Quick response manufacturing (QRM) is an approach to manufacturing which emphasizes the beneficial effect of reducing internal and external lead times.
Description Shorter lead times improve quality, reduce cost and eliminate non-value-added waste within the organization while simultaneously increasing the organization's competitiveness and market share by serving customers better and faster. The time-based framework of QRM accommodates strategic variability such as offering custom-engineered products while eliminating dysfunctional variability such as rework and changing due dates. For this reason, companies making products in low or varying volumes have used QRM as an alternative or to complement other strategies such as Lean Manufacturing, Total quality management, Six Sigma or Kaizen. However, the benefits of QRM are still mooted and contested by experts around. Many opposers of QRM criticize its approach being very "marketing-style" rather than academic or statistical.
History
Background QRM is rooted in the concept of Time-based competition (TBC) pioneered by Japanese enterprises in the 1980s and first formulated by George Stalk Jr. in his 1988 article entitled Time – The Next Source of Competitive Advantage. Time-based competition is a broad-based competitive strategy emphasizing time as the major factor for achieving and maintaining a sustainable competitive advantage. It seeks to compress the time required to propose, develop, manufacture, market and deliver products. QRM advocates a companywide focus on short lead times that include quick response to demand for existing products as well as new product and design changes. This combination has led to the implementation of QRM in many high-mix, low-volume companies. Some argue that Quick Response Manufacturing differs from Quick Response (QR) methods used in the apparel industry and the fast fashion market. QRM is a companywide management strategy applicable to a wide variety of businesses, whereas QR primarily stands for a specific business model in a particular industry. However, the important difference to note is that QR was a competitive industry initiative introduced in the US Textile Industry in 1984 as a means of improving efficiencies in manufacturing and supply chain processes and as such was one of the earliest pioneers of putting into practice time-based competition prior to Stalk's seminal article. Thus QR crossed the traditional boundaries of organization and was not limited to a single organizational efficiency improvement such as that advocated by proponents of QRM. In this respect the Textile Industry initiative was innovative and visionary in its application of QR techniques across the supply chain.
Development The concept of Quick Response Manufacturing (QRM) was first developed in the late 1980s by Rajan Suri, at the time professor of Industrial and Systems Engineering at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Combining growing academic research in Time-based Competition (TBC) with his own observations from various lead time reduction projects, Suri conceived QRM as a concept espousing a relentless emphasis on lead time reduction that has a long-term impact on every aspect of the company. In 1993, Suri, along with a few U.S. Midwest companies and academic colleagues at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, launched the Center for Quick Response Manufacturing, a consortium dedicated to the development and implementation of QRM principles in an industry setting. Proposed by Suri, the newly coined term "Quick Response Manufacturing" (QRM) signifies the new strategy. QRM extends basic principles of time-based competition while including these new aspects:
Singular focus on lead time reduction Focus on manufacturing enterprises Clarification of the misunderstanding and misconceptions managers have about how to apply time-based strategies Companywide approach reaching beyond shop floor to other areas such as office operations and the supply chain Use of cellular organization structure throughout the business with more holistic and flexible cells Inclusion of basic principles of systems dynamics to provide insight on how to best reorganize an enterprise to achieve quick response New material planning and control approach (POLCA) Specific QRM principles on how to rethink manufacturing process and equipment decisions Novel performance measure Focus on implementation and sustainability Manufacturing Critical-path Time (MCT) metric to measure lead times Suri's continued research into QRM through industry projects along with enthusiastic responses to various articles on lead time reduction issues led him to develop a comprehensive theory on implementing speed in a manufacturing company, covering all areas in the enterprise. He formulated his theory in the book Quick Response Manufacturing: A Companywide Approach to Reducing Lead Times (1998), providing a framework for the implementation of QRM in manufacturing companies.
QRM Strategies and Tools
Lead time as a management strategy Traditionally, U.S. manufacturing firms have focused on scale and cost management strategies based on the division of labor practices formalized by Frederick Winslow Taylor and pioneered by Henry Ford. From the time-based perspective of QRM, the high degree of labor specialization and hierarchical department structures at purely cost-based organizations have these negative effects on lead times:
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