| Abstract: |
The efforts that had been directed to the development of the proposed company-level productivity system had resulted in some conclusions that should be clearly presented at this position of the thesis. They are two main groups. The first is the group of conclusions that could be drawn from surveying the manufacturing companies with respect to productivity management and reviewing the academic works that were directed to serve those companies in that respect. The second is the group of conclusions that conclusions and recommendations were drawn from the development of the proposed system and applying it in one of the manufacturing companies.6.1.1 Conclusions about Productivity-Management ApplicationsThis group can be summarized in the following:(a) The concepts of productivity management are applied in practice in a very limited scale. This is not only here in Egypt but is also observed all over the world. This is because different reasons that include the low awarness to the productivity issue and the limitations that are associated to the available productivity models. The companies may be aware to productivity improvement, but not aware to productivity management. So, they directly jump to productivity improvement without passing with productivity measurement, evaluation, diagnosis, and planning.(b) Researches that are related to productivity management are not fairlydistributed among the phases of productivity cycle. A lot of researches, that had stopped by 1990, were directed to productivity measurement and evaluation. Very few efforts were directed to productivity planning. Productivity improvement, only, is still paid a lot of researches. New productivity improvement techniques are>continuously attempted to be introduced. After reviewing the relatedliterature, a gap between the steady-state measurement and evaluation models• and the continuously developed productivity improvement techniques could be recorded. A model by which the causes of productivity change can be determined is missing. This limitation is one of the reasons of the limited scale of having formal productivity management systems.(c) Companies, specially manufacturing, appreciate the cost reduction programs. Such programs are executed through formal control systems that are based on well known concepts of cost. All levels of employee in a manufacturing company are aware to the concept of the input per unit output Less awareness is available to the equivalent concept, output per unit input. Employee understand that the input per unit output is broken down into some partial inputs per unit output. But, they are not aware to the partial productivities of inputs.(d) The increased competition faced by the manufacturers have made them very receptive to ideas that promise improved competitiveness. Foremost among the ideas that have achieved widespread acceptance are the just-in-time (GIT) and the cellular manufacturing. The later is the application of the group technology (GT) to the manufacturing systems [26] . The development of flexible productivity systems is in line with the widespread employment of such technologies by the manufacturir:g companies.6.1.2 Conclusions about the Developed Productivity System(a) The developed term consumptivity, which is just an inverse of the original term productivity, has the following advantages that are not available to the term productivitiy:(i) The mathematical relationship between total consumptivity and partial consumptivities of the input factors is multiple linear. This linearity expands to the relationship between the changes in total and partial consumptivities. This advantage enhances the regression analysis if required.(ii) Due to this linearity, there is no limitation on the number of productivity measures. The company can classify its inputs into unlimited number of factors. It can also change the way of input classification according to the changes that have been introduced to the manufacturing system. Productivity measures can be generated to satisfy the company’s expectatins from the productivity system. For this advantage the developed system is described as a flexible system.(iii)The efforts that are required to promote this term and the related models to the manufacturing companies are less than the required efforts for promoting the term productivity and its related models. A company’s manager accepts and appreciates the attempt of ”reducing the inputs consumed per unit output” more than his appreciation for the attempt of increasing the output produced per unit input, which is a productivity improvement attempt.(b) The most effective advantage of consumptivitiy lies in planning. This is due to the linearity and the simplicity of the mathematicalrelationships (the change in total consumptivity is a simple function of the changes in the partial consumptivities that are multiplied by the constant base period weights of input factors).( c) The developed two productivity diagnosis models are very helpful in the productivity management cycle. Based on the gotten diagnosis of productivity changes, the managementcan either asses the effectiveness of the actions that had been executed in the measurement period or select the most effective way for productivity improvement.(d) The Inputs Contribution Model [ICM] enables the management of the manufacturing company to precisely identify the area to which it should directs its efforts for improving productivity. Precision stems from two advantages.(i) First, it enables not only to identify the input factor which is the most contributing in the total-productivity change but also to identify which subcategory of that input factor is the most contributing. The management can go further to identify which element of subcategory of input factor is the most contributing to the total-productivity change.(ii) Second, all these steps of identification are based on quantitative measures, which are provided by the model.(e) The Engineering-Changes Diagnosis Model [ECDM] lS also very helpful in diagnosing the changes in the total productivity and the partial productivities of the direct main input factors by the engineering changes that had been introduced to the manufacturing system. By this model, the management of a manufacturing companycan determine the percents with which the total productivity and the partial productivities of labor, materials, achinery, and energy have been changed due to the modification of the product mix; the modification of the design of the products and / or of the process, processing materials of characteristics other than those specified by the design, the time in which the labor and / or the machines are idle, and / or the change of the performance of the man-machine system. This diagnosis is based on quantitative measures. The modification of the product mix and the modification of the proudct / process design are two of the characteristics of the flexible manufacturing systems. This is con-elated with the aspect of flexibility by which the proposed productivity system is titled.(f) The two diagnosis models represent a great part of this work’s contribution to the field of productivity management. Before these two models, diagnosis was relying on the normative group technique, which is mainly a subjective diagnosis technique. Productivity planning and improvement can be canied out on the basis of the quantitative analyses, which are provided by the two models.(g) The developed expert system is an effective tool by which the procedure that should be followed to diagnose the changes in both partial and total productivity is described.
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