Selection and implementation of a PPC system

There are many computer-aided production planning and control (PPC) systems available on the market which can provide a solution to the complex task of production planning and control. However, the question remains, how can a company find an optimal system from the vast amount of available systems? This article proposes that a company, having decided to buy one of the available systems, starts a project for selection and implementation of the PPC system.     

The effects of managerial decision making behaviour and order book size on workload control system implementation in Make-To-Order companies

Insufficient attention has been paid to behavioural influences on the implementation of the ‘Workload Control’ (WLC) concept – a Production Planning and Control (PPC) approach for small and medium sized Make-To-Order companies – and there is an implicit assumption that managers are rationalistic in their decision-making. This paper analyses the effects of both managerial decision-making behaviour and the size of a company’s order book, affecting the number of decisions that have to be made, on two case study implementations of a WLC system. The Recognition-Primed Decision (RPD) model from the Naturalistic Decision-Making literature is used to unpack the first case where implementation failed. This highlighted a misalignment between how the company’s owner-manager initially made operational decisions and how a rationalistic WLC system functions. But the company is studied over six years, allowing us to show how the owner-manager was forced to transition from the RPD model to a more rationalistic approach to PPC as the size of the order book increased. A second case study is then briefly presented in which WLC system implementation was successful; the RPD model was not strongly evident and the size of the order book was greater to begin with. The paper helps to understand the decision-making behaviour of managers in small companies and how it may conflict or be misaligned with the rationalistic assumptions underpinning the WLC concept. This provides a possible explanation for why few successful implementations of the concept have been presented in literature.     

Integrated Management Systems — Opportunities and Risks for Corporate Environmental Protection

Environmental protection in companies is increasingly carried out using Integrated Management Systems (IMS). Based on empirical results, this article examines how IMS can be designed and how the integration affects corporate environmental protection. In particular, we discuss the findings of four empirical studies, which surveyed experiences of German and European companies.Our work shows, that the success of corporate environmental protection does not depend on whether the company has implemented a separate environmental management system or an IMS. What is crucial is the rank of environmental protection within the company's system of objectives. In case of goal conflicts, decision criteria in agreement with the company's system of objectives have to be formulated. Furthermore, the IMS model can have an effect on this issue. The results of a pilot project in the automobile sector are discussed to illustrate how to implement such an IMS on the basis of ISO 14001.Compared to isolated environmental management systems, IMS can even improve environmental protection, because ecological criteria can be considered from the beginning when designing customer-oriented products and processes.     

Supplier code of conduct–state-of-the-art and customisation in the electronics industry

In the field of corporate social responsibility (CSR), one efficient way to improve the ethical behaviour of a company is the implementation of a code of conduct. When focused on suppliers, this code is referred to as the supplier code of conduct (SCoC). Specific, application-oriented research on SCoCs is rare. The main goals of the present article are to define the state-of-the-art in SCoCs and to show how this review can be used in industrial practice when defining a company-specific SCoC. This article uses the electronics industry as an example. The state-of-the-art review of the content of the SCoCs is structured in five main categories of issues: labour standards, health and safety, environment, ethics and compliance. The practical relevance of this review is demonstrated by applying it in the development of a customised SCoC for a company as a part of the company's corporate risk management activities. This review uses the content analysis of SCoCs based on the website disclosures of the Forbes Fortune 2000 (Technology Hardware & Equipment) companies; which yielded 24 SCoCs. The application was done in an action research framework with a partner company, and the results were verified with the help of a focus group consisting of 10 companies.     

Production planning and control as a tool for eco-efficency improvement and environmental impact reduction

The environmental impacts of industrial activity are an increasing concern amongst firms and their stakeholders. As a result, companies around the world have been exploring new tools to diminish the adverse impact of their activities on the environment. Eco-efficiency has played an essential role in this scenario, as companies are continuously seeking to produce more while utilizsing fewer resources and minimising adverse effects on the environment. The literature includes several initiatives to improve eco-efficiency and to reduce the environmental impact of manufacturing operations, but the use of production planning and control (PPC) activities to accomplish these goals has rarely been considered. Therefore, to contribute to the assessment of this issue, this paper proposes to integrate environmental concepts and actions as part of the PPC execution; therefore, they could also be applied to minimise environmental impacts, resulting in an increase in the eco-efficiency level of a company. The practical utilisation of the suggested procedure was confirmed using a case study where the procedure was successfully applied to a make-to-order firm, where a simplified version of a workload control (WLC) form of PPC was in use. As a result, incorporating environmental considerations into the WLC practices enabled the eco-efficiency level of the designated production area to increase by 42%, while the environmental impact of production was reduced by 13%.     

To be or not to be corporate heritage oriented? A study of managers’ corporate heritage mindsets

Corporate heritage is a research topic in branding with managerial relevance to achieve competitive advantages. Research has mainly focussed on companies with a formal corporate heritage orientation, neglecting other companies. In this study, a novel framework has been developed for analysing managers' corporate heritage mindsets as a precondition for a corporate heritage orientation in a non-heritage-oriented company. Individual managers’ corporate image heritage depicts how managers perceive their company over time, hence revealing their corporate heritage mindset. This article proposes that two managerial mindset dimensions matter – corporate heritage recognition and stance. This abductive study combines theory and empirical findings from an industrial company with a long history, but no corporate heritage orientation. The proposed framework offers companies with a history a way to analyse whether corporate heritage could be recognised and employed. This article contributes to corporate heritage research by broadening the applicability of corporate heritage issues.     

A survey of simulation modeling techniques in production planning and control (PPC)

The manufacturing sector as a whole has undergone remarkable changes in terms of scale, complexity and technology over the past decades and this applies across most modern high-technology manufacturing such as electronics, semiconductor, aerospace and automotive industries. In order to remain competitive, manufacturers have to produce high-quality products at low cost, and at the same time retain sufficient flexibility and to meet rapidly changing customer demands. Production planning and control (PPC) is a key role which enables the manufacturer to gain visibility and control over all aspects of manufacturing activities. PPC in itself forms a subject of study, within which simulation techniques have proven themselves to be one of the most practical methodologies available to investigate and evaluate manufacturing issues. In this review paper, we focus on state-of-the art applications of simulation techniques in PPC to demonstrate their applicability to modern manufacturing issues. The review reports on academic publications on simulation applications in manufacturing from 2002 to 2014, incorporating surveys of peer-reviewed literature. The review covers three types of simulation techniques (system dynamic, discrete event simulation and agent-based simulation) and eight PPC issues (facility resource planning, capacity planning, job planning, process planning, scheduling, inventory management, production and process design, purchase and supply management). Literature survey is analysed on the basis of simulation application to PPC problems which can give a guideline for simulation technique selection and also can help for simulation modelling in PPC problemsWould you consider changing the term “modeling” to “modelling” in the title. Please check, and correct if necessary.     

Visualizing the factory through meta- manufacturing processes

Milestone or deadline driven production management is predominant in most manufacturing companies. Problems and other disturbing occurrences tend to see their first daylight during phases where plans are implemented into reality, for example, when production commences, prototypes enter manufacturing and deliveries are expected. Conventional control routines fail to depict the true progress and procedures of the company on an on-line basis, which means that instead of being proactive they serve as means to react to already existing problems. This paper studies the application of advanced visualization techniques to the already existing information embedded in a comany's information infrastructure, and how it can help management to anticipate probable near future pitfalls. By studying those daily operations of a company which share a document relationship with the true manufacturing process, that is, the meta-manufacturing processes, a completely new perspective on the company's value-adding activities is drawn. By mining the existing data reservoirs of a company traditionally difficult management processes, such as product development, vendor integration, production planning, can be analysed and the problems identified in a novel way to react in advance. The paper displays several empirical examples from bulk to one-of-a-kind production where the method has been successfully implemented.     

Linking IT Applications with Manufacturing Strategy: An Intelligent Decision Support System Approach

Research has indicated the importance of matching Information Technology (IT) applications or manufacturing systems with the competitive strategy of a company. Selection of the right type of IT application is, however, a challenging task. When a company with a given dominant process structure emphasizes two or more competitive priorities, such as quality, product flexibility, etc., an unaided manager faces a complex decision problem in choosing from alternative IT applications available in the areas of product design through distribution. In this paper, we develop an Intelligent Decision Support System (IDSS) to assist managers with assessment of the relative importance of competitive priorities in their organization, evaluation of the fit between the competitive priorities and their dominant process structure, and identification of the IT applications that are consistent with both the competitive priorities and the process structure. The IDSS is comprised of an interactive user interface, a knowledge database, a decision model, and a Knowledge-Based System (KBS) that was developed using the 1st Class KBS shell. Validation of the system illustrates that its performance is as good as the human expert, and it has the potential to facilitate effective and swift decision making in the selection of appropriate IT applications that best match an organization's manufacturing strategy. The choice and use of the right type of IT application should provide a company with a competitive edge.     

Reflections from philips electronics,N.A.: Lessons from winning the WEC gold medal

Several years ago I went to a lecture in which documentary film maker Rick Burns described his new film on the history of New York City. He mentioned that his biggest challenge was to identify a theme—an element that was a common thread in the history of the city which he could use as the focus for the documentary. (He finally decided that the theme would be “money.”)To develop the theme for Philips Electronic's application for the World Environment Center's (WEC's) Gold Medal Award for Corporate Environmental Excellence, I encountered the same challenge as the film maker. What theme would I use for a company which is diverse, decentralized, and has a worldwide presence? While Philips was doing many worthwhile things and had significant accomplishments, how could I put that in a package which would be coherent, cohesive, and understandable to the independent judges from around the world?     

The annual planning cycle

The practical business man, be he the boss or an employee, usually accepts that systematic planning of some sort is almost certain to be of benefit to his company, and he can usually agree with many of the planning techniques put forward. What often worries him though, is how to actually operate a planning system in his company day by day: what instructions to give, systems to use, how to make it really work. In this article, the author describes an Annual Planning and Budget Cycle Chart which was developed at the Avon Rubber Company. This chart goes a long way to solving the practical businessman's dilemma referred to above, it gives set dates during the year for completion of specific planning and budgeting jobs and it explains how they are interconnected to make up a coherent and workable corporate planning system.     

Dupont,conoco and the biodegradable grease project: Using innovation to turn chemical by-products into a new product

Conoco manufactures lubricants and oils from petroleum and markets them to the mining, trasportation, recreation, construction and related industries. In the wake of the 1990 amendments to the Clean Air Act, the company became concerned that certain customers would be obligated to discontinue the use of lubricants that contained chlorinated solvents. Specifically, Conoco realized that numerous state and local environmental quality standards were becoming stricter with respect to open gear lubricants dropping to the ground from the gears on large power shovels and drag lines used in mining and construction. Although these applications were often in avid regions, groundwater contamination was an issue in other regions. Therefore, if the company did not initiate the development of alternatives to current products, it might lose market share to competitor's products. Fortuitously, a new line of feedstocks came to the attention of Conoco in the form of a chemical by-product stream from a business unit of its parent company, DuPont. The two companies ultimately used this chemical by-product stream to develop a new product to solve the problem.In this case study, we describe a DuPont/Conoco effort to develop a more environmentally friendly niche lubrication product that could be used to mitigate certain heavy machinery environmental problems and create a more competitive slate of products to facilitate sales of an entire line of lubricants. Likewise we examine how Conoco employed part of a chemical by-product stream from another part of the company as feedstock for the new product.     

Leveraging transformational and transactional leadership to cultivate the generation of organization-focused ideas

We investigate how transformational and transactional leadership motivates employees to commit to an organizational ideation program so that they subsequently generate ideas that benefit the organization. To resolve the mixed and contradictory findings of earlier studies about these leadership styles, we propose that more attention needs to be devoted to the leader's personal beliefs. Specifically, we study the degree to which a leader identifies with an organization and how this possibly unlocks the effects of transformational or transactional leadership. Using multilevel data collected in a large multinational company, our findings reveal that both transformational and transactional leadership is effective in motivating followers to commit to the goals of an ideation program. Increased commitment, in turn, is associated with more ideas that followers generate. In contrast to the effect of transactional leadership, however, the effect of transformational leadership is contingent on how strongly leaders identify with the organization.     

The Ecological Footprint: A Metric for Corporate Sustainability

From a business perspective, one of the emerging debates is how can businesses contribute to the objectives of sustainable development. This article presents the ecological footprint accounting tool and demonstrates its usefulness in measuring and monitoring corporate sustainability. The application of the ecological footprint is based on a case study of the city of Liverpool whilst its usefulness to businesses is demonstrated with data available in the environmental reports of various companies. For companies, the ecological footprint is able to take a given environmental impact and through its methodology convert this impact into a land measurement (hectares). Once all environmental impacts are considered and measured, the ecological footprint becomes the total area of land required to support a company in terms of the resources they consume and the waste that they produce. An ecological footprint analysis can highlight how near or far a company is from being sustainable and identify those aspects that have the greatest ecological effect. The usefulness of the ecological footprint is the use of a land measurement that enables it to be readily and easily understood by all that have a vested interested in a company's environmental performance. The metaphorical resonance of the ecological footprint is seen as one of a number of powerful attributes.     

RFID technology for increasing visibility in ETO supply chains: a case study

This paper presents the application of an innovative system for increasing visibility along an Engineer-To-Order supply chain. The system has been applied in a leading Italian company that manufactures vessels and tube heat exchangers. By means of this method, the company shares information about its shop floor activities with other actors in the supply chain, i.e. clients and suppliers. The system elements are as follows: Radio-frequency identification transponders (to identify either components, operators, tooling machines (e.g. welding machines) or production phases), a Wi-Fi network (to communicate data) and a web-based application that is accessible by the company’s clients. This paper shows the methodology that is used to define the system’s architecture and the technical solutions adopted. Benefits in terms of reduction in costs for monitoring and control have been observed. Moreover, customers perceived the increased visibility of the production process to be a valuable service.     

Alternative Mechanisms Guiding Salespersons’ Ambidextrous Product Selling

Ambidextrous product‐selling strategies, in which companies’ salespeople concurrently pursue the sale of existing and new products, are hard to implement. Previous studies have addressed this issue for relatively simple consumer settings with the manager in close proximity to the salespersons and focusing on different levels of control and autonomy to resolve this issue. However, little is known about how field salespeople can be influenced to pursue such dual goals proactively for more complex business‐to‐business products. In this study, the authors distinguish between salespeople's proactive selling behaviour for new and existing products, and study the impact of two alternative mechanisms: a situational mechanism (i.e. perceived manager product‐selling ambidexterity) and a structural mechanism (i.e. salesperson organizational identification). Using a time‐lagged, multisource data set from a large ambidextrous company, the authors demonstrate that both mechanisms contribute to salespeople's proactive selling of new and existing products, but also act as each other's substitutes. The results suggest two most likely strategies for salespeople to obtain overall sales targets: focusing on existing product selling; or acting ambidextrously. The latter approach offers the benefits of better achieving ambidextrous company sales goals and of greater performance stability, and is thus preferred.     

Supply Chain Sourcing Under Asymmetric Information

We study a supply chain with two suppliers competing over a contract to supply components to a manufacturer. One of the suppliers is a big company for whom the manufacturer's business constitutes a small part of his business. The other supplier is a small company for whom the manufacturer's business constitutes a large portion of his business. We analyze the problem from the perspective of the big supplier and address the following questions: What is the optimal contracting strategy that the big supplier should follow? How does the information about the small supplier's production cost affect the profits and contracting decision? How does the existence of the small supplier affect profits? By studying various information scenarios regarding the small supplier's and the manufacturer's production cost, we show, for example, that the big supplier benefits when the small supplier keeps its production cost private. We quantify the value of information for the big supplier and the manufacturer. We also quantify the cost (value) of the alternative‐sourcing option for the big supplier (the manufacturer). We determine when an alternative‐sourcing option has more impact on profits than information. We conclude with extensions and numerical examples to shed light on how system parameters affect this supply chain.     

Developing a manpower strategy for an industry

This paper considers the following issues for developing an industry manpower strategy. An idea of the national system that exists for implementing a manpower strategy. The main questions arising from the strategy, and a definition of manpower planning. From this, the information and analysis techniques used to identify the strategy. The first application produces a manpower picture of the foundry industry. For company manpower planning the paper describes a manpower model of a company, and how the relationship between the activity and employment patterns of boundries was investigated. The industry findings are verified by company manpower planning investigations using the same information and techniques. The conclusions discuss some of the strengths and weaknesses of using this approach.     

Production and inventory control at ABB Motors and Volvo Wheel Loaders,two examples of MRP in practical use

The paper presents the main routines of production and inventory control at ABB Motors, Västerås and Volvo Wheel Loaders, Eskilstuna. The primary interest is to present how Material Requirements Planning (MRP) is used in these two companies. If the number of end items is large, the company assembles-to-order or makes-to-order then additions to pure MRP seem to be necessary. ABB Motors and Volvo Wheel Loader use: planning bills, a normal bill of materials with 'adding bills of materials', a master production schedule planning system with an available-to-promise function and a home-made 'system' for modules available-to-promise. One important measure for the both companies is the accumulative lead-time. An increase of the Master Production Schedule in a shorter time than the accumulative lead-time is avoided, because it will lead to suggestions of purchase in past time periods and therefore most probably to future material shortages.     

Local Management Response to Corporative Restructuring: A Case Study of a Company Town

This is a case study of top management in a Swedish pulp industry at Skutskär. After decades of proactive response to change, starting in 1976 the pulp industry experienced a rapid and significant restructuring. In 1992, and after a prolonged hold on local investments, came a large‐scale investment with major labor reductions, which created a local crisis. The aim of this study is to analyze how top managers of a local business plant perceive and explain their citizenship relationship to the community of the company town during a transition period from 1976 to 2007. Our study shows that too much reliance on top management cost reduction requirements and not caring, or underscoring, local social concerns created gaps and local stakeholder distrust. We discuss how prolonged distrust of the company to bear social responsibility ended up in a broken relationship between the company and the local community. Our case indicates at least two problems that must be handled for successful corporate citizenship. First, the traditional control‐oriented management view is too narrow and not adjusted to today's citizenship reality, including how to handle corporate social responsibility. Second, we can see a possibility where the conceived needs on a global corporate level may lead to situations to obscure local needs and consequences.