Summary

Today’s CAD/CAM technology gives us the ability to customize products for individual customers without incurring high additional costs. When combined with customer demands for personalized products and internet-based individualized ordering capabilities, this means that there will be increasing demand for customized products in the 21st century.

In addition, after placing their orders both OEMs (original equipment manufacturers) and end consumers expect these products to be delivered quickly.

^ The Response Time Spiral for a Make-to-Order Company
   To understand the spiral, start at the top box (“Long Lead Times”) and follow the
   arrows and descriptions.
   Each time around the spiral, lead times get longer and the other problems
   get exacerbated.
   Similar Response Time Spirals occur in Make-to-Stock and Engineer-to-order companies,
   see Suri (1998).


Although Lean Manufacturing techniques can be powerful in certain situations, for companies making a large variety of products with variable demand or companies making highly engineered products, Lean Manufacturing has several drawbacks.

Quick Response Manufacturing (QRM) can be a more effective competitive strategy for companies targeting such markets.

In this article, we give an overview of the QRM strategy, which focuses on lead time reduction throughout the enterprise.

We also explain why the Lean Manufacturing strategies of flow, takt time and pull don’t work well for these markets, and why QRM has greater competitive potential.

Next we describe POLCA, a material control system to be used as part of QRM. Again, we show why a kanban system (used in Lean Manufacturing for material control) is not appropriate for these markets.

Instead, POLCA provides an effective method to support both manufacturing and material control for companies serving these markets.

The combination of QRM and POLCA will provide companies with significant competitive advantage through their ability to deliver customized products with short lead times.

This paper is a revised and updated version of “Quick Response Manufacturing: A Competitive Strategy for the 21st Century,” by the same author. It contains new results on the impact of QRM strategy, as well as updated references to recent case studies on the application of QRM at various companies. Copyright © 2003 Rajan Suri. Reprinted on this website with permission. > Download full article (30 pages, pdf-format, 121 Kb)