Synchronous Innovation - The New Trend in Manufacturing Management

In this paper, we discuss a recent development in the area of manufacturing management-aptly called “Synchronous Innovation”. This is a strategy which calls for synchronous deployment of technological and administrative innovations during modernization programs in manufacturing organizations. The spectacular growth in organization worldwide adopting the New Manufacturing Technologies (NMTs) has led to a growing body of research on effective implementation of the NMTs. One after the other, NMTs such as Group Technology (GT), Just In Time (JIT), Flexible Manufacturing System (FMS), CAD/CAM, Computer Integrated Manufacturing (CIM), have grown in tremendous popularity in the past decade. One can safely predict that the nineties will see the drive towards new Manufacturing Revolution become much more vigorous, and widespread, with a growth many orders of magnitude higher than we witnessed in the previous decade. The foremost question that arises now is “how should the NMTs be effectively deployed?” An organization committing substantial investments for modernization is naturally concerned about effective deployment of the modernization program. This paper discusses the synchronous innovation strategy which has been advocated for this purpose. We look at a number of administrative innovations to make the modernization program a success by many leading organizations. We provide evidence by briefly reviewing a few case applications. Finally, we provide guidelines on implementation of synchronous innovation strategy. The individual references are too many to cite. However, a good compilation of these may be found in the book “Taking Charge of Manufacturing” by John Ettlie, Jossey Bass Publishers, USA (1988).