BRIDGE BUILDINGTIME

GAB Edwards, author,consultant and lecturer,reviews the proceedings ofEPICS'(TheBritishProduction ControlSociety) annualconference and concludesthat BPICS and theIProdE have much incommon.

It was in 1947 that our (IProdE) formerPresident, Sir Walter Puckey wrote the paper'The Gap Between the Production Engineer andThe Production Manager' (IProdE Journal

December 1947) and now 42 years later, followingour merger with the Works Managers (now IIM) andthe report, in the new style November issue ofProduction Engineer {Page 51), that the EngineeringCouncil aim to encourage more engineers to becomemanagers, it is a particularly auspicious time toconsider the role and significance of BPICS as acontributor to our collective manufacturing future.What better way than to visit their conference, talk totheir members and examine the things they hold dearby studying their proceedings!

In the sense that London is more cosmopolitanthan Manchester a BPICS gathering is more variedthan an IProdE one. Whereas we find it difficult tocause accountants to attend our meetings, BPICS hasthem as delegates and members. The historical placeof the computer in finance, rather than in production,is clearly a prime reason for this, but it is alsorelevant to note that when the computer whizz kidsreach manufacturing, it is production control, ratherthan CAD/CAM, that is their main focus.

Whilst in our engineering management history itwas the experienced production engineers and worksmanagers that 'controlled' the factory, in recent yearsthe computer has taken on a major role and rather toooften it has been perceived that the presence of acomputer implies good control and its absence bad.The hardware was the focus of introducing dataprocessing into accounts, estimating and salesdepartments. Thus that unmanageable functionalismof workshops, which I have so often cursed in variouspublications, entered into information flow. Then likethe massive amounts of WIPs on the shop floor, sothe vast volume of paper, within and between thefunctions, grew with unintegrated, function-basedelectronic data processing.

Just as in 1968 we called for workflow analysis inlines and cells on the shop floor, to cause integrationbetween the shops, bays, WIPs and stores, so BIPCScalled for Integration of Information Flow in 1988 andentitled their conference 'INTEGRATION FOR SUC-CESS'.

For those IProdE members who missed theconference, the papers at £14, are an excellent readfor the practising engineering manager wishing to

bring himself up to date with the way in which trueproduction control professionals and professionalsalesmen of production control actually think.

There are 36 papers in the proceedings and 378pages; one paper was 25 pages long and one had justtwo pages. Ten of the papers had references and 16did not. Fifteen papers were presented by consultantsand only two of them referred to anyone at all! Of the10 papers with references there were two noticeabletrends. The first was the tendency to refer topublications produced in the last five years and thesecond a tendency to refer to the author's own papersor those from within his own circle of influence. I wasastonished to find no references made to the previousyear's BPICS conference, nor to any papers fromprevious BPICS conferences-all 22 of them!

The conference speakers from industry these daysseem to be either automotive, aerospace or computermanufacturers, but on this occasion only DAF andBostrom Seats represented the automotive sectorand both concentrated on JIT. Whilst DAF wasexplained by reference to the significance of JIT topurchasing, the operations director (D P Lorraine) ofBostrom Seats (a simple product with simplemanufacturing methods and narrow product variety -they are all seats!) showed how a change ofmanufacturing system from functional to cell wascoupled to a change of control system towardKANBAN, since MRP did not work well. The resultswere impressive in inventory reduction, leadtimereduction, productivity and quality improvement,space reduction and, after some difficulties (!),improved morale.

The Aerospace sector was represented by BACPreston whose firm belief in a direct numericallycontrolled machine shop in order to achieve effectiveshop floor control is a primary raison d'etre. In myview this should be seriously challenged by myformer UMIST colleague Roland Smith, who is nowthe BAC chairman. I wonder if the reason that BACare soon to sell some of their land acreages (airfieldsetc) is to pay for the machine tool and computerinvestment at Preston? Whilst yours truly proposedcells for manufacturing control as early as 1966 andBAC Preston have clearly picked up that philosophy,it has not been generally accepted that the DNC routeto control is the right one. Joe Dunn's paperdescribing the BAC work is particularly useful and ithas a place because Joe took the honourable course,

PRODUCTION ENGINEER 52 MARCH 1989

'the objective of the paper is to describe some of theproblems that BAC were confronted with during theimplementation programme!' Some Members willhave visited the prestigious Salford IProdE eveningand heard a more senior colleague at BAC do nojustice to seven years of work. I recommend JoeDunn's paper to those Members who attended andonly saw a few slides of machines! Whilst thisparticular review does not at all accept the BACmethod, the significance of Joe's paper is that it hasthe courage to 'go for DNC and try to prove it canwork'. Many IProdE members should visit BACPreston and to have this paper to read before the visit,be able to use it during the visit and to study it, withone's own notes, after the visit for that is truly whatmanufacturing education should be about.

The computing industry is an interestingdevelopment and one that cannot be ignored anymore for its marketing hype than for its investment inefficient manufacturing (mainly at its suppliers!) andin its own assembly. The volume of business andprofits generated have caused computer makers toinvest in their own future as providers of (a) efficienthardware and software for their customers and (b) asales pitch which incorporates efficiency ofproduction to the user as its focus. It is quite clearthat CIM is the current acronym for sales pitch (b)and the current European market size for CIM, asdefined, is over 12 million dollars and is expected todouble in two years. With such a sales pitch thecomputer makers of 1988 are as different from theUK machine tool makers of 1968 as it is possible tobe. The CIM market demands of the salesman that hedemonstrates that his wares actually work. To do this,each manufacturer has invested or is investing inCIM in his own plants. Whereas the UK's machinetool salesmen of the Sixties were acutely embar-rassed about their own workshops, the CIMsalesmen of the Eighties wish to show off and beproud of their own assembly efficiency and their ownJIT supply chain.

We should expect, therefore, to see many moreexamples of CIM 'pieces' developed inside thecomputing firms over the coming months and withthe opportunity to compare the likes of Bostrom, BAC(Preston) and some computer firms (Siemens,Hewlett Packard, IBM, DEC) most productionengineers should take advantage of 'study bycomparison'.

If, like me, you have begun to have more than asneaking respect for the computer industry and arewholly convinced by the need to introduce and usecomputers in production you may also, like me, besensitive to the extravagant claims made for onepiece of software rather than another. If so, youmissed a good conference because of two mainreasons, both connected to honesty and integrity -matters relevant to the general failure, yes failure, ofsoftware in our area (the production engineer's area)of the factory ie shop-floor control. The best, longest,honest and most academic, in the best sense of theword, conference paper was written by Tom Knowlesof Honeywell-Bull about Newhouse ManufacturingDivision from 1983 onwards. It provides a selective

reference list from 1969 onwards, incorporates thework of Kaplan and Johnson ('Relevance Lost' -where accountants actually perceive that 'they' havelost the ability to measure production - and perhapseven recognise that they never had it!) and relatespractical work to the literature of production and itsmanagement. 'Through JIT to CIM' is the title and hisseven Lessons and Manufacturing Strategy Guide-lines show the way production engineers, workingwith production controllers and production man-agers, can create a mature, on-going think-tank in theworks which relates to and causes the developmentof an improved manufacturing business. From apersonal point of view, I look forward to seeing thisfirm's work of 'Action Learning1 published for howthey created this approach is equally valuable to us,as the work itself was valuable to them.

There were three papers on the plant-dominatedor process type of manufacturing; from KolmarCosmetics on Purchasing and Materials Manage-ment, from Glaxo on Production Scheduling and fromHoffmann-La Roche Ag on What is Meant byPlanning, and whilst these papers serve to remindengineering managers that chemical processes alsoneed to be properly controlled, they do represent adifferent, more predictable and more stable, as to thevolume variety relationship, than is the case withmuch of engineering production.

Turning from the industrial speakers to theteachers, it is common for delegates to find a lack ofinspiration and enthusiasm from those who are paidto teach and research. So it was at BPICS 1988. Anotable exception was David Little of LiverpoolUniversity who presented a thought provoking,carefully considered examination of what isrealistically possible in CIM (see also The State ofCIM by D Appleton, Datamation Magazine) by citingcase examples. He asked us to recognise the simpleview of CIM, integrating manufacturing technologies,the more helpful view, linking manufacturing andbusiness systems but also the necessary, and higherlevel view, that CIM is principally about the I of CIM -'Integration of Business activities concerned withproduct design, sales and manufacture'. His analysis,using the cases of best practice, seems to me to beexactly the kind of work that the universities andpolytechnics ought to be doing. He demonstrates hisknowledge of and experience in manufacturingindustry by illustrating the differences in approachesto CIM adopted by different firms. In this way, it willbe valuable, one day, to have a common approachresulting from the well used but wasteful 'trial anderror' method. The significance of this paper, and twoothers from academics, is that David Little'sknowledge as an academic working within industry isthat firms not wishing to have too much error, withtheir expensive CIM trials, can call upon his practicaladvice in the same way as a consultant medicalpractitioner, working at a teaching hospital, canconduct diagnosis and prognosis. Whilst firms wishto 'get sick' before they 'get cured1, his knowledgeand experience 'gets wasted'.

Now, we know that many of our professors andteachers especially in engineering, certainly know

how to put audiences to sleep. In some cases,however, the underlying competence of the workhelps the delegate to sleep during the lecture but stayawake to read the paper. Whilst at least one of the'teachers' put me to sleep, and I found little of anyconsequence in the paper, for it had probably beenwritten as a necessary publication for academicpromotion purposes, I was not put to sleep by ChrisVoss of Warwick and I was glad I stayed awake toread David Rhodes' (of the CIM Institute) paper.

Professor Voss was a young research student atthe London Business School when I first met him andI was impressed by his lack of acceptance of much ofwhat was then OR (operational research), taught atthe school as production. His elevation to professorhas been an easy transition for him, for he is in theamateur tradition as a stylist which colleges like, andas a presenter he is competent, but not exuberant,keeps strictly to his subject and slides, and delivers aview of Japan that is straightforward, clear andunambiguous. One industrial member close to me atlunch considered the conference useful because in50 minutes Chris Voss had explained to him what JITis and what Japan has done. Whilst this may besimplistic to some, I too found this presentationvaluable because it taught me, what I ought as anEnglishman (with Irish blood) to know - thatinteresting and sensational findings are not bestpresented by a News of the World journalistic or JoanRivers style of presentation! I was, of course,delighted to note that the research on Japanesemanufacturing showed the significance of Flow,layout, GT, cells, materials handling, focus on theprocess and small machines to Japanese success,for that is why IProdE had a Group Technologyspecial interest group in the Sixties! Come backGordon Ransom, Joseph Gombinski, J L Burbidge,F R E Durie and Charles Allen, all is forgiven - wellnearly so!

In recent years. AMI EC at Macclesfiela wanSperry and Unisys, CIM centre at Kingston Tech, theCIM Institute at Cranfield and various other CIMinitiatives, the MSc course in CIM at Strathclyde andthe little unit at the most unlikely of places, LeedsUniversity, have been started. The IBM supportedCranfield Institute chose to present a paper at thisconference and to focus upon medium and smallfirms. This interested me because I had thought thatHewlett Packard had cornered this segment of theCIM market in Europe and I thought too, quitehonestly, that if I was advising a small company Imight say 'keep out for a while'. I was thus interestedin the case experience of Dr Rhodes and whether thatparticular Institution had moved away from IT andinto manufacturing and assembly for real. The paperis, I believe, significant for three reasons. The first isthe existence and structure of the integration matrixwhich attempts to determine the relationship betweenbusiness processes and traditional, functional areasand their ongoing development in CIM studies. Thesecond is that the CIM Institute believe that CIM isattractive to smaller firms, and the third was myinterest in whether the Institute itself can find arelevant and useful place for itself in this competitive

PRODUCTION ENGINEER 53 MARCH 1989

world - isn't everyone selling CIM? In all cases, thispaper seems to me to give a clear signal that thisInstitute is trying to find out what CIM really is and todemonstrate that whatever it is perceived to be bymanufacturers, the CIM Institute at Cranfield canhelp.

By now, the reader will have appreciated that thisparticular BPICS conference and papers are viewed,by this reviewer, as significant to IProdE members.The most important matter, however, has yet tosurface, but it did so in that part which was presentedby the consultants. Now the word consultant is notoften appreciated by production engineers any morethan accountants or salesmen. In the BPICS worldthe consultants are mainly salesmen too for they areoften independent businessmen selling softwarepackages through 'consultancy'. Of course, many inthe software sales world are simply good, hard nosedsalesmen. BPICS is fortunate in attracting bothsalesmen and consultants and in so doing attractsthe best and the worst of both worlds. BPICS is,however, a modest and yet enthusiastic society andlike our own train spotters and model aeroplaneenthusiasts clubs it knows a good (or bad) thingwhen it sees one. It might take time, however, for thatto happen as it did to change from elastic to ICEngines in model aeroplane developments. BPICS isaffiliated to APICS, the American society and a keyissue at the APICS conference of 1984 wasconsidered by Ed Heard in a paper entitled 'JIT and

MRP - Can This Marriage Be Saved1. Hisconclusion, unlike that of IProdE's new honoraryfellow, J L Burbidge in 1980 (IProdE Journal, TheCase Against MRP) was that MRP and JIT arecompatible but 'other matters' need seeing to. At the1988 conference Ed Heard spoke in the UK, but thistime on 'Responsiveness-The Next Battleground'. Ittranspires that on this subject he and J L Burbidgeare in complete agreement ie the importance of shortcycles! It was necessary for me the reviewer, on you,the reader's part, to look further and more deeply intothe problems posed by Burbidge to us in 1980. It wasin the paper by Michael C Harrison that the honestyand integrity I know to exist within BPICS was best tobe found. Harrison had worked with Goldratt of OPTand when Goldratt, who it is said was not a goodmanager of his own business (although I suspect thisnot to be the real reason), left the OPT organisation,the UK concessionaires for his algorithm decidedthat they had to sell the algorithm in its softwarepackage as a package and not as a service. Themanagement consultancy was removed and thoseconcerned with it went elsewhere. One such wasMike Harrison and I am glad he went wherever it was,because he produced a paper of great topicality andsubstantial merit - he may not have produced itotherwise. His paper, the highlight of the conferencefor me, had the most dishonest title imaginable:'Integrating MRP, JIT and OPT' ie without thequestion mark, and the most honest, straightforward

and accurate explanation of the severe inadequaciesof MRP I and II, that it has been my pleasure to hear,(but sadly not read for he failed to put the significantbits in his paper!). What Mike Harrison said wasquite simple, effective, devastating and important. Itwas, that if you build your house on inadequate,unrealistic or fallacious foundations, don't besurprised if it falls down. He explained that MRP wasbased upon unrealistic rules, it systemised badhabits, had a lack of focus, had millions spent on it,was over 20 years old and had achieved very poorresults in that it had failed to help control shop flooractivities. His presentation and argument comingfrom a BPICS control route and using a differentevidence from J L Burbidge (who said the same in1980) was music in my ears and caused me toappreciate just how far BPICS has come in its first 23years, much of it with assistance from ArthurAnderson, and why it has grown to 3500 members,over half of whom are engineers, and it is still growing.

There have been a number of mistakes made bymost Institutions in the last 40 years and one that theIProdE made was to deny its grass roots support theopportunity of membership through hard-nosedexperience. Times are now achanging and as a proudBritish manufacturing man and IProdE supporter Ibelieve that now is the time to bridge the gapillustrated by our ex-President Sir Walter Puckey andbuild more effective bridges between IProdE, IIM andBPICS. HI

A GUIDE TO THE MANAGEMENT OF DESIGNSets out the methodology for the successful application of state of the art experience from

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FOREWORDThis Guide focuses on the creative role of designers andthe relationships between Design and the other keyfunctions in any manufacturing organisation. It is basedon the real-life experiences of its accomplished authorsall of whom believe strongly in the need for teamwork aswell as encouraging individual flair and inventiveness. Itforms a logical sequel to the excellent Design forProduction Guide produced by the same WorkingParty.

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Much has been written separately about both Designand Management but little has so far been published onthe subject of'Management of Design'. This Guide fillsan obvious gap very adequately in my view and deservesto be read widely. I commend it wholeheartedly tostudents and senior manager alike.

Tony Johns BSc, CEng, MIProdE, FIMCChairman, Manufacturing Management and Control Activity Group

Price: £12.00(Membersprice £10.00) ISBN085510 034 4Combined price with A Guide to Design for Production £20.00( Members price £16.00)

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