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Inventory Reduction And Productivity Growth: Linkages In The Japanese Automotive Industry, Marvin B. Lieberman, Lieven Demeester
Inventory Reduction And Productivity Growth: Linkages In The Japanese Automotive Industry, Marvin B. Lieberman, Lieven Demeester
Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business
The literature on JIT production suggests a causal link between work-in-progress inventory and manufacturing productivity. Such a connection has been described in numerous case studies but never tested statistically. Historical data for 52 Japanese automotive companies are used to evaluate the inventory-productivity relationship. It is found that firms increased their productivity rank during periods of substantial inventory reduction. More detailed tests suggest that inventory reductions stimulated gains in productivity. On average, each 10% reduction in inventory led to about a 1% gain in labor productivity, with a lag of about one year. Such effects were more immediate for Toyota affiliates, …
The Empirical Determinants Of Inventory Levels In High-Volume Manufacturing, Marvin B. Lieberman, Susan Helper, Lieven Demeester
The Empirical Determinants Of Inventory Levels In High-Volume Manufacturing, Marvin B. Lieberman, Susan Helper, Lieven Demeester
Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business
This study uses survey data on several hundred automotive suppliers in North America to evaluate the determinants of inventory levels in high-volume discrete parts manufacturing. We assess the magnitude of raw materials, work-in-process, and finished goods inventories held at automotive supply plants. Inventories are shown to be jointly determined by technological and managerial factors in a manner roughly consistent with classical inventory theory. Several categories of managerial practices are found to be important. Low inventories are linked to employee problem solving and frequent communication with customers. More unexpectedly, we find the absence of inventory differences between U.S.-owned and Japanese-owned plants …
Phase Transitions In Project Scheduling, Willy Herroelen, Bert De Reyck
Phase Transitions In Project Scheduling, Willy Herroelen, Bert De Reyck
Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business
Researchers in the area of artificial intelligence have recently shown that many NP-complete problems exhibit phase transitions. Often, problem instances change from being easy to being hard to solve to again being easy to solve when certain of their characteristics are modified. Most often the transitions are sharp, but sometimes they are rather continuous in the order parameters that are characteristic of the system as a whole. To the best of our knowledge, no evidence has been provided so far that similar phase transitions occur in NP-hard scheduling problems. In this paper we report on the existence of phase transitions …