摘要
In order to retain a certain level of production in Norway,suppliers to the Norwegian maritime industry need to lower their production costs.Automation is generally an effective way of achieving this in standardized high-volume,low variety production.However,manufacturing companies in the Norwegian maritime industry typically supply capital-intensive,advanced and customized products in low volumes.In this engineer-to-order production situation,manual labor is traditionally preferred over automation.Nonetheless,such companies increasingly automate parts of their production.This paper presents a case of a supplier that has chosen to automate its welding operations,the implications and determinants of this decision.
In order to retain a certain level of production in Norway,suppliers to the Norwegian maritime industry need to lower their production costs.Automation is generally an effective way of achieving this in standardized high-volume,low variety production.However,manufacturing companies in the Norwegian maritime industry typically supply capital-intensive,advanced and customized products in low volumes.In this engineer-to-order production situation,manual labor is traditionally preferred over automation.Nonetheless,such companies increasingly automate parts of their production.This paper presents a case of a supplier that has chosen to automate its welding operations,the implications and determinants of this decision.
基金
the projects Effective Production of Advanced Maritime Equipment(EFFEKT)
Sustainable multi-variant manufacturing in semi-process industry(MIX)
the SFI Norman(Norwegian Manufacturing Future) program supported by the Research Council of Norway
