Seru Production System: A Review and Projections for Future Research

In mid-1992, Japanese consultant Yamada Hitoshi was tasked with modifying the production systems of Japanese companies as the existing configurations at manufacturing plants no longer satisfied unstable demands. He made improvements to the overall production system by dividing the long assembly lines into several short ones called cells or seru. Although of the advantages, it is still unclear about how to manage this new production system, and what variables really promoted the desired benefits. We identify in total 39 articles from 2004– 2020 about the progress of the seru production system, and we observe some possibilities to improve the effectiveness of this type of the production system. The first is the possibility of manufacturing the product in flexible sequence, in which the operations are independent among them. We show through the developed example that the makespan may be different. We noted when converting the in-line production system to one pure seru, the makespan tend to increase. Nevertheless, when analyzing the effectiveness of serus working concomitantly considering splitting the same lot, makespan and the cost may be reduced. And finally, when converting to one of pure serus, the performance may be similar to that obtained when serus working concomitantly.