Category Archives: Domestic Business

The Barcode’s Intelligent New Rival

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MARCH 24, 2014

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Thin film technology

In June 1974 history was made at a supermarket in Troy, Ohio, with a ten-pack of Wrigley’s Juicy Fruit chewing gum. It was the first time a commercial item bearing a Universal Product Code was scanned by a cashier at the checkout. Forty years on, the barcode has transformed the world of commerce by providing reliable product identification, tracking and pricing. Nearly everything now comes with a barcode.

As revolutionary as it was, the barcode has limited abilities, reports The Economist (March 8, 2014). It can impart only the information it was printed with and that can be read by an optical device. The next generation of labeling contains tiny printable electronics able to generate, store and share information. The technology behind “smart labels” is a flexible film of electronics that can be printed like a barcode. The memory circuits which can be used by smart labels to store information are printed as a film of ferroelectric polymer sandwiched between two electrodes. A tiny 20-bit memory label can store over 1 million combinations.

Yet another advancement is called Near Field Communication (NFC). This allows a user to tap an NFC tag with a portable device, like a smartphone, to send or receive data. NFC is a more sophisticated version of RFID and is already used by some contactless payment systems. By incorporating NFC, smart labels will be able to communicate wirelessly. Besides conveying product codes, applications include recording storage times and temperatures for perishable goods like food and pharmaceuticals. Smart labels might even be programmed to automatically discount their prices in response to marketing campaigns. To gain widespread use, smart labels will need to be cheap. Basic printed-memory labels can be produced for around 2 cents. Printed sensor-labels cost 50 cents, compared with $10 or more for a system using conventional microelectronics.

This post provided courtesy of Jay and Barry’s OM Blog at www.heizerrenderom.wordpress.com. Professors Jay Heizer and Barry Render are authors of Operations Management , the world’s top selling textbook in its field, published by Pearson.

 

Outsourcing Auto Workers at Nissan

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MARCH 23, 2014

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Nissan's truck line in Tennessee

Nissan, the first of many foreign automakers to set up shop in Tennessee, is leading a trend, writesThe Washington Post (March 9, 2014).Companies from Amazon to Asurion to Dell have outsourced their warehouses and call centers to the hundreds of staffing agencies that have cropped up in the region. Tennessee went from having 51,867 temporary workers in 2009 to 80,990 in 2012, while median wages have stayed flat. Temps make up 3.1% of all jobs in the state.

Tennessee holds its low unemployment rate up as a shining example of success in the global economy — the return of American manufacturing after decades of decline, and the future of work for those left jobless by globalization and technological change. Nissan was Tennessee’s first major investment by a foreign automaker, and has since attracted a constellation of suppliers that support thousands more jobs. Since the plant opened in 1983, the town of Smyrna has grown from 8,000 to 41,000. In the plant’s first 2 decades, getting a Nissan job was like winning the lottery.

But Nissan’s brush with bankruptcy in 2001 and a turnaround plan that involved new models and much lower production costs led to using temps into front-office functions. In 2007-2008, Nissan reduced its permanent workforce by 1/3. As demand returned, it started to backfill production jobs with contractors, too — first on the “pick line,” where workers run parts up to assembly, and then throughout the plant. Now a majority of its 7,000-person workforce is supplied by staffing agencies.

Many work for Yates Services, an in-house contractor that’s hired thousands of people over the past few years to ramp up production. Yates is like a company within a company, with separate bulletin boards, rules and procedures. The bona fide Nissan employees are easily recognizable through their logoed shirts, which Yates workers don’t receive. Yates pays between $10 and $18 an hour, which is about half what Nissan employees make. The gap in benefits is equally wide.

This post provided courtesy of Jay and Barry’s OM Blog at www.heizerrenderom.wordpress.com. Professors Jay Heizer and Barry Render are authors of Operations Management , the world’s top selling textbook in its field, published by Pearson.

 

Ford Touts Car Parts Made From Plants

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MARCH 17, 2014

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green auto partsIf you’re driving a new Ford, chances are you’re sitting on a seat filled with foam made from soybeans, reports the Orlando Sentinel (March 14, 2014).  It’s part of the push by many automakers to produce cars that are cleaner and greener. Plant-based materials that are used now or are in some phase of development by Ford include:

1. Fibers from coconut husks that can be included in sound-absorbing underlayment for carpet.

2. Wheat straw that is showing promise as reinforcement for plastics.

3. Latex extracted from dandelion roots to produce natural rubber, potentially replacing rubber from Asia or synthetic rubber made from petroleum.

“We are a group of research scientists developing these formulations and composites and looking at non-traditional materials and implementing them in our vehicles,” says a Ford engineer. The long list of automobile parts and pieces made traditionally from petroleum ingredients include cup holders, floor mats, engine O-rings and seals, dashboard trim and many more. A typical car is made with 100 kinds of plastic materials that weigh a combined 300 pounds, which includes 30 pounds of seat foam. Ford requires plant-based materials to perform as well as and cost no more than conventional products.

This post provided courtesy of Jay and Barry’s OM Blog at www.heizerrenderom.wordpress.com. Professors Jay Heizer and Barry Render are authors of Operations Management , the world’s top selling textbook in its field, published by Pearson.