Harley davidson s just in time jit journey

Circumstance Summary

The case is about the Just-in-Time (JIT) implementation by Harley-Davidson Motor unit Company. Following World War II, they faced with competition from Japan companies, which were able to generate better quality motor bikes at relatively lower cost. Harley-Davidson found that there were 3 most important procedures of Japanese companies, which will differentiated their very own production procedure from that of others: JIT making, employee participation, and statistical process control. Harley-Davidson adopted those three principles and formulated diverse strategies to make this move possible and to make the manufacturing procedures as successful as regarding its Japan counterparts.

The company finally been successful in reaching its goals of minimizing the cost of production, improving top quality, and raising its business. With the business again engaging in hard times, the case presents how it was looking to focus on “continuous improvement within a bid to bring itself back in profits. Issue #1: For what reason has ongoing improvement recently been so good at Harley davidson Davidson? Constant improvement can be ongoing work to improve items, services or perhaps processes.

These attempts can look for “incremental improvement over time or “breakthrough improvement all at once.

Below continuous improvement, a task or perhaps series of responsibilities were recognized as the problem place in the business procedure, manufacturing businesses, and product development where improvement could be built. Harley-Davidson necessary the active participation and commitment of its staff to help in eliminating unnecessary steps and complexity pertaining to the process and to bring more flexibility in to the system. Constant improvement helped the company recognize savings options and put those mechanisms into places, as well improved the product quality standards plus the reduced the waste inside the forms of expense, time and flaws. Therefore with a year, most Harley-Davidson’s manufacturing operations were being converted to JIT: components and sub-assemblies had been “pulled throughout the production system in response to final require. Question #2: Considering the street ahead, what specific actions can Harley Davidson have that will move them toward their goals? Harley Davidson could keep performing “continuous improvement.  Have a closer check out its procedures in a bid to obtain its cost composition right and manage deliveries consistent with the expected slowing of consumer spending.

For ongoing improvement, it can begins with identify the current process and take a election on which method would most benefit from improvement, then create the existing procedure using a task board just like A3 survey. After understand fully the process, identify areas of opportunity surrounding the mapped process, to do this teams should assess the current process and study areas that will be streamlined. Finally, the team is going to decide on a brand new process. To be able to reduce excessive capacity or perhaps costs and gain efficiencies, the company has consolidated a number of its production facilities, and parts, add-ons and general merchandise circulation operations to improve its total process. The company also caused it to be a high goal to manage supply in line with demand. In addition , the company started reorganization, rearrangement, reshuffling its creation process to reduce complexity and create the flexibleness to produce multiple product families on the same manufacturing plant every day at the beginning of 2009.

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