2007 Fiscal Year Final Research Report Summary
An inquiry into production systems and the division of labor on manufactuiring shopfloors
| Project/Area Number |
17530306
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| Research Category |
Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research (C)
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| Allocation Type | Single-year Grants |
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| Section | 一般 |
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| Research Field |
Business administration
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| Research Institution | Toho Gakuen University |
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Principal Investigator |
ASAO Uichi Toho Gakuen University, Faculty of Business Administration, Professor (70281912)
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| Co-Investigator(Kenkyū-buntansha) |
NOHARA Hikari Nagano University, Department of Industry-Information Science, Professor (40085999)
SARUTA Masaki Chukyo University, Faculty of Business Administration, Professor (80139980)
FUJITA Eishi Nagoya City University, School of Humanities and Social Sciences, Professor (50110755)
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| Project Period (FY) |
2005 – 2007
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| Keywords | Production System / Division of Labor / Assembly Industry / International Communication / Sweden |
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| Research Abstract |
The main purpose of this research project is to investigate the change of production systems and the characteristic of the division of labor in the assembly plants of automobile, electric and precision machinery industries in Japan and other countries.
The main research results for 3 years were the following :
1. Assembly works are composed of standard operations (repetitive routine operations) and non-standard operations (dealing with changes and problems). It is important to classify the latter under 'countermeasure methods are standardized' and 'no countermeasure methods are standardized', and then, to analyze it. Moreover, non-standard operations are usually carried out as operation based on the division of labor among assembly operators, supervisors, engineers and maintenance workers.
2. We analyzed the characteristic of the division of labor on the three assembly shopfloors, i.e. the parallel product flow system of Volvo Uddevalla plant, the complete process of Toyota's assembly shops and assembly cells which produces electric devices. As a result, we got the following conclusion.
Firstly, the characteristic of the division of labor in the above three cases is to restrain the excessive fragmentation of their standard operations, i.e. to recover partly the functional completeness and the wholeness of the process. Secondly, there is a big difference in the degree that the standard operation recovers the functional completeness and the wholeness according to the length in cycle time of the standard operation and it brings the two type of the division of the non-standard operation: 1) The one type is that the separate workers take charge of the standard operation and the non-standard operation respectively. 2) Another type is that an assembly worker or a work group take charge of the more non-standard operation.
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