A venture isn’t fruitful in light of the fact that it has been finished on schedule and inside a spending plan. There is one other factor that is basic to progress: quality. Regardless of how rapidly and inexpensively a task is finished, partners won’t be upbeat if the nature of the item or administration doesn’t live up to their desires. Along these lines, one significant technique to follow and examine the nature of the task and ensure it meets the necessities of the clients is Quality affirmation. QA according to ISO 9000 is characterized as “a component of value the executives concentrated on giving certainty that quality prerequisites will be satisfied”. This deformity counteractive action in quality confirmation contrasts unpretentiously from imperfection recognition and dismissal in quality control and has been alluded to as a move left since it centers around quality prior all the while. The expressions “quality affirmation” Continue reading
Operations Management
Purchasing Management – Meaning and Functions
The purchasing department in any organization acts as an interface between suppliers of materials and the production function. Since materials comprise one of the largest sources of cash outlay in any manufacturing firm, their acquisition requires careful management. The responsibilities of a purchasing department include learning the material needs of the organization, selecting suppliers and negotiating price, ensuring delivery, and monitoring cost, quality, and delivery performance. Occasionally the term procurement is used to describe the acquisition of goods and services. This is a broader term and includes purchasing, stores, traffic, receiving, and inspection. The principal goals of purchasing are related to quality, service, price, and vendor relations. In addition to the obvious necessity of quality purchased parts, the purchasing department must consider vendor reliability, maintenance and return policies, and other aspects of customer service. Moreover, they must continually seek new vendors and products and be able Continue reading
Meaning of Reliability and Maintainability
Reliability Reliability may be defined as the probability, or degree of confidence that a product will perform a specified number of times under prescribed conditions. For example, the reliability of an electrical changeover switch may be defined as 0.9999. This may hold true only when it is operated with an input voltage of 440 volts AC, in an environmental temperature range of 0 to 80 degrees C, with humidity less than 90 percent, if its housing has never been opened, if it has been operated less than 1 million times, and if its is less than five years old. Even if any one of these conditions is violated, then the reliability concepts goes off. When parts are interdependent, and especially when there is a large number of them, achieving a high degree of reliability for a product presents and real challenge. Maintainability Maintainability refers to the ability of the user Continue reading
Vendor Managed Inventory (VMI)
Vendor Managed Inventory (VMI) is a supply chain practice where the inventory is monitored, planned and managed by the vendor on behalf of the consuming organization, based on the expected demand and on previously agreed minimum and maximum inventory levels. In its simplest form, Vendor Managed Inventory is the process where the vendor assumes the task of generating purchase orders to replenish a customer’s inventory. VMI is a term that is used to describe many types of supply chain initiatives. Traditionally, success in supply chain management derives from understanding and managing the trade off between inventory cost and the service level. The Vendor Managed Inventory Approach Vendor Managed Inventory reduces stock-outs and reduces inventory in the supply chain. Some features of VMI include:- Shortening of the supply chain Centralized forecasting Frequent communication of inventory, stock-outs, and planned promotions. Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) linkages facilitate this communication. No manufacturer promotions Trucks Continue reading
Production Planning and Control
Planning and control are interrelated and interdependent. Planning is meaningless unless control action is taken to ensure the success of the plan. Control also provides information feedback which is helpful in modifying the existing plans and in making new plans. Similarly, control is dependent on planning as the standards of performance are laid down under planning. Therefore, production and control should be considered an integrated function of planning to ensure the most efficient production and regulation of operations to execute the plans successfully. Production planning and control may be defined as the direction and coordination of the firm’s material and physical facilities towards the attainment of pre-specified production goals in the most efficient available way. It is the process of planning production in advance of operations, establishing the exact route of each individual item, part or assembly, setting starting and finishing dates for each important item Continue reading
Cellular Manufacturing – Meaning, Implementation and Benefits
A cellular manufacturing layout is in direct contradiction to the traditional production line. In the production line, numerous workers are needed to service a single production line running from receiving of raw material to shipping of finished product. A breakdown in staffing or machinery in any part of the line nearly always resulted in the entire process being idled until the specific difficulty in the line was repaired, or re-crewed. With cellular manufacturing, production is divided among groups, or cells, of workers and production machinery. Thus, the breakdown of one cell, due to equipment malfunction or staffing problems, does not radically affect the rest of the production process. Technology and cellular manufacturing have combined to streamline the production processes of numerous established and start-up manufacturing facilities worldwide. Lean systems, such as Kaizen, and Six Sigma, to name just two, though very often high in startup cost, provide both a short- Continue reading