The National Shipbuilding Research Program, 1991 Ship Production Symposium Proceedings: Paper No. IIA-2: Breaking the Chains of Tradition and Fantasy - A Revolutionary Approach to the Constraints on Productivity
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Published: 1991
Total Pages: 12
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DOWNLOAD EBOOKProductivity improvement is becoming an ever more crucial agenda item for the U.S. Shipbuilding Industry. Initiatives to improve productivity in U.S. shipyards have traditionally taken the form of piecemeal efforts to increase capability and capacity through technological upgrades of production methods, facilities, tooling, and machinery. In spite of the fact that those initiatives have been successful in eliminating many of the physical constraints of productivity, a broadening productivity with foreign competitors places U.S. shipbuilding in a noncompetitive position in the international commercial market. The continuing failure of technological initiatives to narrow the productivity gap does more than suggest that additional measures need to be taken. It strongly indicates the presence of productivity constraints which exist beyond the realm of technology. In fact, one of the most valuable opportunities currently available to U.S. shipbuilders may exist in the realization that many of the constraints limiting productivity in shipbuilding are actually self-imposed, arising from traditional management and organizational policies which run counter to the new and changing realities of modern industry.