Reengineering of a Small Assembly-to-Order Manufacturer: A Case Study

Traditionally, small manufacturing firms find difficulties in fully comprehending and implementing modern production planning techniques. The main reason for this is often not the complexity of the techniques, but the firms’ difficulty in adapting an existing production process to a modern planning technique. On the other hand, the ability of a manufacturer to adapt is vital for its survival in a very competitive environment. This paper investigates how principles of MRP and JIT systems can be applied in small assembly-to-order firms with a basic production planning and control policy using as a real world test case a Greek manufacturer of bathroom furniture. We first describe the limitations of the existing production practice and then propose the adoption of a hybrid JIT/MRP production planning and control system. The positive impact of the proposed production environment is verified through discrete-event simulation. The first preliminary results from the implementation of the proposed policy are very positive