Book Reviews

Time-Based Competition:
The Next Battle Ground in American Manufacturing

By Joseph D. Blackburn

Reviewed by Steve Buchwald, CIRM

At an APICS event I recently attended, I heard the comment, "Our company is now in the third year of focused factory...." and at the time I didn't think much of it. However, after reading this month's book review selection, Time-Based Competition - The Next Battle Ground in American Manufacturing, edited by Joseph D. Blackburn, I am wondering if American Manufacturing (I know that I didn't) really understands the importance of flexibility in the total product delivery cycle. Mr. Blackburn writes that our Japanese competitors were very effective in the '60s and '70s at penetrating Western markets by restricting their product lines and operating in very focused factories. Nonetheless, those same Japanese competitors are now altering the economics of focus by developing flexible factories. These companies are compressing the time required to move products through their distribution systems. In addition, they are significantly compressing the time required to develop and introduce new products. In essence, these companies are able to now increase the breadth of products offered and reduce costs, allowing them to cover more segments of their markets, and to increase the technological sophistication of their products.

This book is not another how to book, it is a collection of works written by experts in the field of time compression that gives you food for thought on how your company may be able to use TIME to an advantage. The works included deal with Just in Time, Total Quality Commitment, and Computer Integrated Manufacturing. It consists of four parts: Strategic Overview; New-Product Development; Time Compressing Logistics and Distribution; and lastly The Top Managers Role. It includes case histories from such notable companies as, Federal Express, Hewlett-Packard, Honeywell, and Xerox Corporation. Moreover, it has interesting research like, what matters and what doesn't matter in productivity improvement, and interesting discussions like, the similarity between the manufacturing process (large batch vs. small lots) and the new product development process, scattered throughout.

If you still think American manufacturing can be saved on the shop floor or that JIT is a shop floor inventory control system then you really need to read this book. As Toyota discovered, time saved through improved manufacturing efficiency, can be dissipated in distribution. Toyota learned that although they could manufacture a car in 2 days, 15 to 26 days were required to close the sale, transmit the order to the factory, get the order scheduled, and deliver the car to the customer. They further learned that 20 to 30 percent of a car's cost to the customer was sales and distribution related. Time-Based Competition takes the basic principles underlying JIT and demonstrates how other businesses have been able to apply them to the other crucial business functions so you can take non value-added time out of your entire product delivery cycle.

This book is available from APICS. Good reading!