Académique Documents
Professionnel Documents
Culture Documents
Introduction
Flextronics International Ltd., headquartered in Singapore, was originally founded in Sillicon Valley, in the year 1969 by Joe McKenzie. They provide electronics manufacturing services (EMS) to original equipment manufacturers (OEM). An OEM refers to a company that originally manufactured the product. Flextronics is highly vertically integrated, they are concerned with the design, manufacturing, distribution and the after-market services of their products. We can entitle Flextronics as the brand behind brands., since they execute the operations that are being outsourced or assigned to them by large corporation as for instance Philips, Microsoft, Ericsson, Cisco and HP.
Obviously, this layout type has its pros and cons. Firstly, one can state that by transporting transformed resources by a prearranged route the flow is highly predictable, which makes it relatively easy to control. Mass manufacturing processes like the one we just dicussed are mainly characterized by low costs per unit. Additionally they offer opportunities for the specialization of equipment. Finally, the relatively high speed of a production line, provides a convenient movement for materials and information. However, the product layout type also has its disadvantages. One of them is the possible absence of mix flexibility. Moreover, the production line is very vulnerable in terms of stagnation when being disrupted. Lastly, the work at a production line can be very repetitive, which can lead to decreasing motivation amongst employees.
With the exception of the holiday period the demand for Xbox 360 is relatively stable throughout the year. This results into a predictable production capacity, which goes along with high utilization of resources and low unit costs. Although the sales of the Xbox 360 are still increasing on the long term, sales numbers do not fluctuate heavily on the short term, which indicates a low variation in demand. As Microsoft makes use of the services of Flextronics in order to producte the Xbox 360 , they will not be able to experience very much of the mass production process. However, since it is in the interest of Microsoft to verify whether the product is being produced properly, they will appoint someone to keep an eye on the situation. The operation process with a product layout is per-eminently suited to be monitored, which is beneficial for its visibility. Obviously, the obtained information will be passed through towards the CEO of, in this case, Microsoft. Hence, it would be ignorant to conclude that the visibility is very low, since there are certain aspects of the operations process that need to be exposed by Flextronics in order to keep their customer (in this case Microsoft) satisfied. Therefore, it can be concluded that the visibility of this operations process can be positioned between medium and low.
Materials-processing technologies
One of Flextronics customers is LEGO. Flextronics manufactures the toys, and employs sophisticated facilities. Materials-processing has helped to make production and assembly of materials more efficient and cost-effective. LEGO uses Automated Guided Vehicles in their factory. These are independently powered vehicles which move materials between operations. In LEGOs case, these machines transport the pieces between manufacturing workstations throughout the factory. The benefits of applying AGVs are independent movement, flexibility of routing and long-term flexibility of use. Obviously, to LEGO, these aspects are more important to their production process than the relatively high capital costs associated with the AGVs.
by employees is one of them. Additionally, the implementation of job enlargement as a way of job design is always accompanied by an introduction period in which it will disrupt the smooth flow of work. This relatively negative aspect in the short term will be offset by the positive developments in the long term. To conclude we can state that the option of job enlargement will be the most suitable taken into account the aspects of the assembly line and the objectives of Flextronics top management.