A pilot study for the application of World Class Manufacturing techniques in the fibre-cement industry

[摘要] ENGLISH ABSTRACT: World Class Manufacturing(WCM) is a set of managementstrategies developed in Japan. These strategies have helpedJapan to become the world leaders in manufacturing. This isobvious when the quality, price, availability and range ofJapanese products are compared to those produced elsewhere.This thesis consists of two sections, namely, a literaturesurvey discussing the various components of WCM, and adescription of an application of some of these techniques.WCM consists of four seperate building blocks, namely, Just-in-Time(JIT), Total Quality Control(TQC), Total WorkerInvolvement and Total Prod11ctive Maintenance. Thesebuilding blocks are discussed in the literature survey. Thereason for their importance, their different components andtheir inter- relationships are discussed. Suggestions arealso given on how to implement them.Some of these techniques were implemented in a fibre cementsheet plant and this is explained in the second part of thethesis. The most important application was reducing setuptimes on one of the machines. In this pilot exercise, setuptimes were reduced to 30% of their previous times. Theauthor is confident that it can reduced even further. Anadditional 10% should be the next goal. This makes the complete application of WCM in the plant a very real possibility.Finally suggestions are made on how to implement the rest ofthe pilot study. Once this is completed, the management ofthe specific plant will hopefully consider implementing WCMtechniques throughout the plant.

[发布机构] Stellenbosch University