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Mazak Worcester Visit Report

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1. Introduction
A report is based on my personal visit to a factory of the Mazak company, based in Worcester. The aim of this work is to evaluate processes within the company and to identify whether it is using Fordist practise or not. Mazak is privately owned by a Japanese family named Yamazaki. It is the world largest producer of sophisticated computer numerical control tools (CMC). It has 8 factories in places such as USA, Japan, UK, China and Pacific Rim. It employs around 6000 staff around the world. In the Worcester factory it employs around 500 people plus a number of contract workers. The company manufactures an extensive variety of products, and generates sales of over £3.5bn per annum. It operates within in a highly competitive …show more content…

There are several policies personnel employment policies in Mazak. For example the company does not use agencies to employ staff for permanent positions or to employ contractors. There are several reasons for this, firstly agencies are an additional cost and second the company has its own internal labour market. Only temporary staff are employed through agencies; but they are not a part of the Mazak company. Temporary staff form the peripheral workforce and are used to provide numerical flexibility; the concept of which was explained in the work of Tailby(2003). Problems of cultural difference:

Japan and England are totally different countries in different parts of the world, one is purely western and the other one is Eastern. People living in England and in Japan have a totally different culture, they were brought up in a different way and as a result they have different ideas, customs and expectations. To perform successfully in Britain, the local culture was studied and the companies policies were changed to match people’s expectations in Britain, however there is a mixture of cultures on the company’s site.

3. Production Line:

There are several departments on a production line, which are separated into different functional areas, with different workstations and teams. Machines at Mazak are transported by monorail, however they are not built on the production line formed by a single action assembly line as used in producing of cars, but only being

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