Legal restrictions prevent American prison industries from running at optimum levels. If those legal barriers were repealed, here’s what the optimum prison industry might look like:
The work community or workhouse containing the industry would only make widgets now manufactured exclusively overseas, overcoming the current legal impediments to prison industries. The employer would rent space from the state or federal prison or perhaps build a separate building on or off the prison grounds to prepare for making widgets. Widget-making machinery is brought in, and it may not be the most up-to-date machinery. The proprietor of this business then hires from among the state’s or federal government’s inmates, choosing those it prefers without any legal concerns or restrictions, just as American businesses did 150 years ago. The wages, hours and conditions of employment are negotiated between the employer and the prospective employees and committed to writing. Employers are free to pay $1.25 per hour if prisoners will agree to work for that. There are no wage and hour legal restrictions, because prisoners don’t deserve them.
The prison industry is completely free to negotiate with the prison authorities for food, clothing, medical care, security, guards, rent and other things. The private employer must reduce the state’s correctional costs or else it cannot co-locate, hire prisoners or remain a prison industry. The company buys supplies and services from off-site free businesses and unionized labor, boosting the American economy.
This is not convict leasing, because prisoners can choose to remain in the general prison population or return there if they don’t like making widgets in the new work community, subject to their contract of employment. By the same token, employers can send prisoners back to the general prison population for any reason or no reason, subject to the contract the parties have signed. Troublemakers get sent back early in the process. By exercising this selectivity, the employer keeps peace in the work community; prisoners prize these jobs. If the prisoner tries to escape, the prisoner’s earned wages are forfeited. Fines might be imposed for other misbehavior. The longer the inmate works, the less likely the prisoner attempts escape or misbehavior. In fact, prisoners in the general prison population behave better to improve their chances of obtaining one of the better private jobs.
Payment of wages is not to the prisoner directly, but instead into a special trust account managed by the employer, with some oversight by prison authorities. Deductions can be made for child support, crime victim restitution or for room and board at the prison. At the end of the prisoner’s sentence, the prisoner has learned to work hard and receives the balance in his or her trust account, a nest egg or “freedom dues” as indentured servants were paid in the colonial era. For those serving life without parole or very long sentences, their earnings permit them to enjoy some luxury items.
The employer makes sure the work community is a better environment than the general prison population. The work community is …
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Flexible Manufacturing Automation Is Optimum in the Manufacturing Continuum
Manufacturing capabilities can be represented by a continuum that is made of four characteristics, flexibility, production rates, production volumes, and changeover time. By looking at the various mixtures of these characteristics it is easy to see what types of manufacturing occupy the different sections in the continuum. At one end of the spectrum is the production line that has multiple work cells that are coordinated to work quite well together. This line produces a high volume of finished products and runs at a high production rate. The line also has drawback of being longer to re-configure to make a production run of products that are totally dissimilar to the products that are in a prior production run. This characteristic gives the production line very little flexibility in being able to move from one production job to the next.
On the other end of the continuum is production that is done by independent work cells. The changeover time between production jobs for these machines is fairly short, which gives them very good flexibility. However, since the devices are not linked together by automation the unit volume and the production rates for this equipment is very low. This production scenario is ideal for producing small batches of products that do not require high speed production to complete. It is easy to see how this scenario can effectively make products that are of the same family of parts because very little changeover is required between production jobs.
Flexible manufacturing automation is the center part of the continuum. It occupies this spot because of the need to draw the best parts from both of the ends of the spectrum to create a type of manufacturing that can perform at an optimum. Flexible manufacturing automation has medium performance in the areas that occupy both ends of the continuum, changeover time, unit volume, production rates, and flexibility. This type of manufacturing Performance Of Service Sector offers several excellent advantages to a company. Flexible manufacturing automation, because of its configuration, has the ability to produce similar products at the same time. As long as the products are of similar design and can utilize the same work cell operations in their creation, it is possible to have these products created at the same time. Imaginative programming of controllers allows this kind of task to be done.
That same programming will be able to make correct decisions about the disposition of dissimilar parts that are fed to the manufacturing operation in a random fashion. Parts that are designed as a widget A will be routed through the series of production centers that are particular to its requirements, while widget B will be sent through those work centers that are particular to it. Some of these work cells maybe the same and some of them may be different in completing each of these part types from the same part family. As indicated before, the controller must have each part be identified so that a decision by the program can be …