The furniture industry has played an important role in the history of the United States as a bellwether for manufacturing. This sector continues to be a major manufacturing employer in the US and around the world through its utilization of a global production network. Types of furniture range from household (indoor and outdoor) to institutional, with particular growth in firms supplying medical and government related commodities. The industry is highly responsive to economic and fashion trends, but is partitioned into high, medium and low cost segments that reveal different locational and market responses to changes in these factors. Recent developments indicate that the post-1980's migration of furniture manufacturing to offshore, low labor cost countries has stabilized and shows signs of re-shoring in the US for high end customized technologically intensive products utilizing the remaining embedded skilled labor and locally clustered industry components. Businesses that survived the recessionary 'creative destruction' largely adopted lean manufacturing processes and took advantage of newly available, lower cost equipment and buildings to upgrade their production practices, absorbing market from former competitors. New partnerships will be traced with branches and headquarter relocations in Asia, along with cooperative supplier relationships with former U.S. and new foreign companies. Industry survivors adopted practices that could be highly instructive for other manufacturers challenged by globalization to grow stronger by increasing their adaptive capacity. Concepts illustrated in the furniture industry would be useful to a number of audiences in academic, industry and public policy markets. The proposed book provides an overview of the industry and its global production network including a brief overview of the manufacturing technologies of each sector. Assessment of new competitors in Asia and South America will illustrate opportunities and challenges in these locations. The book culminates by considering challenges, opportunities, and the future outlook of the industry in regional clusters.

Doing business in China is tougher than you think. Not only is the culture vastly different, but China's experience in manufacturing is still developing. It will be a few years before the majority of manufacturers are up to world standards. In the meantime, quality, contract laws, schedules and logistics must be closely monitored. As a result, the things Westerners must do to be successful are far different from dealing with American or European manufacturers. The best way to quickly come up to speed on these differences and how to handle them is to learn from the experience of others.

Through over 20 extraordinary executive interviews, Rosemary Coates captured the essence of sourcing and manufacturing in China. '42 Rules for Sourcing and Manufacturing in China (2nd Edition)' is a pragmatic approach that every businessperson headed to China must read.

For business people who are experienced in doing business in China, or for first-time visitors, this book will provide valuable insights from real executives and experts. These executives offer their personal experiences and recommendations about sourcing and manufacturing in China. Going beyond simple cultural do's and don'ts, you will discover: how business is really done how you can make things happen in China the mistake westerners often make, and how to avoid them what made these executives successful

Based on her 25 years of supply chain experience, much of it spent living and working across Asia, Rosemary Coates has become an expert on doing business in China. Her own personal experiences in China are interwoven into this book.

The toy industry is one of the most consistently misunderstood sectors of American business. Thats no surprise because on many levels it resists easy definition. Its a commodity business. No, its a fashion business. No, its a consumer products business. No, its an entertainment business. The fact is its all of these businesses, each of which addresses and responds to market forces differently. And often, especially with the larger, publicly traded companies all of these businesses share a balance sheet. This book will provide a concise and in-depth introduction to the structure, practices and market forces that impact the toy industry. It will offer a short history of the industry, a description of the current market landscape, major and emerging industry competitors, contemporary trends, changes and expectations for the future. It will further cover aspects of retailing, consumer behavior, and financial markets as they relate to the industry. As noted, the book will focus primarily on the U.S. toy industry, but will provide guidelines for extrapolating the information to the global toy market and a highlight of those issues, such as manufacturing, that are relatively consistent worldwide. The book is intended to provide a foundation for understanding the diverse and changing nature of the toy industry and to help readers develop a context for appreciating it relevant to other, more predictable and definable industries. Many studentsaEURO"and professionals for that matteraEURO"come to the toy industry ill equipped for success because they are unable to understand the various disciplines and business practices it encompasses and therefore unable to apply those practices appropriately for the product or product category. A preschool toy will never behave like a toy from a hot movie. Its something many successful people in the business know and have learned over time, but it remains a mystery to the uninitiated. Withal this book is intended as an initiation into a fascinating, fast-paced and fiercely competitive business that is very often more an art than a science.

This book argues that light manufacturing is appropriate for a resource-based country like Zambia. While Zambia's recent growth has been impressive, it has not been accompanied with adequate job creation. Long-term job creation in copper production is very small; links to the rest of the economy tend to be weak as well. Besides, the development of natural resources tends to discourage job-creating sectors such as manufacturing. To be sustainable and to create productive employment for its people, growth needs to be accompanied by structural transformation. Such transformation entails a growing share of manufacturing output in the economy. In the past, Zambia's efforts to promote and facilitate industrial growth have not been very successful. Policy regimes swung from one extreme to another. In the 1980s, Zambia put complete control of the industrial sector in the hands of the state. When this model proved unsuccessful, policy shifted in the opposite direction in the 1990s, and all earlier government interventions were lifted. Neither extreme led to sustained growth of manufacturing. This book suggests an alternative: directing government policies toward removing constraints in a few of the most promising light manufacturing sectors using practical and innovative solutions inspired by the fast-growing Asian economies whose starting point 20 years ago was not very different from Zambia's today. This book has several innovative features. First, it provides in-depth cost comparisons between Zambia and four other countries in Asia and Africa at sector and product levels. Second, the book uses a wide array of quantitative and qualitative techniques to identify key constraints to enterprises and to evaluate differences in the performance of firms across countries. Third, it uses a focused approach to identify country- and industry- specific constraints. It proposes market based measures and selected government intervention to ease these constraints. Fourth, it highlights the interconnectedness of constraints and solutions. For example, solving the manufacturing input problem requires actions in agriculture, education, and infrastructure. The book shows that Zambia has the potential to become regionally competitive in several light manufacturing subsectors by leveraging its comparative advantage in natural resource industries such as agriculture, livestock, and forestry. Interventions include both the provision of public goods and the removal of existing policy distortions in the economy. Growing production of light manufacturing goods would allow Zambia to capture more value from its raw materials and create more jobs.

This book examines how light manufacturing can offer a viable solution for Sub-Saharan Africa s need for structural transformation and productive job creation, given its potential competitiveness based on low wage costs and an abundance of natural resources that supply raw materials needed for industries. Based on five different analytical tools and data sources, the book examines in detail the binding constraints in each of the subsectors relevant for Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA): apparel, leather goods, metal products, agribusiness, and wood products. Ethiopia is used as an example, with Vietnam as a comparator and China as a benchmark, and with insights from Tanzania and Zambia used to draw out lessons more broadly for SSA. The book recommends a program of focused policies to exploit Africa s latent comparative advantage in a particular group of light manufacturing industries especially leather goods, garments, and agricultural processing. These industries hold the prospect of initiating rapid, substantial, and potentially self-propelling waves of rising output, employment, productivity, and exports that can push countries like Ethiopia on a path of structural change of the sort recently achieved in both China and Vietnam. The timing for these initiatives is very appropriate as China s comparative advantage in these areas is diminishing due to steep cost increases associated with rising wages and non-wage labor costs, escalating land prices, and mounting regulatory costs. Five features of this book distinguish it from previous studies. First, the detailed work on light manufacturing at the subsector and product levels in five countries provide in-depth cost comparisons between Asia and Africa that can be used as a framework for future studies. Second, the book uses a wide array of quantitative and qualitative techniques to identify key constraints to enterprises and to evaluate firm performance differences across countries. Third, the findings that firm constraints vary by country, sector, and firm size led to a focused approach to identifying constraints and combining market-based measures and select government intervention to remove them. Fourth, the solution to light manufacturing problems cuts across many sectors: solving the manufacturing inputs problem requires solving specific issues in agriculture, education, and infrastructure. African countries cannot afford to wait until all the problems across sectors are resolved. Fifth, the book draws on experiences and solutions from other developing countries to inform its recommendations. This book will be very valuable to African policy makers, professional economists, and anyone interested in the economic development, industrialization, and structural transformation of developing countries."

Sewing Success? Employment, Wages, and Poverty following the End of the Multi-Fibre Arrangement (MFA) analyzes the impact of the 2004 MFA phaseout on key social indicators in major apparel-exporting developing countries. This study provides important policy insights on how to maximize the poverty-reduction potential of the apparel industry in a post-MFA environment: The significant post-MFA reallocation of production across countries did not necessarily match predictions. Wage differences explain some of the production shifts, but domestic policies targeting the apparel industry, ownership type, and functional upgrading of the industry also played important roles. Using exports as a metric of success in terms of reducing poverty is insufficient. Falling exports usually meant a loss of opportunities for low-income workers, but rising exports did not always benefit poor workers. Rising global competition may induce a shift toward higher-value production and services that are often less labor- and female-intensive. Post-MFA apparel workers experienced changes in both short- and long-run wage components as well as employment. It is important to understand these different determinants of poverty. Countries that actively promoted industry upgrading or established a niche position experienced larger increases in exports. Since upgrading does not always correspond to increases in employment or wages, it is also crucial to develop worker skills and improve working conditions. In short, export and economic growth alone are not enough; the composition of growth also matters. Poverty falls if employment or wages increase for the people at the lower end of the income distribution, and countries that experience growth in labor-intensive sectors are more likely to reduce poverty. This book will be of interest to academics, policy makers, and decision makers in nongovernmental organizations who work in the areas of international trade, development, and poverty.

This book presents empirical evidence on manufacturing firm performance in Africa based on the World Bank Enterprise Survey and on a one-time quantitative survey conducted for the World Bank by Oxford University's Centre for the Study of African Economies. Because of their institutional environment, their labor productivity is low, and their labor costs also tend to be low. Key constraints to firm growth vary by country, by sector, and by firm size. But the binding constraints for most large formal firms in Africa are access to finance and to electricity. The binding constraints for small firms tend to be access to finance and competition from foreign firms. After controlling for differences in firm characteristics, geography, infrastructure, political and institutional factors, business environment, and finance, the authors show that African manufacturing actually has a conditional advantage in productivity and sales growth. Political and institutional factors (especially party monopoly), access to finance, and the nature of the business environment are key to explaining the disadvantage of African countries in firm performance relative to countries at similar levels of income in which firms perform better. The results of the new Oxford survey, which covers both formal and informal firms, shed light on manufacturing firm performance in Africa in relation to that in Asian countries such as China. The survey results suggest that, whatever the reasons for China's success relative to Africa, it is unlikely to be less regulation. Indeed, China seems to have more stringent registration requirements and labor laws. It is also unlikely to be corruption, lower labor or land costs, or social networks: Chinese firms report fewer links with banks and politicians and fewer business friends. There also are no strong differences across the countries in the rate at which individual firms innovate and invest. The dimensions along which Chinese firms are at an advantage appear to be finance, competition, information about innovations, and educational attainment. Asian workers and entrepreneurs have more schooling. Nonetheless, education is not a good predictor of how quickly production workers can become fully active in firm operations.

"Steven Rattner shows a journalist's eye for detail . . . "Overhaul "is a feast of political and financial intrigue." --"Detroit Free Press"
In "Overhaul," Steven Rattner delivers an inside account of the Obama administration's bold bid to save the auto industry. From his vantage point at the helm of the intervention, Rattner crafts a tightly plotted narrative of political brinksmanship, corporate incompetence, and personalities under pressure in a high-stakes drama of Washington and Detroit. He also explains the tough choices he and his team made to keep Chrysler and GM in operation--while working against the clock in the face of intense lobbying from staunch Democratic allies and vocal opposition from free-market partisans.
"Overhaul "is a candid, gripping story of one of the most difficult crises of President Obama's first year in office, with lessons relevant for all managers and executives.
" An] exhaustive, detailed account . . . "Overhaul "will certainly be on the bookshelf of every bankruptcy attorney in the country, and become required reading for public policy and law students." --"New York Times"
"Unquestionably the best book so far about the Obama presidency." --"Slate"
With a new epilogue

This is a heartening and inspiring story of the regeneration of the southern piedmont region after the desolation of war and reconstruction had all but destroyed its economy and disrupted its social life. It is a sociopsychological study of the growth of cotton mills viewed as a social movement.
Originally published in 1956.
A UNC Press Enduring Edition -- UNC Press Enduring Editions use the latest in digital technology to make available again books from our distinguished backlist that were previously out of print. These editions are published unaltered from the original, and are presented in affordable paperback formats, bringing readers both historical and cultural value.

Companies continue to struggle to maintain, manage and control sheet metal stamping operations in a manufacturing environment, but proven strategies and procedures can turn things around.

Author Thomas Ulrich, who has been in the die construction business since 1964, played a leadership role in developing a successful and comprehensive preventive maintenance process for large body-panel stamping dies at Chrysler Corp. In this step-by-step guidebook, he delivers a technical, methods-centric examination of the challenges of maintaining, managing, and controlling sheet metal stamping operations. You'll learn how outsourcing, downsizing, and slashing costs can hurt firms; how to take internal steps to improve existing manufacturing processes to improve performance, sustainability, and the bottom line; and how to apply specific methods to bring sheet metal operations under control, thus allowing profit centers to flourish.

This is a practical and functional guide that any company can use to successfully improve its sheet metal tool and die operations. Written in easy to understand and precise prose, it serves as an indispensable resource for managers, comptrollers, production managers, PM coordinators, engineers, and anyone working on the front lines of a sheet metal stamping operations.

CLASSIC PRODUCTIVITY SYSTEMS for the Assembly Manufacturer or Distribution Center REV A. Contains our generic industrial engineering proposals should your company seek outside expertise in your improvement effort.

A practical and enjoyable way for the beginner, with no knowledge, to start on the journey of becoming a serious watch collector.

The author presents a comprehensive picture of the furniture manufacturer's marketing policies and the framework of the industry out of which marketing policies evolve. He thoroughly investigates and critically analyzes the existing marketing policies of the industry and furnishes data on the industry's profitability.
Originally published in 1957.
A UNC Press Enduring Edition -- UNC Press Enduring Editions use the latest in digital technology to make available again books from our distinguished backlist that were previously out of print. These editions are published unaltered from the original, and are presented in affordable paperback formats, bringing readers both historical and cultural value.

A wonderful book for anyone interested in starting their own homestead or small farm. This book will show you how to be self reliant and build the things you'll need. There are more than 200 illustrations showing you how to make handy farm devices. You'll learn about the farmer's workshop and tools, running a grindstone, making a dumb waiter, making a cradle, how to clean a well, how to stake out stock, bee keeping, how to transplant trees, how to build a bridge for a small stream, how to keep a gate from sagging, important points in house building, how to build small greenhouses, advice on the best way to split wood, black smithing, and much, much more in this thrift-conscious and environmentally wise book.Wilder Publications is a green publisher. All of our books are printed to order. This reduces waste and helps us keep prices low while greatly reducing our impact on the environment.

It's true. Creating industry standards is a game. To be successful at it, you must be cooperative as well as competitive, proactive as well as instinctive, technical as well as practical. You've got to know the rules of the game as well as various strategies for winning it. Which is why standards veteran and blogger Karen Bartleson wrote '#STANDARDStweet Book01, ' the must-have playbook for industry standards leaders and followers.

In 140 bite-sized insights, Bartleson illuminates the standards game for readers by providing an understanding of what standards are and why they are important, as well as presenting ideas for creating better standards and respecting the standardization process. Using her thirty years of experience in the computer chip industry as well as her fourteen years in the area of standards for electronic design automation, Bartleson helps industry standards players focus their game on the future of electronic design by honoring an approach to standards that can increase productivity, solve design problems, and still leave plenty of room for innovation.

Whether you're already in the standards game or preparing to join it, '#STANDARDStweet Book01' will make you better equipped to play your best and come out a winner.

'#STANDARDStweet Book01' is part of the THINKaha series whose 100-page books contain 140 well-thought-out quotes (tweets/ahas)

Computer chip industry veteran Bartleson provides ideas for creating better standards, increasing respect for the standardization process, and ways for leveraging others' industry expertise to create more effective technical standards.

Fashion Unraveled offers an inside look into the operations of a small fashion design business. This book offers tips, tools of the trade and valuable insight into the industry. Fashion Unraveled acts as a guide for developing a customer, market and collection. The book introduces the reader to sourcing and production, as well as explains marketing concepts.Whether the reader is an entrepreneur, designer, student or crafts person, this book will guide one through the business implementation process. Fashion Unraveled introduces an in-depth look at creating a costing model, solid pricing and realistic budgeting. This edition is user friendly and was designed for the creative mind. Chapters are laid out with definitions and web links in the sidebars for ease in use. The second edition features over 400 pages of valuable information transforming this into the "must read" resource for every designer entrepreneur. This book offers a new case study feature, following a small fashion business through their business launch, including their business plan. Fashion Unraveled also features several designer interviews, including a Q&A with British designer Timothy James Andrews and couturier Colleen Quen.

Cleveland-based manufacturer Lincoln Electric has thrived for more than a century. It survived two World Wars, the Great Depression, the decline of industrial America, and the recent credit crash with impressive profits. While factories across the Midwest fired employees and shuttered their doors, Lincoln Electric fulfilled its promise of "Guaranteed Continuous Employment," a company pledge to avoid layoffs for economic reasons. By promoting loyalty, trust, and flexibility, Lincoln Electric has built a company of committed, hard-working employees and a reputation of excellence.

In this insightful and spirited investigation, journalist Frank Koller digs deep into Lincoln Electric's inner workings--revealing surprising lessons about what happens when managers view their employees as valued assets rather than costs.

A Simple Approach to Manage the Manufacturing and Supply Chain Complexity. Do you dream of the perfect manufacturing organization? In this company your Manufacturing application sustains your evolving manufacturing strategies. The Sales, purchase and manufacturing department strongly interact to optimise to a maximum your organization. Through efficient scheduling or JIT management, manufacturing and procurement can easily be organised to avoid shortages. The advanced routes option allows you to manage complex routes within and between locations. Real-time dashboards display up-to-date information in a graphical, dynamic way. In this book, you will learn to set up and use OpenERP to: * Create your master data, such as Bills of Material and advanced routings, * Efficiently schedule your manufacturing and purchase orders, * Ensure flexible management of your operations, * Measure and improve your performance through real-time information dashboards

CLASSIC PRODUCTIVITY SYSTEMS for the Assembly Manufacturer or Distribution Center REV A. Contains our generic industrial engineering proposals should your company seek outside expertise in your improvement effort.

This scarce antiquarian book is a selection from Kessinger Publishing's Legacy Reprint Series. Due to its age, it may contain imperfections such as marks, notations, marginalia and flawed pages. Because we believe this work is culturally important, we have made it available as part of our commitment to protecting, preserving, and promoting the world's literature. Kessinger Publishing is the place to find hundreds of thousands of rare and hard-to-find books with something of interest for everyone!

Six months after its American introduction in 1985, the Yugo was a punch line; within a year, it was a staple of late-night comedy. By 2000, NPR's "Car Talk" declared it "the worst car of the millennium." And for most Americans that's where the story begins and ends. Hardly. The short, unhappy life of the car, the men who built it, the men who imported it, and the decade that embraced and discarded it is rollicking and astounding, and one of the greatest untold business-cum-morality tales of the 1980s. Mix one rabid entrepreneur, several thousand "good" communists, a willing U.S. State Department, the shortsighted Detroit auto industry, and improvident bankers, shake vigorously, and you've got "The Yugo: The Rise and Fall of the Worst Car in History." Brilliantly re-creating the amazing confluence of events that produced the Yugo, Yugoslav expert Jason Vuic uproariously tells the story of the car that became an international joke: The American CEO who happens upon a Yugo right when his company needs to find a new import or go under. A State Department eager to aid Yugoslavia's nonaligned communist government. Zastava Automobiles, which overhauls its factory to produce an American-ready Yugo in six months. And a hole left by Detroit in the cheap subcompact market that creates a race to the bottom that leaves the Yugo . . . at the bottom.

With an updated Afterword by the author
This is the epic saga of the American automobile industry's rise and demise, a compelling story of hubris, missed opportunities, and self-inflicted wounds that culminates with the president of the United States ushering two of Detroit's Big Three car companies--once proud symbols of prosperity--through bankruptcy. With unprecedented access, Pulitzer Prize winner Paul Ingrassia takes us from factory floors to small-town dealerships to Detroit's boardrooms to the White House. Ingrassia answers the big questions: Was Detroit's self-destruction inevitable? What were the key turning points? Why did Japanese automakers manage American workers better than the American companies themselves did? Complete with a new Afterword providing fresh insights into the continuing upheaval in the auto industry--the travails of Toyota, the revolving-door management and IPO at General Motors, the unexpected progress at Chrysler, and the Obama administration's stake in Detroit's recovery--"Crash Course" addresses a critical question: America bailed out GM, but who will bail out America?