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International comparisons of plant productivity - Domestic water heaters

Bureau of Industry Economics research report

This report was released in 1992.

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  • Contents

Preliminaries
Cover, Copyright, Contents, Foreword, Report at a glance, Executive Summary

1   Introduction
1.1   Background
1.2   Methodology
1.3   Structure of the report
2   The production of water heaters
2.1   The product
2.2   Product demand and supply
2.2.1   Product demand
2.2.2   Product supply
2.3   Production process
2.3.1   Fabrication of the inner water tank
2.3.2   Enamelling
2.3.3   Final assembly
2.4   Quality control
2.4.1   Reactive quality control practices
2.4.2   Proactive quality control practices
2.5   Regulation

3   Industrial relations at the national and plant level
3.1 Introduction
3.2   Industrial relations systems
3.2.1   Overview
3.2.2   Australia
3.2.3   New Zealand
3.2.4   The United States of America
3.3   Industrial relations at the plant level
3.3.1   The U.S. plant
3.3.2   The Melbourne plant
3.3.3   The N.Z. plant
3.3.4   The Sydney plant
3.4   Concluding comments

4   Work practices, training and education
4.1   Introduction
4.2   Work practices
4.2.1   Labour flexibility
4.2.2   Job rotation
4.2.3   Temporary employees
4.2.4   Overtime
4.2.5   Maintenance
4.2.6   Industrial disputes
4.3   Remuneration and conditions
4.3.1   Labour remuneration
4.3.2   Managerial remuneration
4.3.3   Award restructuring
4.4   Labour turnover, training and education
4.4.1   Labour turnover
4.4.2   Training
4.4.3   Education
4.5   Concluding comments

5   Relative performance of the Australian producers
5.1   Output
5.1.1   Output level
5.1.2   Output mix
5.1.3   Quality
5.2   Sales
5.2.1   Output level
5.2.2   Output mix
5.2.3   Quality
5.3   Labour input
5.3.1   Labour mix
5.3.2   Labour hours
5.3.3   Unproductive hours
5.4   Material imputs
5.4.1   Steel
5.4.2   Other materials
5.5   Capital imputs
5.5.1   Plant and equipment
5.5.2   Buildings and structure
5.5.3   Inventories
5.6   Productivity
5.6.1   Labour productivity
5.6.2   Capital productivity
5.7   Costs
5.7.1   Unit costs
5.7.2   Hourly labour costs
5.7.3   Capital costs
5.7.4 Material costs
5.8   Concluding comments

6   Summary and conclusions
6.1   Product and market characteristics
6.2   Industrial relations systems
6.3   Productivity and costs
6.4   Materials
6.5 Labour flexibility and training
6.6   Remuneration
6.7   Enterprise bargaining
6.8   Final remarks

Appendix 1   Cost of capital
A.1   Introduction
A.2   Methodology and data

References

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