Industrial reactivity

The reactivity consists in of the capacity of an entity answering quickly the requests of its environment.

Definition of the reactivity in industry

Definition of industry

As surprising as it can appear, to define what is industry is already to approach the concept of reactivity. As notes it James Teboul in the time of the services , “the border between sectors defined as Agriculture, industry and service S tends to disappear”. With the beginning of the year 2000, that seems perhaps obvious, especially in the rich countries where the service, constituting the part of the production which is in direct contact with the customer, takes importance more and more.

If the difference grows blurred between a tomato producer having six hectares of Serre S, a company of Transport, a restaurant, a hospital, it is undoubtedly because they all are confronted with the same kinds of problems of management, of Management, must with the quick change of the characteristics of their “products” because of the change of the needs for the customers, of the aggressiveness of competition, and the ceaseless Innovation applied to the level of their resources of production.

Thus, rather than to seek to define the Industry starting from precise criteria, it seems more “flexible” to be satisfied to include under this term any organized activity intended to durably produce (perennial activity) goods and commercial services, implementing human means, machines and financial means, with a lucrative aim.

While still simplifying, industry relates to all the Entreprise S, the all small companies being able one day to become very large companies, of which nobody will discuss the industrial character. (Microsoft, Apple, Michelin, Renault, Pinault, Sodexo etc)

Definition of the reactivity

A undertaken reactivates is a company which quickly reacts to the needs for its customer S.

The flexibility is often confused with the reactivity and the agility . Until the years 1990 flexibility was in fact synonymous with reactivity, the flexible Manufacturing system (of machining in particular) having taken part to generalize, a little wrongly, the use of the term. Around the years 2000, flexibility generally indicates, also in a reducing way, the flexibility of the resources humaimes.

The agility of the production, in English lean manufacturing , defines the capacity of a company to be adapted quickly to its environment. It is not only or only flexible device, it is overall reconfigurable, and that quickly. The agility takes into account the capacity to be called into question on nature of the products, and regards the lifespan of the products as principal factor of its organization and of the definition of its means of production (life cycle).

Christian Hohmann, one will be able to consider that “ according to his " environnement" , a company must adapt its organization and its answer ”, and to define by a table which is the answer adapted according to two criteria:

the life cycle of the products,
the degree of foreseeability of the request.

The agility is adapted to short life cycles and to an unforeseeable request, the reactivity is adapted to an unforeseeable request and long life cycles, or has requests not easily foreseeable and with short life cycles etc

If the border appears clear on a two-dimensional board, it is it less actually, where a simple reactivity must brutally be transformed into agility.

One will be able to also consider, like Francoise Dauty and Francoise Larré, that “ the reactivity falls under an economic context (...) the reaction speed to the variations of the environment becomes paramount vis-a-vis the exacerbation of the Concurrence and with the increased personalization of the products and services ”

It is thus delicate to define exactly what is the reactivity, more especially as the uses correspond to modes. To try to summarize, one can say that a company or a reactive organization is equipped with average flexible devices which, if they are rather light, enable him to be nimble.

Objectives of the industrial reactivity

The reactivity particularly relates to the industrial companies whose process is discontinuous, where the development of a product is done by stages, and who sell several products implementing common resources. A company mono-product, where manufacture could be regarded as a single pipe (continuous process or process ), where one introduces matter with an end, with some contributions at some places of the pipe, does not need to be reactive. It must have to think of its next produced, and to show sagacity, with the limit of agility, to determine its evolution. The companies which are not industrial, which does not have any production equipment, are not concerned either with the reactivity. They have to show commercial agility. But a warehouse of storage, preparing orders for customers, has problems similar to a company building of the back-digging shovels, the washing machines or the printed circuits:

to be able in the intended deadlines to deliver
the product ordered (in necessary quantity and quality)
to the cost envisaged (without mobilizing more internal or external resources)
without harming the other orders
without slowing down the evolution of the products (in definition, quantity, quality)
without slowing down the evolution of the performances (times, quantities, quality, costs)

The final objective is obviously the perpetuation of the financial Rentabilité. Therefore, reactive being, it is to be able to react quickly to the requests of its environment, while respecting the economic objective. If the final objective were different, it would undoubtedly be necessary to re-examine the methods and the tools. But these considerations leave the framework of the industrial reactivity. (see Political Strategy, , Altermondialisme)

Means implemented

Disturbing elements

The means to implement depend on the “disturbing” elements. We saw higher than the environment included/understood:

the customers (with her needs)
the Competition (with its products)
the Resource S external of production
financial resources

We can add to it:

suppliers of raw materials and component
suppliers of technology (patents for example)

Without forgetting an important component:

information (Technological survey, strategic Day before, market research etc)

To be reactive, it is thus to react quickly to all the events generated by these external actors, in order to satisfy the financial Productivité as well as possible. And this reaction will thus stick to satisfy the customers and the shareholders. These events, many, can be summarized and classified multiple ways. These events are them-even initiated by the great upheavals which influenced the industrial evolution since the years 1970, like the increase in the cost of energy, the opening to the economy of market of the Eastern European countries of Europe and Asia, the autonomous development of the countries of the south, the development of the communication of information (Média).

Disturbing events

Concerning the reactivity, it is useful to consider the event which causes the installation of method S of Organization, of means of production, commercial methods, tools of Recherche and development adapted to the speed of reaction, which reduce the Response time.

increase in the number of families of products (new needs)
diversification of the products in each family (personalization of the use of the products)
increase in the number of competitors (real or apparent)
technological change fast (in all technologies)
change in the mentalities of the Consuming S, the customers (level of education, fickleness, impulsiveness, reserves, passions, beliefs, manners etc)
acceleration of the means of communication of information (Internet)
diversification of the offer in resources (equipment, personnel, localization of the production sites)
etc

The list is not exhaustive, but is enough to explain that the disturbances come mainly

from the reduction of the lifespan of the products,
of the diversity of the products,
of the irregularity of the sales, little foreseeability,
of the evolutionarity of the offer in resources (in definition, cost, localization)

The answer to the disturbing events: levers of reactivity

The answer to these disturbances consists in obtaining means allowing

the Innovation in products (produced and services attached),
the development of the contact with the customers, (integration of the customers to the production process)
the implementation of adaptive resources of production (i.e. easily adaptable to the offer and compatible with the innovation on the products and the integration of the customers).

This formulation of the means of the reactivity is an active presentation, whose equivalent formulation in passive mode is: “to obtain average flexible devices allowing to reduce the time of marketing, and the delivery periods”.

Always with least the Cost, costs being able to be regarded as belonging to the definition of the product.

One will be able for example to qualify these three main roads of average reagents of levers of reactivity. But they are only words. How to make them function?

The practical application or the handling of the levers

Pragmatism: continuity or rupture?

It is advisable to point out here certain great principles quoted by Christian Hohmann and Gisele Mendy in April 2006, on the Production with pull systems in a supply chain, improvement of the synchronization of the production on a supply chain .

Diagram 4 represents the successive stages of the production process of the “case has” this study. The supplier of painted parts has sufficient means in capacity, i.e. the automobile assembly line which it supplies advance at a rate lower than 54 parts every 90 minutes. It however creates ruptures in the provisioning of this chain although laying out of a stock of parts painted of 2 times 18 parts in each color. Although having forecasts of sales and firm controls over several days of production, this supplier works in call by the downstream, in Kanban. The defects of quality were introduced into the data of a simulation which shows that it can reduce its stock of parts painted to 1 time 18 parts of each color (division of stock by 2) without never putting its customer in rupture, on the condition of knowing the encyclage 9 or 10 90 minutes cycles in advance. The production is encyclée, i.e. the parts are delivered to the final assembly line of the cars in the order decided by manufacturer (a red car, green, white, etc). This order is itself given to smooth the workload of each station of assembly of the chain according to the alternatives of models of the ordered vehicles (by customers or for stock). Simulations determine in fact that mini stock is with not-quality, knowing that for perfect quality (not reject or of final improvement) it suffices to know the production 7 times 90 minutes in advance (anticipation or firm control) to deliver within the deadlines. (Cycle of 90 minutes painting, cycles encyclage orders 90 minutes, 14 colors, 3 simultaneous colors with the maximum). The point of penetration of the orders must thus be before the painting and not on the level of the stock of painted parts, more especially as the orders are known!

This example illustrates some key points well.

the reactivity is a question of good choice. Implementation the inopportune of a kanban thus proves sometimes catastrophic, because useless and harmful with the tension of the flow of products.
the blind reactivity, like the flexibility of principle, does not benefit the final customer. As we will see it in the following example, 35% of the cars (at the beginning of years 2000) are manufactured on order. Thus 65% of the production “are encyclée” for stock, this encyclage being intended mainly for productivity gains intended to reduce the cost of the vehicle.
information must be exploited as soon as possible, here the order taking. It is not only the storekeeper who must exploit it (for the livaisons), but also the person who schedules the production (to choose the colors to be painted).
the good time is not inevitably the zero-time.
flow is drawn upstream from the point of penetration of the orders, it is forced downstream.
the constraints of storage due to the obstruction, the diversity and the cost of the products, coupled in the searches of direct productivity often determine the deadlines, therefore the reactivity of a company.
Plus one can make upstream go up the point of penetration of order, more one is reactive. (production with has order)
Plus one is obliged to make reassemble the PC less one is reactive. (production on forecasts)

Real case: reactivity of the distribution in auto industry

To be able to produce with the order affects the organization and the means of production. But that affects also the distribution network, the dealers. All is not so simple. This study of Noémie Behr, concerning the matching watch well practical limits of the industrial reactivity.

“To sell a car would ideally require to propose to the consumer the vehicle which, within a varied range, maximizes its utility and makes it possible to the manufacturer to capture all his assent to be paid. We call matching this process of meeting, that the manufacturer organizes within his distribution network. ”

Distribution network

The study of Noémie Behr shows that the passage of the sale on stock to the production with the order modifies the trade of the dealers and its relations with the manufacturer. The incentive and handing-over, tariffing system is called into question, the dealer becoming an interface of matching intended to sell closest to the price which the consumer agree to pay.

By simplifying the dealer would apply a tariffing system depending even more on the industrial constraints, therefore leaving him less autonomy to the way of carrying out its objectives and its margins. (The tests carried out on sales by the Web for the moment appeared nonprofitable for the “virtual” dealers.)

Logistic of transport for the deliveries

One can easily imagine that the reactivity of the supply chain, once the production equipment was flexibilisé (Juste-with-time, SMED, 5S, etc) and that the dealers joined with new methods of sale, remains dependant on transport of the products towards the customers.

Results obtained

The results obtained by the implementation of the means necessary to a good reactivity vary according to the Entreprise S. Like blanks above, the basic principles utilize logics of distribution of the responsibilities where the actors of decision makings are sometimes only partners of those which support the consequences of them, the subcontractors.
The results and their appreciation thus varies also according to the way in which a company is positioned in the line production which binds it by the supply chain to the principal clients.

Prospects

The industrial reactivity is synomnyme of fast capacity of reaction. The multiplication of the offer in products or components or Labor supported subcontracting and the Externalisation, the centring on the core activity in order to minimize the investments out of equipment and the salary costs. Certain companies seem to regret their policy of the years 1990 to return to a vertical Intégration. For example Dell and General Motors, which, as Daniel Gross quotes them, “… was Masters of their chain of world provisioning, was transformed into impotent victims, taken out of vice between worldwide markets and customers from now on accustomed to the cheap products ”.
The resumption in hand of the quality of know-how proves to be necessary to avoid, for example, the return of 4,1 million batteries of portables which could ignite. (Always according to Daniel Gross.)
The industrial reactivity it is also to know to react to this kind of problem.

References and bibliography

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