Group Technology Production Methods in Manufacture

Abstract

Tolerance analysis and its impact on design, assembly, and manufacturing cost is the focus of Bjorke's book. It begins with a review of probability models applied to modeling tolerance chains, the main analysis tool. If you have had a course in probability and statistics, the concepts will probably be familiar to you, but if not this may be a difficult book to follow. Topics covered in early chapters are weighted heavily to linearizing and mathematically modeling simple chain links. Methods for determining and modeling process capability, assembly interchangability, and ways to synthesize tolerances based on cost models or other tolerance distribution procedures are covered. Two chapters cover interrelated tolerance chain links by way of examples. I found that these examples concentrated too much on the calculations and not enough on how to set up the equations for the tolerance chains. The procedures to analyze a tolerance chain are implemented as a CAD tool that runs on personal computers, and the last chapter is essentially a short tutorial on this system called TOLTECH. My overall impression of this book is that it meets the author's intended objective, "a reference for manufacturing engineers in industry." It gives a statistical treatment of dimensional tolerancing using the tolerance chain concept. Being able to identify these tolerance chains is the difficult part for the novice and the examples offer no middle ground in terms of complexity. Examples go from four or five design tolerances to 17 in a few pages. For mechanical engineers doing design, assembly, or manufacturing, this book is a reference that belongs with their books on geometric dimensioning and tolerancing, internal design standards, and statistical process control.

Job and Team Design

“…In recent years, design of work around groups or teams, rather than at the level of the individual worker, has become more popular (Goodman et al 1987;Guzzo and Shea 1992;Hollenbeck et al 1995;Tannenbaum et al 1996). New manufacturing systems and advancements in understanding of team processes have encouraged the use of team approaches (Gallagher and Knight 1986;Majchrzak 1988).…”

“…The number one obstacle to implementation was considered to be resistance to change (Hyer 1984). Guidelines for reducing resistance to change include the following (Gallagher and Knight 1986;Majchrzak 1988;Turnage 1990):…”

Current status, enablers & barriers of implementing cellular manufacturing system in Indian industries

“…CM provides the possibility of improving the quality of working life in two ways, by the use of job enrichment and by the creation of autonomous or self-managing groups [38]. Indian manufacturing sector is very vast and diversified and therefore the findings of any study, based on a small sample may not generalize any specific sector.…”

“…Although the minimum score is 3.27 (important to very important), GT is a technological improvement, and it is from this class of change that companies gain the largest manufacturing productivity increases. Manufacturing productivity has been found to be influenced by three major factors [38]: (i) 15% can be attributed to improvements in the quality of the work-force.…”

Heuristic Approaches for Cell Formation in Cellular Manufacturing

“…It has been found that CMS can increase the productivity of manufacturing system by three major factors [2]:…”