ABSTRACT
Increasingly, manufacturing companies are introducing organisation-wide changes in order to compete in terms of cost, quality, responsiveness to customers and lead-time (e.g. Lawler, 1982). Originally, the focus was on adopting new programmable technology (i.e. Advanced Manufacturing Technology, AMT) to manufacture customised products at close to mass production cost. This has now been extended to include the introduction of new production practices associated with the visibly-successful Japanese companies, such as Just-in-time (JIT), Total Quality Management (TQM) and Productbased manufacture. These practices, including AMT, are collectively referred to as ‘Integrated Manufacturing’ because they have in common the potential to eliminate barriers between different facets of manufacturing and thus allow more flexible production (Dean & Snell, 1991).
