Critical Thinking
The global marketplace has witnessed an increased pressure fromcustomers and competitors in manufacturing as well as servicesector (Basu, 2001; George, 2002). Due to the rapidly changingglobal marketplace only those companies will be able to survivethat will deliver products of good quality at cheaper rate and toachieve their goal companies try to improve performance by focusingon cost cutting, increasing productivity levels, quality andguaranteeing deliveries in order to satisfy customers (Raouf,1994).
Increased global competition leads the industry to increasingefficiency by means of economies of scale and internalspecialization so as to meet market conditions in terms offlexibility, delivery performance and quality (Yamashina, 1995).The changes in the present competitive business environment arecharacterized by profound competition on the supply side and keenindecisive in customer requirements on the demand side. Thesechanges have left their distinctive marks on the different aspectof the manufacturing organizations (Gomes et al., 2006). With thisincreasing global economy, cost effective manufacturing has becomea requirement to remain competitive.
To meet all the challenges organizations try to introducedifferent manufacturing and supply techniques. Management oforganizations devotes its efforts to reduce the manufacturing costsand to improve the quality of product. To achieve this goal,different manufacturing and supply techniques have been employed.The last quarter of the 20th century witnessed the adoption ofworld-class, lean and integrated manufacturingstrategies that have drastically changed the waymanufacturing firm’s leads to improvement of manufacturingperformance (Fullerton and McWatters, 2002).
Consult chapter 7 of your text book or secondaryavailable data on internet and answer the followingquestions.
Question:
- Why Companies adopted Lean Thinking and JIT model?
- Discuss major types of Waste, companies has to keep in mindduring production.
- Assess the reasons for using lean thinking (suitable examples),what are the benefits from Suppliers to end users?
- Due to COVID 19 emergency do you think agile supply chain isthe right concept in this kind of situation? Give reason withexample.
The Answer should be within 4- 5 pages.
The Answer must follow the outline pointsbelow:
- Lean Thinking and JIT Concept
- Agile Supply chain
- Their Main functions
- Reasons with suitable Examples
- Reference
