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This concept of ‘synchronous manufacturing’ was started in 1984. It has been defined as: an all-encompassing manufacturing management philosophy that includes a consistent set of principles, procedures, and techniques where every action is evaluated in terms of the common global goal of the organisation.
A set of seven ‘principles’ are associated with synchronous manufacturing:
1. Do not focus on balance idle capacities; focus on synchronizing the production flow.
2. The marginal value of time at a bottleneck resource is equal to the throughput rate of the products processed by the bottleneck.
3. The marginal value of time at a non-bottleneck resource is negligible.
4. The level of tilization of a non-bottleneck resource is controlled by other constraints within the system.
5. Resources must be utilized, not simply activated.
6. A transfer batch may not, and many times should not, be equal to the process batch.
7. A process batch should be variable both along its route and over time.
According to synchronous manufacturing principles 2 and 3, the return on improvements at a bottleneck resource is very high. But the return on improvement made at non-bottlenecks is marginal at best. The synchronous manufacturing philosophy required managers to focus on those areas of operations where there exist potential global improvements.
