Production management: Beyond the dichotomy between push' and pull'

Abstract Existing approaches in Japan and western countries to managing production orders are surely different. The former aims at assuring a ‘lean production’ so that items can flow without waste, where each manufacturing stage ‘pulls’ the supply of items and resources according to its own needs from stages upstream. The latter forces management to plan ‘fat production’, so that the risk of stockout can be minimized and where the loading conditions at each stage have to be ‘pushed’ by a suitable plan. Besides different work organization in plants managed by ‘push’ or ‘pull’ philosophies the goals and aims of these two approaches are complementary. This fact raises the question of taking the opportunity to integrate these two philosophies, and to originate a new production management methodology able to handle difficult economic periods through robust planning, and to track markets in equilibrium through decentralized control. The question approached in this paper is: does an, at least theoretical, integration of the two approaches exist? This contribution aims to propose an answer in terms of the potential integration of the two approaches, as suggested by the different but complementary experiences of the two authors.