Economic Advantages of Group Assembly

Summary

This paper claims that assembly groups are more economical than long machine-paced assembly lines and the assembly methods often associated with materials requirement planning (MRP) in which assemblies are built in batches as a succession of assembly stages. It defines assembly groups; classifies the different ways in which they can be formed and the different ways in which the work can be organized inside the groups. Examples are taken from Valvo in Kalmar, Philips in Eindhoven and Olivetti in Ivrea. It is claimed that a general change to group assembly methods would release many millions of pounds from investment in assembly stocks and work in progress, and would induce a major reduction in stock holding costs.