From Cellular Manufacturing to Bubble based Manufacturing

Its quite common to see the graduate students in IISc, IITs, sleeping in the labs/workplace, but workers of companies like Tesla, sleeping on the floor in the workplace is quite unheard of. In the ongoing curb due to Covid-19, in china companies have formed 'bubbles or closed loop system' in which everyone is required work, eat, sleep and repeat in the same place.

The idea of so called bubble system or closed loop system was first conceive two years back during Olympic in Japan. The players, coach, media persons and everyone related were required to be confined to be certain zones or bubbles. The success of the idea in the Olympic were lap up by the Chinese government and they made it mandatory to every industries to confine their workers in certain zones from several weeks to months to curb the spreading of virus.

The kaizen system of never ending improvement gave way to upside down changes in the pandemic. The last century industrial era started after the first world war the with statistical quality control(SQC) of Shewhart to great quality gurus like Juran, Deming giving philosophy of Total Quality Mamngement(TQM), and the companies like Toyota implementing it. And then adopted by other industries from automobile to drug manufacturing. The latest in quality philosophy is Six Sigma by Motorola which says that all products and processes must strive for perfection, But recently it has reached almost its limit as further improvement was becoming very challenging like Moore's law curve seems flattening in the semiconductor industries. Similarly cellular manufacturing/Group Technology and Flexible Manufacturing have become common place in many industries. Gradual inclusion of the robots in the flexible manufacturing system are the very common and then suddenly it added one more element: the worker on the shop floor!

The ongoing corona virus breakout in the Chengdu city of Sichuan Province, China has forced the companies like Automaker Volkswagen and Apple Largest assembler Foxconn to be confined its workers to virtual bubble. Imagine your I-pad maker is eating sleeping and working in the factory itself!

Some of the Chinese industrial hub:Shenzhen, Dongguan and Changchun, Chengdu, have converted into virtual isolated bubbles of world top industries from Automakers like Tesla, Toyoya, Volkswagen, Volvo to Apple product supplier, Foxconn and world biggest Battery supplier of electric vehicle: CATL.

From these unexpected changing layout of the industries few things can be predicted: the use of robots in the industries will more than predicted anywhere in the literature and as the predicted curve like Moore's law is flattening, industrial growth will take unpredictable trajectory.

References:

1.Liker, Jeffrey K. The Toyota Way : 14 Management Principles from the World's Greatest Manufacturer. New York :McGraw-Hill, 2004.

Shen Y, Huo D, Yu T, Wang Q. Bubble Strategy - A Practical Solution to Return to Regular Life in the Intertwined Era of Vaccine Rollouts and Virus Mutation. China CDC Wkly. 2022 Jan 28;4(4):71-73. doi: 10.46234/ccdcw2022.014. PMID: 35186371; PMCID: PMC8837440.