Book Description

The central theme of this thesis is that desired business results are the direct result of the system design (Cochran, et. al, April 2002). It is also theorized that the thinking' within an organization creates the organization's structure' or design, which then drives the system's behavior' (Cochran, et. al, April 2002). It is concluded that the behavior, actions, performance, quality, cost, culture and classifications describing systems as either mass' or lean' are solely the results of the system's design or structure. Achievement of enduring change in a system's performance must begin with a change in the thinking of all the people in the enterprise, but especially that of leadership. In the absence of such a change in the thinking, the needed structural change within the system will be short-lived, only resulting in localized optimization of sub-systems versus systemic improvement. Two types of thinking, mass thinking' and system thinking, ' are defined and analyzed with respect to their structure and resulting behavior. The unit cost equation exemplifies the structure within mass systems resulting in business results being more unpredictable. Axiomatic design is presented as the way of structuring or design methodology to best reflect, understand and control the complexity inherent in the design of large-scale integrated systems. System stability is identified as the desired objective of system design. The Product Delivery System (PDS) is applied in a case study comparing the before' and after' state of the redesign of a manufacturing cell. Direct correlation is identified between achievement of PDS requirements and improved system performance. Research based on the logical system design as defined by the PDS also was used to develop and apply an investment and resource allocation methodology to support manufacturing system design implementation. The methodology is a new approach that can be used by a company with constrained investment.