Manufacturing and San Francisco

Automation describes the company’s reliance on robotic control systems rather than human capital. In other words, as automation increases, Andrews will use more machinery to produce its products. Therefore, labor hours will decrease, and, in turn, the lower labor costs will reduce expenses. There are different approaches that Andrews will take for automation in the low and high-tech markets.

Some costs are expensive: freight cost from China, inventory (lead-time increase because of shipping), and quality control (testing shipped products from China in the US require some cost; time and money)

to be able to produce at a specified rate, we must be aware of the tools, processes and equipment being used.

The raw materials sit idle until they are ready to ship out which leads to large cost of holding

The assembly line principle as it matured in industrial society however, proved to destroy workers creativity and stifle the very essence of human life. Growth and change. On an assembly line workers are degraded to automatons, performing the same tasks over and over and over. Day in day out, without ever having any knowledge or input into any of the other tasks related to completion of the project. This monotony in the workplace spills over into the daily life of many factory workers and affects how they live their life outside of the factory after the whistle blows as much as it does while they’re on the assembly line.

With assembly-line production, job skills become highly specific to the technology and procedures used in a given plant. Such jobs are considered semi-skilled because they require a specific skill but one that can be learned in a relatively short time... The organizations of production around an assembly line…and other forms of advanced mechanization are organized under scientific management [where]…the worker was to execute diligently a set of motions engineered to ensure the most efficient performance of a given task. (Hodson, R. & Sullivan, T.A., 2008, p. 27)

Modern day production is much more efficient and productive then it was 100 or so years ago, ever since factories started using the automated production line. The entire

Ford realized that he must change his methods of production in order to decrease the price of his automobiles. His invention of the assembly line actually started before the Model T came out, but Ford did not know it at the time. The Model N was built prior to the Model T. The workers on the Model N automobiles placed the parts in order along the floor while the “under-construction” auto was on skids and moved down the line. The workers placed their respective parts on the machine as it passed by. For the Model T, Ford tried to make his process even better. He broke the assembly process into 84 small steps. On top of this, workers were trained for only one of the 84 steps. By having a machine that could make interchangeable parts faster than any human, the process accelerated quickly and there was no shortage on supplies. With the combination of the new parts machine, line of workers trained per step, and an order of parts, the assembly line was born. Figure 1 below shows the wheels and hubcaps of Model T cars being assembled using the assembly line. The excessive amounts

China, one of the most complicated relationship with the United States politically but economically, they are best friends. China’s number one import is technology such as cellular devices, computers, and even air crafts. Japan sends to the United States things such as medical equipment, machinery, technology as well as air crafts, just like China. The United Kingdom sends to the United States through imports electronics, air crafts, and pharmaceuticals. So why are these imports so important? It is because the United States can only manufacture so much. If the United States were to manufacture all of these, then there would have to be a lot more factories opened here on US soil. But due to the fact that other countries are making these commodities and importing it to the US, there is not a need to open up factories and begin manufacturing.

Robots? Not so Fast: Without a doubt, even as most major mechanical affiliations see robots and various sorts of robotization as the most ideal approach to manage lessen costs and nurture capability, Honda inclines toward a substitute way. Honda 's plants are intentionally the most work brought up in the vehicle business, utilizing robots just in ranges that are hazardous or all things considered clearly less fit for people than machines. Honda accept that building pros progress toward getting the chance to be perceptibly separated and their vitality for their occupations and, by expansion, neighborhood change is quieted by the vicinity of machines whose sole

And the reason of it was still the cost. Indeed, this former strategices failed to match their product characteristics with their supply priorities. That is, it cannot minimize their product cost. For example, using Japanese suppliers before was twenty to thirty percent more empensive than using Chinese suppliers, not to mention about the trasportation cost. In addition, their original Japanese design was still increasing the cost in China’s factories ----- increase equipment cost cannot make good use of the cheaper labor cost in China; increase producing cost by designing unnecessary function in China.

Boeing made use of lean techniques in their production system and increased its production by 50% and also reduced its floor space by 40%. Assembling a Boeing 737 is a typical job. Workers should take 367,000 parts, an same number of bolts, rivets, other equipment and 36 miles (58 kilometres) of electrical wire and then keep them all combined to make an airplane [2]. Engineers to machinists were involved in lean (reducing waste) in the factory. By creating an assembly line, aircraft will pass through the workers were they going to concentrate on assembling. Allocating all employees in the factory building and organising special teams helped a lot to solve the errors in the assembly line [2]. In the assembly line, there are eight beacon lights which reflect the production status. If everything is good it shows green colour. If an error occurs, the worker will press a button and the green light will changes to yellow and the panel board will shows the category of the problem(which category it is related to). The worker will pass on to a computer and writes about the problem in a brief manner and the problem should be assigned to special team to solve it within 30 minutes if not, the light turns to purple and the assembly line will shuts down. This moving assembly is the icon of factory’s lean strategies.

The Chinese are an emerging economy that has taken over the world's production in recent years. In fact China is now considered to be the world's factory, as all the major players in the world outsource all or some of their manufacturing activities to the country. All this would not have been possible without the help of technology and with the state of globalization being such, that logistics and distances are becoming shorter and shorter.

The assembly line allowed for the specialization of product production, whereas before the assembly line there would be a slower process of producing products, for example, each piece would have

Another challenge is that despite the ability to manufacture products cheaper in China, there is a flip side to this situation and that is that sometimes, that “made in America” sign on the back of a product could mean more than the few dollars more it costs to buy that product. Some Americans, in their spirit of patriotism, care more about supporting the American economy than saving a little bit here and there buying products that were manufactured outside of the United States. Balancing the stigma sometimes associated with making a product in a foreign country with the lower costs that usually comes along with that is important in doing business in China as well.