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OCTOBER 2023 I SMT007 MAGAZINE 45 What Are the Trade-offs? is flexibility has come with significant (and mostly hidden) costs. ough the final produc- tion line works smoothly, the pain and cost of variation is passed upstream to suppliers, who receive a high variation in demand, together with the need for perfection in quality, as well as just-in-time delivery. Suppliers, in turn, had difficulties with their suppliers to whom they could not commit to an accurate demand fore- cast for materials or components. Supply-net- work issues and increased risk, as compared to other industries, quickly became very damaging, as we saw with post-COVID supply network issues. Another symptom in this accumulation of prob- lems, particularly in the car industry (even pre- COVID) was the lead- time from the date an order was placed to when it was delivered. Some- times it was even a half- year before the order was fulfilled, which deterred many customers. At the same time, more basic "filler" specifications were inserted into the schedule to keep the line running, which could be sold through dealers or online third parties. We have seen bizarre inventory holding prac- tices, with unsold cars kept in fields because they required significant discounts to resolve. ese costs and losses mean an extreme amount of waste. e economies of Henry Ford's mass production only worked because he was the first. is evolution of endemic waste has led the industry toward the next industrial revolution—Industry 4.0—which for most of manufacturing remains an enigma. is is partly because Industry 4.0 takes us backward, rather than forward. Before Henry, products were made to order, tailored to a cus- tomer's requirements. For much of manufac- turing, the market has either reverted to this or is on the way there. e throwaway culture is being replaced, whether we like it or not, with one based on value and sustainability. Manu- facturing, therefore, must come up with a new take on this old challenge. We have quite sophisticated technologies at our disposal that were not available in Henry's time. From the hardware perspective, automa- tion is now quite adaptable and, based on its programming, able to handle varied require- ments. Such program data, as well as instruc- tions for manual assembly, can be tailored to each production lot. Simply by reading the incoming production unit ID, the appropri- ate set of instructions for setup and assembly are presented, which may even be bespoke to each individual article. e role of the mod- ern MES is to ensure that the individuality of each operation is auto- matically managed and executed, with full visi- bility of progress, com- pletion, and material management. For many, the instinct is to shy away from this principle. Lean cell production, for exam- ple, though it has proven successful at match- ing the effective levels of mass production, is considered rather too extreme because of the complexity of stations and operator training for most manufacturing applications. e state of the art has become the idea that real-world manufacturing can neither be supported by a mass production derived model, nor by Lean cell production. Both approaches represent ideals in which the business must compromise. Positive contributions to the business from sales, marketing, and the distribution network have always trumped priorities from the man- ufacturing floor, which has been expected sim- ply to be the engine in which products are The economies of Henry Ford's mass production only worked because he was the first.