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A Frequent Mistake—Undoing an Assembly Line—Part 2

Christoph Roser — Tue, 07 May 2024 11:00:58 +0000

Assembly lines are THE way to do mass production. Yet, with constant regularity people try out to undo the assembly line, only to fail in their endeavor. In my previous post I looked at examples by Volkswagen in Salzgitter, Volvo in Kalmar, and Opel in Bochum, who all tried, just to switch back to an ... Read more

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A Frequent Mistake—Undoing an Assembly Line—Part 1

Christoph Roser — Tue, 30 Apr 2024 11:00:44 +0000

Assembly lines are everywhere in mass production. From mobile phones to cars to airplanes, almost all items produced in large quantities come from an assembly line. Just look around you wherever you are and try to find a produced item that did NOT come from an assembly line. My general recommendation is that if you ... Read more

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Training Within Industry—Second-Line Supervisor Job Instructions

Christoph Roser — Tue, 06 Jun 2023 11:00:43 +0000

Training Within Industry and its modules Job Instructions, Job Relations, and Job Methods are well known. But (thanks to Mark Warren) I just recently learned about another module: Job Instructions for Second-Line Supervisors (nowadays called managers). This is a hierarchy level higher, and the goal is to support and guide the shop floor supervisors on ... Read more

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The Difference between the Toyota Production System and Lean Manufacturing

Christoph Roser — Tue, 23 May 2023 11:00:08 +0000

The Toyota Production System (TPS) is the archetype of lean manufacturing. Lean is often used as a synonym for the Toyota Production System, and that is generally quite accurate. It is also sometimes referred to as the “Westernized” version of the Toyota Production System. However, there are some smaller differences in the underlying approach, as ... Read more

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KUKA FAMULUS Turns 50—The First Modern Industrial Robot

Christoph Roser — Tue, 16 May 2023 11:00:45 +0000

Fifty years ago, the FAMULUS industrial robot was introduced by the German machine tool maker KUKA. This articulate-arm kinematics industrial robot with six axes was the first of many modern industrial robots. This design is nowadays still the most common type of industrial robot. Pre-industrial Robots The idea of machines doing manual labor is quite ... Read more

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Akio Toyoda Steps Down as Toyota CEO

Christoph Roser — Tue, 21 Feb 2023 11:00:26 +0000

Somewhat surprising to industry insiders, the CEO of Toyota Motor, Akio Toyoda, announced on January 26 his resignation, and he will step down as CEO on April 1, 2023, to become the chairman of the board. Hence, I will have a look at his impact on Toyota. However, just to be warned, if you expect ... Read more

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The Impact of ChatGPT on the Future of Work

Christoph Roser — Tue, 07 Feb 2023 11:00:11 +0000

You may have heard of ChatGPT, the latest buzz in artificial intelligence. ChatGPT is a chatbot by OpenAI that can answer your questions and hold a conversation. And, it is very good at this. It can handle almost anything connected with text. This tool (and the many others that are likely to follow) has the ... Read more

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250 Years of the Cromford Cotton Mill – Start of the Industrial Revolution

Christoph Roser — Tue, 06 Sep 2022 11:00:54 +0000

The Industrial Revolution is arguably the most significant change in manufacturing history. Since it was a gradual process over almost a century, the exact start and end dates are hard to pin down. However, for me one of the key dates is the start of the first cotton mill in Britain, the Cromford Cotton Mill ... Read more

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