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    Production Methods Worksheet1

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    manasvi ganiga
    BMW retained the Mini brand after acquiring Rover in 1994. Production of the new Mini model was moved in 2001 to the Cowley plant in Oxford, where BMW spent £230 million upgrading facilities. The plant now produces over 210,000 vehicles per year, but BMW wants to increase output further. BMW changed Cowley's production approach from traditional flow production to team-based cell production. Workers were organized into self-managing teams of 8-15 people with responsibility for targets and some decision making power. This new structure aimed to increase worker investment in the business compared to the previous hierarchical system.

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    Production Methods Worksheet1

    Uploaded by

    manasvi ganiga
    6 views1 page
    BMW retained the Mini brand after acquiring Rover in 1994. Production of the new Mini model was moved in 2001 to the Cowley plant in Oxford, where BMW spent £230 million upgrading facilities. The plant now produces over 210,000 vehicles per year, but BMW wants to increase output further. BMW changed Cowley's production approach from traditional flow production to team-based cell production. Workers were organized into self-managing teams of 8-15 people with responsibility for targets and some decision making power. This new structure aimed to increase worker investment in the business compared to the previous hierarchical system.

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    BM Practice worksheet

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    Production_Methods_worksheet1

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    BMW retained the Mini brand after acquiring Rover in 1994. Production of the new Mini model was moved in 2001 to the Cowley plant in Oxford, where BMW spent £230 million upgrading facilities. The plant now produces over 210,000 vehicles per year, but BMW wants to increase output further. BMW changed Cowley's production approach from traditional flow production to team-based cell production. Workers were organized into self-managing teams of 8-15 people with responsibility for targets and some decision making power. This new structure aimed to increase worker investment in the business compared to the previous hierarchical system.

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Flag for inappropriate content
    Download as docx, pdf, or txt
    6 views1 page

    Production Methods Worksheet1

    Uploaded by

    manasvi ganiga
    BMW retained the Mini brand after acquiring Rover in 1994. Production of the new Mini model was moved in 2001 to the Cowley plant in Oxford, where BMW spent £230 million upgrading facilities. The plant now produces over 210,000 vehicles per year, but BMW wants to increase output further. BMW changed Cowley's production approach from traditional flow production to team-based cell production. Workers were organized into self-managing teams of 8-15 people with responsibility for targets and some decision making power. This new structure aimed to increase worker investment in the business compared to the previous hierarchical system.

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    © All Rights Reserved
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    of 1

    PRODUCTION AT BMW

    The Mini was one of the few parts of the former Rover group to be retained by BMW following its

    takeover in 1994. The Mini was seen as a valuable brand by BMW and it continued to develop

    it with the introduction of a new model in 2001. Production of the car was transferred to the Cowley

    plant in Oxford and the company spent 230 million on improvements to production facilities. The

    plant currently produces over 210 000 vehicles a year, but BMW is keen to increase this further.

    BMW changed the culture of the organisation by introducing a new system of working at Cowley. It

    moved away from traditional flow production to a team-based approach. The workforce

    was reorganised into self-managing teams or cells of between eight and 15 people. The teams can

    make production decisions and have job rotation schemes. Responsibility for achieving plantwide

    targets are now in the hands of those teams. Each team has more of a stake in the way the business

    develops rather than a hierarchical system where workers feel alienated from decision-making,

    stifling initiative and leading to a dependency culture. The organisation also introduced fortnightly

    team talks where plans, decisions, suggestions and points of view could be aired.

    25 marks, 45 minutes

    1 Define the following terms:

    a) flow production

    b) job rotation. [4]

    2 Analyse two disadvantages BMW may have encountered using flow production. [6]

    3 Explain the characteristics of cell production. [6]

    4 Discuss the advantages and disadvantages to BMW of switching

    from flow production to cell production. [9]

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