Modular Production System

The modular system was first implemented at company Toyota in 1978 as part of JIT, and was known in the 1980s in the West as the Toyota Sewing System. Monden  in 1998 gave this system a U-turn layout and claimed that the main advantage of that system was that the amount produced can easily be arranged by changing the number of operators working in the system. The modular system works on the principle of pull-type production systems, in which the job order comes from the last step to previous steps. Because of this, the amount of work in process is low, even working when no inventory is possible.

The Modular Production System is expressed with team performance (up to ten people, then it should not be the leader and 20 machines) that allows adjustment of frequent changes design of clothes, models, small and medium size work order and frequent changes of the order of technological operations. Application of this system leads to reduced workers sickness, to increase production and quality and reduce downtime in production. Such a system would allow a faster flow of materials rational use of the existing machine, increased productivity and quality in small batches and allowed industrial production to measure (Made to measure).

Seamstresses in modules are compensated with a group piece rate—the team receives a piece rate for the entire garment as opposed to a piece rate for each operation.  The team’s net receipts are divided equally. Group piece rates for modules have two additional differences from individual piece rates.  First, each worker on the floor must unbundle and bundle the stack of garments when it arrives and leaves the workstation. Bundling and unbundling time accounts on average for five percent of the standard time for sewing an entire garment and is included in the PBS standard.  The standard for an entire garment is five percentage points lower for modules because of the elimination of intermediate unbundling and bundling steps, which means that teams should be able to increase garment production by 5%, ceteris paribus.  However, worker productivity of PBS and module production is measured in comparison to standard minutes, not garments, meaning that worker productivity measures for each are directly comparable. Second, whereas floor workers receive variance wages averaging approximately 10% to 12 % of standard, module team-members receive no such variance wages.  Instead, team-members receive piece-rate wages approximately 11% above the module-adjusted standard, which provides a small increase in incentive intensity. Quality, which the plant manager stated was at least as good and perhaps better than quality provided by PBS production, is monitored upon completion of the garment using same inspection method found in PBS production. 

Team members claimed that the biggest difficulty of module production is that workers hold a “variety of attitudes”, which can lead to “communication problems and misunderstandings”. The manager added that workers were more aggressive than management at disciplining team-members.