EFFECTS OF ENVIRONMENTAL MANAGEMENT SYSTEMS ON ENVIRONMENTAL MANAGEMENT PRACTICES AND OPERATIONS

To date, it is unclear as to how Environmental Management Systems (EMS) are implemented and what effects these systems have on other environmental and operational practices. This study reports empirical insights to EMS practices based on the largest EMS survey of manufacturing firms in the United States. The objective of the study is to test for a relationship between environmental management systems and perceived operations performance while considering direct and indirect effects of various environmental practices. The results of this study are supported by several field studies and provide a new source of information regarding EMS theory development. The results also indicate a positive relationship between an EMS, the environmental practices a firm engages, and operations performance measures.     

INTEGRATED OPERATIONS: A PROPOSAL FOR OPERATIONS MANAGEMENT TEACHING AND RESEARCH

This paper, addressed to professors of operations management (om) in research institutions, suggests that the long-term academic viability of our discipline requires the generation of a theory uniquely associated with the practice of OM. Such a theory will rest on foundations laid by other disciplines, but must find its own unique synthesis that attends to the problems of OM practice. The paper proposes a framework that recognizes physics, social psychology and philosophy as foundational disciplines for an integrative theoryof OM and suggests which concepts from those disciplines may find voice in such a theory.     

ALIGNING ACCOUNTABILITY AND AWARENESS FOR ENVIRONMENTAL PERFORMANCE IN OPERATIONS

This study assesses internal drivers of a firm's level of environmental awareness, including methods for incorporating environmental objectives into the strategic planning of operations, communication of objectives throughout the organization, and deployment of accountability to operating personnel and managers for environmental performance. Challenges firms may encounter in motivating and holding employees and process owners accountable for environmental performance are discussed, as well as a potential for inconsistencies between management's espoused theories and theories in use. A case study of a steel manufacturer is used to determine how accountability for and awareness of environmental objectives can be operationally implemented.     

PROGRESS IN OPERATIONS MANAGEMENT

In this issue, Robert Hayes has written provocatively about the implications of the digital economy for Operations Management (om). Here I examine and illustrate a simple four‐stage framework for thinking about these implications: advances in digital technology (stage 1) lead to business developments (stage 2), which impact the views of OM‐relevant thought leaders (stage 3), which influence the conduct of OM activities (stage 4). This framework provides a perspective for viewing the evolution of OM and indicates how educators, researchers, and practitioners can steal the march on mainstream thinking.     

PEDAGOGICAL CHALLENGE: TEACHING INTERNATIONAL PRODUCTION AND OPERATIONS MANAGEMENT COURSES

There should be two distinctly different pom introductory courses (or even tracks) for MBAs. Course one (called pom) would consist of traditional pom materials emphasizing domestic POM course materials. Course two, called international production and operations management (ipom), would focus on international aspects of pom, emphasizing cross-boundary operations. Training of instructors differs significantly for the two courses. ipom accentuates operations crossing borders where different languages, cultures and currencies apply. The ipom syllabus employs cases and examples based on companies and/or divisions located in a great variety of countries. Three important drivers of the international pom curriculum should be recognized: (1) supply chain management with ipom responsible for coordinating sources-of materials as well as making and delivering goods and services across global boundaries, (2) portfolio management because ipom can reduce risks by geographically diversifying operations, and (3) capabilities management because ipom must spot, develop and implement special global opportunities. Teaching how these three international drivers interact challenges the pom field to provide proper curriculum development and instructor methodology.     

INTERNATIONAL TECHNOLOGY AND OPERATIONS MANAGEMENT: RESOURCE TOOLKIT FOR RESEARCH AND TEACHING

Increasing globalization has affected the way that firms are managed today. While its impact on competitive strategy, marketing, and finance has been well accepted and well studied, its effect on the firm's technology and operations has not. This paper provides resources for research and teaching in international technology and operations management (itom). Included are an extensive bibliography of papers and an overview of large-scale survey research initiatives in the area. By bringing together and categorizing this body of work, we hope to facilitate further work in the area and to help define ITOM'S scope.     

CONSTITUENCIES OF JOURNALS IN PRODUCTION AND OPERATIONS MANAGEMENT: IMPLICATIONS ON REACH AND QUALITY*

I analyzed the contributions made by members of the following constituencies in terms of the number of articles published in the Journal of Operations Management (JOM), Manufacturing and Service Operations Management (M&SOM), and Production and Operations Management (POM): the top 20 U.S. business schools and the top 7 non‐U.S. business schools as ranked by Business Week or U.S. News and World Report, business and government organizations, U.S. business schools ranked between 21 and 50, non‐U.S. business schools not included above, and U.S. business schools not included above. I also analyzed the contributions made by U.S. business schools with top 10 programs in production and operations management; 9 of which are also in the list of top 20 U.S. business schools. Authors from the schools with top 10 programs in production and operations management contributed 20.2% of the articles published in POM and 3.5% of the articles published in JOM during 1997‐2001. They contributed 24.6% of the articles in the eight issues (from July 2000 through June 2002) of M&SOM. During these periods, authors from the top 27 schools contributed 29.3% of the articles published in POM, 9.4% of the articles published in JOM, and 37.4% of the articles to the eight issues of M&SOM. Also during the same periods, authors from business and government organizations contributed 6.6% of the articles published in POM, 1.9% of the articles published in JOM, and 5.8% of the articles published in the eight issues of M&SOM. The findings reported in this paper reflect the reach of the three journals and the perceptions of various constituencies regarding journal quality. The findings about POM and JOM have a very high degree of validity because both journals are more than 10 years old and have well‐established constituencies. The conclusions about the M&SOM constituencies are tentative because it is about 3 years old, and it is still developing its constituencies.     

INTRODUCING INTERNATIONAL ISSUES INTO OPERATIONS MANAGEMENT CURRICULA

As the world moves toward a global economy, it is increasingly important that operations management courses prepare students to address globalization issues. The purpose of this paper is to contribute to the dialog concerning how international topics are best incorporated into operations management curricula. On the basis of the results of a survey of operations management academicians worldwide, current course offerings are cataloged and topic areas critical to the globalization of operations are identified. Four major reasons for studying international operations management are proposed, which provide the basis for recommendations on how international topics can be introduced into established operations courses and for the design of an elective course in global operations. Finally, teaching materials relevant to international operations are surveyed.     

PLANT‐LEVEL ENVIRONMENTAL MANAGEMENT ORIENTATION: THE INFLUENCE OF MANAGEMENT VIEWS AND PLANT CHARACTERISTICS

As customers, the public and other stakeholders are increasingly demanding that manufacturing firms improve their approach to environmental management, some plants have moved to develop an orientation that is increasingly proactive. Synthesizing earlier research, environmental management orientation is defined here to include system analysis and planning, organizational responsibility, and management controls. The relationship between a proactive orientation and two sets of internal factors, specifically the personal views of plant managers and plant‐specific characteristics, was tested using survey data from the furniture industry. The production outlook for the plant was critical, with a favorable outlook fostering a more proactive environmental management orientation. After controlling for plant‐specific factors, personal views also were influential; an increasing emphasis on short‐term economic value was related to a more reactive plant‐level orientation. Thus senior corporate management can foster strong plant‐level environmental management through a more balanced emphasis on economic and ethical values and continued investment in a plant's long‐term viability.     

TEACHING OPERATIONS MANAGEMENT FROM A SCIENCE OF MANUFACTURING

Recently, there has been much concern over the dumbing down of production and operations management (pom) courses in response to the repudiation of the theory-heavy operations research (or) approach that became dominant during the 1970s. However, although almost everyone agrees that a new POM framework is needed, there is as yet little agreement on what it should be like. As a result, there is currently a huge variance among POM courses at different universities, ranging all the way from traditional OR courses to almost purely anecdotal case-oriented courses. Although academics have struggled with the search for an appropriate level of methodological rigor in POM courses, our customers (i.e., students and the firms that hire them) have been inundated by a blizzard of management buzzwords. Although many of these undoubtedly contain kernels of truth, the very nature of the buzzword approach is such that it provides little balanced guidance as to what methods work well in a given situation. In recognition of these disparities, POM researchers have begun trying to systematically describe the underlying behavior of production systems. The goal is to provide a framework that will help organize educational approaches and business practices in a consistent fashion. In this paper, we describe our attempt at the needed “science of manufacturing,” which we call factory physics, and illustrate how it fits into a new paradigm of POM teaching.     

MULTIPLE RATERS IN SURVEY‐BASED OPERATIONS MANAGEMENT RESEARCH: A REVIEW AND TUTORIAL

Research in the area of operations strategy has made significant progress during the past decade in terms of quantity of articles published, as well as the quality of these articles. Recent studies have examined the published literature base and determined that, in general, the field has progressed beyond an exploratory stage to a point where there is a core set of basic terminology and models. Concurrent with the formation and solidification of a core terminology, there is an increasing emphasis on developing and employing a set of reliable, valid, and reproducible methods for conducting research on operations strategy. We provide a review of common methods for assessing the degree of reliability and agreement of the responses provided by multiple raters within a given organization to a set of qualitative questions. In particular, we examine four methods of determining whether there is evidence of disagreement or bias between multiple raters within a single organization in a mail survey.     

APPLYING SCENARIO‐DRIVEN STRATEGY TO INTEGRATE ENVIRONMENTAL MANAGEMENT AND PRODUCT DESIGN

The successful development of breakthrough products with environmental attributes can not only create competitive advantage through operations excellence but also benefit the environment. This paper proposes a comprehensive scenario‐driven method with detailed implementation steps for planning and developing breakthrough products with environmental attributes. A case study based on the development process of biotechnology products is presented to show the applications of the method and the resulting importance of flexibility as a key ingredient in operations strategy. The paper also discusses various operational, marketing, technological, economic, and environmental issues concerning the development of biotechnology products, an area that could have a significant impact on both human health and the natural environment.     

A NEW PARADIGM FOR TEACHING INTRODUCTORY PRODUCTION/OPERATIONS MANAGEMENT

This paper postulates that the perception among students that operations management is a tedious, irrelevant subject is a symptom of the lack of a conceptual framework that effectively communicates the importance and relevance of the operations function in a firm. The first half of this paper discusses traditional frameworks, those most frequently found in introductory production and operations management (pom) textbooks, and several alternative approaches to teaching an introductory POM course. The discussion questions whether any of these existing frameworks is sufficient to meet the challenges faced while teaching POM in today's environment and identifies what characteristics an effective framework should possess. These characteristics include defining the scope and bounds of the field, capturing its integrative and system aspects, providing a visible depiction of the framework to aid comprehension, and promoting higher-level thinking (i.e., analysis, synthesis, and criticism) to deepen understanding. This discussion concludes that no current framework meets all of these criteria, therefore there remains a need for a more effective approach for introducing POM. The remainder of the paper describes one approach to conceptualizing the field that satisfies these criteria.     

DELIVERY GUARANTEES AND THE INTERDEPENDENCE OF MARKETING AND OPERATIONS

Delivery guarantees are an important element in a customer satisfaction program. When setting delivery guarantees, a firm must consider customer expectations as well as operational constraints. We develop a profit‐maximization model in which a firm's sales organization, with incomplete information on operations' status, solicits orders and quotes delivery dates. If obtained, orders are processed in a make‐to‐order facility, after which revenue is received, minus tardiness penalty if the delivery was later than quoted. We specify conditions for an optimal log‐linear decision rule and provide exact expressions for its effect on arrival rate, mean processing time, and mean cycle time.     

MIXED ASSEMBLY AND DISASSEMBLY OPERATIONS FOR REMANUFACTURING

In this paper we consider the problem of designing a mixed assembly‐disassembly line for remanufacturing. That is, parts from the disassembly and repair of used products can be used to build “new” products. This is a problem common to many OEM remanufacturers, such as Xerox or Kodak. We study two main configurations, under the assumption that the disassembly sequence is exactly the reverse of the assembly sequence. Under a parallel configuration, there exist two separate dedicated lines, one for assembly and one for disassembly, which are decoupled by buffers—from both disassembly operations, which have preference, as well as parts from an outside, perfectly reliable supplier. Under a mixed configuration, the same station is used for both disassembly and assembly of a specific part. The problem is studied using GI/G/c networks, as well as simulation. Due to a loss of pooling, we conclude that the parallel configuration outperforms the mixed line only when the variability of both arrivals and processing time are significantly higher for disassembly and remanufacturing than for assembly. Via a simulation, we explore the impact of having advanced yield information for the remanufacturing parts. We find that advanced yield information generally improves flow times; however, there are some instances where it lengthens flow times.     

PRODUCTION/OPERATIONS MANAGEMENT: PURE PREDICTIONS FOR THE '80s1

The future of production/operations management is examined. Following a lead-in designed to grab your attention and to demonstrate the relation between production/operations management and health care, 14 specific and irrefutable pure predictions are presented. Briefly, they are 1,2, and 3, followed by 4 through 12, and closing with 14 and 15.