs back to the U.S.? What effect would it have on the U.S. and world economies if Apple were to produce its products in the U.S.? In this paper, I would like to use Apple as an example to discuss the above questions with the business initiative of Apple bringing outsourced manufacturing processes and jobs back to the U.S. Why Would Apple Bring Outsourced Manufacturing Jobs Back to the U.S.? What are the benefits for Apple? 1. The suppliers in China are cost-effective, highly productive and able to scale up and down like no U.S. companies can (Duhigg and Bradsher). However, they operate in conflict with U.S. companies’ code of conduct and fail to...
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...Back to "Search By Author" Comparing lean and agile logistics strategies: a case study Ruth Banomyong* & Nucharee Supatn Thammasat Business School Thammasat University BANGKOK 10200, THAILAND Abstract The purpose of this paper is to compare the effect of lean and agile strategies on the manufacturing process of an aquarium manufacturer. Numerous studies has demonstrated the benefits of lean and agile strategies in enhancing the competitiveness of firms but none has really discussed or compared how performance differed when utilizing either strategies. Lean strategy can reduce, or even eliminate waste in the production process but lean might not be able to respond to fluctuation in customer demand while agile strategy enhance the responsiveness of the manufacturer. The results of this research show that both strategies provide different types of impact for the manufacturer. The findings also suggest that the manufacturer should not select either a lean or agile strategy but rather to combine both strategies. Keywords: lean, agile, manufacturing strategy, case study, Thailand * Corresponding author. He can be contacted at: Banomyong@thammasat.net 1 Back to "Search By Author" Background The aquarium industry and in particular an aquarium manufacturer in Thailand has been chosen in this paper as the study object for the implementation of a lean strategy versus an agile strategy. The purpose of this paper is to compare the effect of lean and agile strategies...
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...Back to "Search By Author" Comparing lean and agile logistics strategies: a case study Ruth Banomyong* & Nucharee Supatn Thammasat Business School Thammasat University BANGKOK 10200, THAILAND Abstract The purpose of this paper is to compare the effect of lean and agile strategies on the manufacturing process of an aquarium manufacturer. Numerous studies has demonstrated the benefits of lean and agile strategies in enhancing the competitiveness of firms but none has really discussed or compared how performance differed when utilizing either strategies. Lean strategy can reduce, or even eliminate waste in the production process but lean might not be able to respond to fluctuation in customer demand while agile strategy enhance the responsiveness of the manufacturer. The results of this research show that both strategies provide different types of impact for the manufacturer. The findings also suggest that the manufacturer should not select either a lean or agile strategy but rather to combine both strategies. Keywords: lean, agile, manufacturing strategy, case study, Thailand * Corresponding author. He can be contacted at: Banomyong@thammasat.net 1 Back to "Search By Author" Background The aquarium industry and in particular an aquarium manufacturer in Thailand has been chosen in this paper as the study object for the implementation of a lean strategy versus an agile strategy. The purpose of this paper is to compare the effect of lean and agile strategies...
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...ambition to make a steady income at that time was fulfilled when she met Shavitz, a beekeeper in Maine. Her talent and passion to start a business paved path to the birth of Burt’s Bee’s. It is interesting to notice how Roxanne and the co-founder Burt Shavitz started the concept of natural skin care products just for the extra income and then went on to make it their core product of the company. During the first year she was able to make sales of $81,000. Burt’s Bee’s first big break came in 1989 when their teddy bear candle was noticed at an up-scale Manhattan boutique’s store. By 1993 Burt’s Bee’s had nation-wide sales of $3 million. Another interesting factor of the company is its use of natural products. The founders prove to be efficient business people since they saw the need of the customers and delivered the product demanded by them. As the company witnessed growth, Maine as Burt’s Bee’s business location proved undesirable because of high transportation costs involved, high payroll taxes and lack of expertise in the area. Quimby knew there was a lot of potential in Burt’s Bee’s business and to liberate it to grow she decided to move to North Carolina. Quimby knew that by staying in Maine Burt’s Bee’s could not grow beyond $3 million in sales. North Carolina proved promising as Burt’s Bee’s could hire marketing and operation expertise and also they had received the state commerce’s support to start their manufacturing facility. Quimby also decided to retain Burt’s Bee’s ethics...
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...Managing Transnational Organizations Professor Thad Barnowe Spring 2009 February 18, 2009 Many companies today, in this growing world market, cannot be successful with out considering the benefits that could be gained by expanding their business, or part of their business, to other countries. As Bartlett, Ghoshal, and Beamish mention in the text there are three macro forces that drive, constrain, and shape the industries in which companies will compete globally. (2008). Companies must prepare for these three macro forces in advance before entering into new countries to do business. If they don’t prepare they will not be very successful in conducting business in another country and will not gain the competitive advantage they strived for when deciding to conduct business globally. Also, if a company does not enter the global market prepared they could run into problems that they did not foresee, which could result in damage to the company name and image, not only affecting international business but domestic business as well. This in turn could create the company to sustain profit losses and gain a tarnished reputation that they would have to fix to regain their competitive advantage and above average returns. In order to be a successful in operating in another country multinational enterprises must have a manager or a set of mangers to deal with three very complex external demands, cross-market integration, national responsiveness, and worldwide learning. (Bartlett et al...
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...resources and job design, Supply-chain management, Inventory management, Scheduling, and finally Maintenance decision. Based on Chad’s Creative Concepts case study, I can conclude that Chad Thomas is now need to make those decisions to make sure the operation of his company flows effectively without stopping at any stage up to the current situation. The situation that Chad is facing is between the manufacturing and turn over. There is no problem with his existing staffs according to the case text. Therefore, Chad now needs to focus on inventory, scheduling, and maintenance to make the right decisions for each of it. Based on text, his manufacturing of standard line has many raw materials in manufacturing as work in process. This makes the progress is slow and caused Chad’s company unable to make a good turn over. They came across a critical situation as their finance status is not promising and not satisfying. Now, he need to make scheduling decision to make sure there is not many raw materials in the work in progress status. The standard line manufacturing need to be scheduled properly to avoid this problem. Secondly, the text had mentioned that standard product’s warehouse is costly to keep the inventory for long as space assuming. To solve out this problem, Chad need to make inventory and supply-chain decision. He must decide a good supply-chain and implement it before...
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...United States is the largest manufacturing economy in the world because it produces 18% of the products that are manufactured globally. In the United States, manufacturing supports around 17 million jobs, and manufacturing is what drives America even today (Terry, 2013). The most recent recession has hit the manufacturing sector in the US very hard, and new layers of red tape and more tax burdens are driving more manufacturing jobs out of the US to overseas destinations thus affecting the United States global competitiveness. Tax burdens on the manufacturing sector in the United States have made manufacturing in the US more expensive than elsewhere in places like China (Terry, 2013). Added to this is the fact that the trade unions in the US are driving up manufacturing costs by increasing the pay and benefits of workers in unionized companies. This has resulted in unionized companies facing more financial losses than non-unionized companies, thus forcing unionized companies to move out their manufacturing bases to places like China (Sherk, 2009). Employer-friendly unions can bring back manufacturing jobs to the US, and this can be achieved through changing the the attitudes, policies and practices of most trade unions in the US. How Can Employer-Friendly Unions Bring Back Manufacturing Jobs To The US? Most businesses run on profit motive, and to achieve greater profits, companies have to cut costs and increase production and sales. It is only when production costs become...
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...treat different customers differently. Riordan Manufacturing had taken this philosophy and incorporated it into their mission as a company. Their mission reads as follows: Our Focus Six Sigma, leading edge R&D and exceeding ISO 9000 standards define the attitude and abilities of Riordan Manufacturing. We are industry leaders in using polymer materials to provide solutions to our customers challenges. Our R&D is, and will remain, the industry leader in identifying industry trends. Our Customer Relationships We will strive to be a solution provider for our customers and not be a part of our customers challenges. Long-term relationships will be sought by maintaining rigorous quality controls, innovative solutions, a responsive business attitude and reasonable pricing. Our Employees We will maintain an innovative and team oriented working environment. By assuring that our employees are well informed and properly supported, we will provide a climate focused on the long term viability of our company. Our Future We must be focused in achieving and maintaining reasonable profitability to assure that the financial and human capital is available for sustained growth (Apollo Group, 2012). As we look into the customer relationship management side of the business, we will solely focus on the “Our Customer Relationship” part of Riordan Manufacturing mission in this section. Cultural intelligence gains Riordan Manufacturing was a well-established business that was created...
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...different alternative methods, and a sensitivity analysis. Guillermo Alternatives The financial downturn of Guillermo Furniture resulting from developments in the industry has caused a need for alternatives to be evaluated in order for Guillermo to remain in business. Alternative one is the option of keeping everything the same until business fails while option two offers the possibility of becoming a broker and distributor for a different furniture store that is currently dominating the market. Option three, is to allow Guillermo to keep the store he has in business but invest capital in a manner that allows the store to move into high-tech manufacturing processes to allow for a competitive edge to exist against the other industry leader. By Guillermo opting to move forward with technological advances, he could keep his company open or just step back and become a distributor for the competition. Weighted Average Cost of Capital In order for any company such as Guillermo to obtain new assets to develop their company, the assets need to be financed. With every asset being financed by either debt or equity, working average cost of capital is a method that averages the costs of the different...
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...protect the driver or passengers or to act as a windbreak. The first windshield wipers were brushes. Inventor J. H. Apjohn came up with a method of moving two brushes up and down on a vertical plate glass windshield in 1903. In the same year, Mary Anderson devised a swinging arm that swept rain off the windshield when the driver moved a lever located inside the car. Anderson patented her invention of the mechanical windshield wiper in 1905, and it became standard equipment by 1913. Electric motors were not used yet to power automobile essentials or accessories, and Anderson's device had a drawback. Without another power source, a driver had to use one hand to move the lever. The driver's other hand steered the car (with either a wheel or steering tiller) and worked the stick-mounted gear shift and brake grips standing on the floor of the car or outside the driver's side on the running board. Rubber strips replaced brushes as the cleaning tools on wipers in 1905. Unfortunately, the hazardous need for drivers to wipe windshields while driving was not eliminated until 1917. The solution was to use an electric motor to move a single wiper with a long rubber blade back and forth. Hawaiian dentist Dr. Ormand Wall invented the automatic wiper by placing an electric motor in the top center of the windshield so the wiper arced down over the...
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...Competing Through Manufacturing by Steven C. Wheelwright and Robert H. Hayes Harvard Business Review Reprint 85117 HBR J A N U A RY– F E B R U A RY 1 9 8 5 Competing Through Manufacturing by Steven C. Wheelwright and Robert H. Hayes M anufacturing companies, particularly those in the United States, are today facing intensified competition. For many, it is a case of simple survival. What makes this challenge so difficult is that the “secret weapon” of their fiercest competitors is based not so much on better product design, marketing ingenuity, or financial strength as on something much harder to duplicate: superior overall manufacturing capability. For a long time, however, many of these companies have systematically neglected their manufacturing organizations. Now, as the cost of that neglect grows ever clearer, they are not finding it easy to rebuild their lost excellence in production. In most of these companies, the bulk of their labor force and assets are tied to the manufacturing function. The attitudes, expectations, and traditions that have developed over time in and around that function will be difficult to change. Companies cannot atone for years of neglect simply by throwing large chunks of investment dollars at the problem. Indeed, it normally takes several years of disciplined effort to transform manufacturing weakness into strength. In fact, it can take several years for a company to break the habit of “working around”...
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...systems and methods which help us find out the answer or questions like: what parts to manufacture, when to start manufacturing, when to stop manufacturing, how many to manufacture and where to deliver them to. Kanban works on a pull systems to automatically schedule more production without intervention of Supervision nor Planning & Scheduling Department personnel. Kanban works for higher volume , repetitive products where setup time is short and there is great deal of demand certainty. A pull system has advantages over push system, 1:It can be observed easily unlike push system 2: Efficiency: Pull system is efficient as compared to push system, 3:Variability: There is less variability in a pull system as compared to a push system because a pull system regulate the fluctuation of WIP levels while a push system does not, 4: Robustness: A pull system is less sensitive to error than a push system is. The main focus of the article is on maintaining a constant flow of production using kanban signals and hence minimize waste of excessive inventories where no production will be initiated before a specific customer order into picture. INTRODUCTION: A Kanban inventory is often seen in accordance with Lean Manufacturing and Just-In-Time philosophies. The purpose of a Kanban inventory system is to have minimum inventory levels, and to keep materials at hand when needed in e.g. production lines . Any given inventory should ideally only hold the amount of e.g. raw...
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...Eli Realty Trust, Superior Court Issues: Acme Corp is suing Eli Realty Trust for injunctive relief and damages for lost revenue from construction done improperly by Eli Realty Trust which lead to the manufacturing process being slowed down and damaged equipment Interests Ours: Our interest is seeking the damages that Eli Realty Trust has done to our company over the past couple of months. Theirs: They want to keep an honorable client in the space they are renting without disturbing the relationship. Others: The Superior Court Judge does not want to see this come to court because if it does, he believes it will get ugly. Options The damages that we have estimated are $600,000. This is a negotiation, so there is a good chance we will not be able to get the full damages we have estimated out of Eli Realty Trust. We will try to get the best offer we can without hurting the relationship between Acme Corp and Eli Realty Trust. What we seek from Eli Realty Trust $25,000 for the broken manufacturing equipment. (We will can settle for 13,000) $55,000 – what we paid out of pocket We would like them to write off the $360,000 in escrow since they did not do the job correctly $37,000 – cost of the navy project $800 – Locksmith We will start paying rent again when the upgrade is done, which means the upgrade will be no cost to us We would also be willing to extend the contract for 3 years for a lower monthly rent of $50,000 ------------------------------...
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...change in leadership due to the unexpected death of prior Vice President/ General Manager (Jim Harrison), the company is now under the watchful eye of Dr. Roger Cahill (also known as King of the Hill). In an industry with rapidly growing revenues and demand, in a sector that was highly competitive, BoldFlash still has the significant competitive advantage of operating its own plants. After a few months on the job, Cahill was able to deduct what he saw as the problem in the Mobile Division as unproductive conflicts between the functional departments, particularly around the product development processes. It is clear that manufacturing is the dominant function of the organization and with its competitive nature, seems to be pulling its weight. Due to the unclear roles of departments, isolation of departments, as well as the conflicting roles of departments, manufacturing is suffering. Conflicting Performance Metrics In many ways conflicting performance metrics of each group are contributing to the problem. Currently the performance metrics of each department are left either unclear or overlapping between groups. The conflicting performance metrics are causing opportunities to be missed, frustration between employees and departments, lower profit margins, lack of information flow through the mobile division, and the development of products that do not currently have a market need. It is necessary to create more clear and effective performance metrics in order to create an atmosphere...
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