What is Quick Response Manufacturing ?
Quick Response Manufacturing (QRM) is a company wide strategy to cut lead times in all phases of a manufacturing enterprise. It facilitates bringing products to market more quickly and secures business prospects by helping compete in a rapidly changing economic arena. QRM will not only make a firm more attractive to potential customers, it will also increase profitability by reducing non-value added time, cutting inventory and increasing return on investment. The QRM approach complements many other ideas, plans, tools and philosophies. Many tools such as MRP / ERP can be effective in running a business. JIT is a excellent plan for handling repetitive tasks. The relationships of these tools to QRM strategies is discussed in Dr. Rajan Suris book Quick Response Manufacturing: A Companywide Approach to Reducing Lead Times” (Productivity Press, 1998). The major difference is that QRM focuses all efforts towards a single goal – lead time reduction. Achieving that goal requires that all aspec
