A modelling approach for production costing and continuous improvement of manufacturing processes

It is shown how production management constraints can be taken into account as early as the design stage of the product. It is then shown that the indication of physical and economic performances is a means to obtain integration and to continually improve the manufacturing processes. To perform continuous and efficient evaluation of physical and economic performances, the concept of activity is introduced, now acknowledged as a basic concept of cost management systems. A modelling approach is then proposed to allow each member of the design team, in a concurrent engineering context, to perform activity based modelling and estimations with simulation. After describing the set of possible situations in which this approach can be used, an application case is presented concerning a French firm, and the advantages and disadvantages of the approach are discussed.     

Manufacturing bill-of-material planning

The bill-of-material BOM in the machine tool industry takes two different forms in design and manufacturing functions: Engineering BOM E BOM , which is used by the design engineer to represent designed product structure; and manufacturing BOM M BOM , which is used by MRPII system for MRP explosion. The designer constructs the E BOM after the product has been designed. Next, the E BOM is transformed into the M BOM by considering assembly sequence and constraints. Constructing a M BOM simply involves compressing the E BOM into a three-level M BOM. Planning of a M BOM still depends primarily on the experience input of a manufacturing engineer and is performed manually. This trial and error and time consuming approach creates an inconsistent method for planning the M BOM. Therefore, in this study, a three-stage M BOM planning method is developed. Stage one plans the initial M BOM, stage two improves the M BOM and stage three tunes the M BOM. Concepts and algorithms of each stage are highlighted in this study. Moreover, an illustration is presented to demonstrate the feasibility of M BOM planning.     

不完全信息下多阶段移动应用产品与服务合作的可更新契约

考虑不完全信息下由提供移动应用产品与服务的ERP厂商、APP厂商与客户企业组成的产品服务供应链,针对ERP厂商与APP厂商产品服务合作中存在的逆向选择与道德风险问题,构建两阶段的动态博弈模型,分析了APP厂商隐藏与披露能力信息对产品与服务质量、供应链系统绩效与ERP厂商利润的影响,提出了信息披露、收益共享的单阶段契约与存在契约变更的两阶段契约激励策略,比较了两种契约的价值。研究表明：通过在产品开发阶段观察APP厂商的契约菜单选择以及获得的产品质量信息,甄别APP厂商的能力信息,在服务阶段进行契约变更,有利于提高产品与服务质量,降低ERP厂商风险,使供应链系统利润与ERP厂商自身利润实现帕累托改善。最后,通过算例对研究结论进行了直观考察和说明。     

Remanufacturing of mobile phones—capacity, program and facility adaptation planning

Successful remanufacturing of mobile phones must meet the challenges of continuously falling prices for new phone models, short life cycles, disassembly of unfriendly designs and prohibiting transport, labor and machining costs in high-wage countries. A generic remanufacturing plan for mobile phones is developed. For the planning of remanufacturing capacities and production programs, a linear optimization model is introduced. To support the planner in the periodic adaptation of an existing remanufacturing facility under quickly changing product, process, and market constraints, discrete-event simulation is applied. Uncertainties regarding quantity and conditions of mobile phones, reliability of capacities, processing times, and demand are considered. The simulation model is generated by an algorithm using results from the linear optimization approach.     

An Information‐Processing Approach for Evaluating In‐Store Retail Operational Design Strategies

We develop a model to evaluate retail store operational design strategies using an information‐processing perspective of organizational design. We propose that three model constructs pertaining to in‐store shopper task uncertainty—the product mix complexity, the service production complexity, and the product mix changeover—create shopper encounter information requirements (IR). These requirements can be met using specific retail service operational design choices for managing shopper encounters, namely, designing layouts for self‐service (SS) and providing employees with task empowerment (TE). The model is then operationalized using a two‐stage approach to develop new multi‐item, measurement scales. The psychometric properties and predictive validity of the scales and model are then confirmed by using structural equation modeling with survey data from 175 merchandise retail store managers. We find that our model can be generically applied across the retail industry to understand how shopper encounter IR motivate retailer store design choices and can be used to determine whether to design stores for SS or to provide store employees with TE. We then evaluate the efficacy of the studied store design choices on customer delivery satisfaction, and offer some suggestions for future research.     

Cost models for evaluating virtual design strategies in multicycle product families

Rapid technological change and increased competition are forcing firms to compress the time it takes to develop product families and rapidly realize innovations among successive family members (models). Competition in rapidly changing high-variety markets requires effective management of design information across successive generations of products as well as in the same product generation. This paper considers two complementary approaches to design information management: virtual design and modular design. Virtual design describes the abstraction hierarchy used to represent product function. Modular design describes the hierarchy of physical realizations of the product and leads to a group technology approach to manufacturing. An analytical model is used to describe the impact of design management strategy characterized by investment in tools and infrastructure for virtual design and group technology on product development costs. This model provides insight into the impacts on costs of the mix of standard and revised parts in a product family. Virtual design has greatest impact on cost when there is a large proportion of parts revision, while group technology has most impact on cost when large numbers of standard parts are re-used. Effective management strategy for high variety rapidly changing products should combine both of these approaches and emphasize compatible organizational methods and technology integration.     

Development of sustainable platform for modular product family: a case study

Abstract

Defining product platform architecture is a critical issue to design and develop product variants. Different factors are highly dependent on the architecture type, such as number of variants, to measure modularity level, component commonality, market demand, etc. It is directly related to manage product portfolios and setting up business plan of a company. Before defining a product platform, whether it is modular or integral product designers need to follow specific design guidelines and checklists. This research mainly focuses on to define the platform architecture as well as provides necessary design guidelines and checklists for the product designers. It also highlights an example product of a case company with the objective to clarify/validate the proposed product design approach. In conclusion, this paper outlines the findings from this research and proposed some critical questions need to be answered within the scope of future research potentials.     

Engineering changes for made-to-order products: How an MRP II system should handle them

Engineering or design changes are an integral part of any design and manufacturing chain of activities. In a made-to-order environment, standard design changes are outnumbered by those emerging during the design and manufacturing stages of individual contracts. This paper discusses the peculiarities of engineering changes in such an environment and proposes an integrated approach to monitoring, controlling and reporting of related activities, using a combination of MRP II modules, enhanced with manual forms, aimed at minimizing the painful impact of numerous design updates throughout the in-house product life cycle.     

面向大规模定制的产品族功能性评价与选择方法

针对大规模定制生产模式下产品多样性和低复杂性的矛盾,系统地研究了一种大规模定制产品族的功能性评价与选择方法。分别以功能域的类功能需求(GFR)和物理域的类设计参数(GDP)对大规模定制产品族进行了描述,并基于公理设计理论建立了GFR和GDP之间的映射关系。提出了产品族功能的定制度的概念和计算方法,建立了基于定制度的定制功能的评价和选择方法。     

消费者短视和以旧换新情形下设计架构与定价策略研究

耐用品的耐用性会抑制了新一代耐用品的销售,企业通常会采用以旧换新政策来激励新一代耐用品的销售。企业有两种产品设计架构策略:一体化架构策略与模块化架构策略,同时企业也有两种定价策略:静态定价策略和动态定价策略。在这种情况下,企业该如何确定产品设计架构和定价策略?在假定两期内消费者是短视情形下,论文建立了消费者与企业博弈模型分析和比较了三种情况。研究发现,无论是静态定价还是动态定价,无论是模块化架构还是一体化架构,购买了第一代产品的消费者都会整体更换成第二代产品;随着第二代核心系统的质量提升,以旧换新促使企业产品架构选择从一体化架构转变为选择模块化架构;当采用动态定价、第二代核心系统质量提升适中和折扣因子高时,企业会选择模块化架构;当企业采用模块化架构时,以旧换新政策会降低模块化产品第二代核心子系统和基础子系统之间的兼容性;如果两代产品之间的质量差距比较大,企业将会选择动态定价策略,反之会选择静态定价策略。     

Design of Flexible Multi‐Stage Processes

Faced with demand uncertainty across multiple product lines, many companies have recourse to flexible capacities which can process different products in order to better balance the trade‐off between capacity utilization and cost efficiency. Many studies demonstrated the potential benefit of using flexible capacity at the aggregate level by treating a whole plant or a whole process as a single stage. This paper extends these analyses by studying the benefits of flexible capacity while considering the multi‐stage structure of processes and consequently determining which stages should be flexible, which should be dedicated, and how much capacity to assign to each stage. We consider a two‐product firm which operates in a process‐to‐order environment and faces uncertain demand. Each stage of the process can be designed as dedicated or flexible. Dedicated resources are highly cost efficient but limited to the single product they are exclusively designed for, whereas flexible resources are versatile to handle several products but are more expensive. Using a general mathematical formulation our analysis shows that the optimal design may have some dedicated and some flexible stages along the process. Interestingly, this decision should be decoupled from the chronological order of the stages along the process.     

A robust approach to the share-of-choice product design problem

A critical issue when solving the share-of-choice product design problem is the reliability of the optimal solution in the presence of partworth uncertainty. Existing approaches use point estimates of an individual's partworth utilities as input to the product optimization stage, ignoring within-person variability in estimates. Post-optimality sensitivity analysis is occasionally performed to assess the degree to which a solution is negatively impacted by partworth uncertainty. We propose a robust optimization model that explicitly captures variation in partworth estimates during the optimization process. Using a large, commercial dataset, we benchmark our model's performance against its deterministic counterpart. We also present inferential theory to guide the selection of model parameters controlled by the analyst. Results reveal that the new approach produces robust solutions in the face of measurement error. Out-of-sample coverage for individuals drawn from the target population is significantly higher than corresponding solutions from published methods.     

Optimising correlated QCHs in robust design using principal components analysis and DEA techniques

Taguchi method is found efficient for optimising process performance with a single quality characteristic (QCH) of a product or process. In practice, however, customers are concerned about multiple QCHs, which are usually correlated. This research proposes and implements an approach using principal components analysis (PCA) and two data envelopment analysis (DEA) models, including CCR and super efficiency, for optimising multiple correlated QCHs in robust design. The PCA is first utilised to obtain multiple uncorrelated linear combinations of principal components, which are the same number of QCHs and hence avoid the loss of information by ignoring some principal components. Then, these components are utilised in two DEA models to decide optimal factor levels. Three real case studies are provided for illustration; in all of which the proposed approach is found more efficient than some other techniques in literature, including engineering judgement, PCA, PCA and grey analysis, and utility concept. In conclusion, the proposed approach shall provide a great assistance to process/product engineers for obtaining robust design with multiple correlated QCHs.     

大规模定制产品柔性分析

提出了一种表达大规模定制产品及其设计参数定制难易程度的指标———柔性指数。基于公理化设计理论,建立了定制方程,导出了柔性指数的计算方法。提出了一种通过计算直接影响设计参数数量和间接影响设计参数数量来比较柔性指数的简便方法。     

The Development Manager's Advisory System: A Knowledge-Based DSS Tool for Project Assessment*

This research investigates whether the knowledge-based decision support system (KBDSS) paradigm provides the necessary supporting structure and developmental framework for product development evaluation. To address the research questions posed in this study, it is necessary to develop and implement KBDSS's at specific decision points along the product development cycle. This paper describes the design, development, and implementation of a KBDSS to support a product development manager's decision concerning full-scale development of a new product. From the systems design perspective, this paper addresses the integration and innovative use of a variety of techniques for knowledge acquisition, modeling, and processing. The approach utilized obtains the benefits of normative modeling as well as the flexibility and developmental advantages of knowledge-based systems. Since its implementation, the system has been successfully used by a development manager to support his recommendation for an ongoing project. His complete satisfaction with this system served as the impetus for the design and development of a multi-expert system which was implemented at the strategic level.     

Effective Design of Products/Services: An Approach Based on Integration of Marketing and Operations Management Decisions*

This paper presents an integrated framework for designing profit‐maximizing products/ services, which can also be produced at reasonable operating difficulty levels. Operating difficulty is represented as a function of product and process attributes, and measures a firm's relative ease or difficulty in meeting customer demand patterns under specified operating conditions. Earlier optimum product design procedures have not considered. operational difficulty. We show that optimum profit, market share, cost, and product profiles are dependent on operating difficulty level. Empirical results from the pizza delivery industry demonstrate the value of the proposed Effective Product/Service Design approach.     

On the product selection and plant dimensioning problem under uncertainty

We present a two-stage full recourse model for strategic production planning under uncertainty, whose aim consists of determining product selection and plant dimensioning. The main uncertain parameters are the product price, demand and production cost. The benefit is given by the product net profit over the time horizon minus the investment depreciation and operation costs. The Value-at-Risk and the reaching probability are considered as risk measures in the objective function to be optimized as alternatives to the maximization of the expected benefit over the scenarios. The uncertainty is represented by a set of scenarios. The problem is formulated as a mixed 0–1 Deterministic Equivalent Model. The strategic decisions to be made in the first stage are represented by 0–1 variables. The tactical decisions to be made in the second stage are represented by continuous variables. An approach for problem solving based on a splitting variable mathematical representation via scenario is considered. The problem uses the Twin Node Family concept within the algorithmic framework known as Branch-and-Fix Coordination for satisfying the nonanticipativity constraints. Some computational experience is reported.     

基于公理设计和功能过剩的公共住房撮合分配方法

公共住房的合理分配是关系保障性安居工程成败及可持续发展的"生命线"。公共住房分配中缺乏科学规划和依据,既难以保障公共住房资源分配的"公平正义",也在一定程度上造成了效率缺失。本文借鉴双边匹配思想,给出了一种基于公理设计和功能过剩的公共住房撮合分配方法,构建了一个公共住房撮合分配多目标优化决策模型。文中给出的公共住房分配案例计算表明,该方法有利于提高公共住房撮合分配的科学性、合理性及正确性,具有一定的可行性和适用性。基于相关系数权重的数值模拟试验,研究进一步探讨了住房保障的发展阶段、住房保障策略与最优撮合分配结果的关系,为公共住房分配提供了一些策略:在住房保障起步和发展阶段,应当优先考虑较高的保障覆盖面,同时也应避免公共住房对保障需求过剩;在住房保障发展成熟和完善阶段,则应当注重提高住房保障的保障水平,尽力满足住房保障对象更高水平的住房改善需求。     

多品种集约生产计划问题的模糊方法

提出具有模糊需求量和模糊能力约束以及资本水平约束的多品种类集约生产计划问题 的模糊优化模型及模糊解方法. 通过对模糊需求量和模糊等式的描述,提出了模糊需求环境下 生产- 库存平衡方程的两种等价的描述方法, 并给出了模糊等式的实用解释. 建立了具有模 糊需求量和模糊能力约束集约生产计划问题的优化模型FMAPP ,并给出了求解模型的参数规 划方法.     

A hybrid approach to configure eco-efficient supply chains under consideration of performance and risk aspects

Formal models that support multi-criteria decision making represent a strongly growing area in sustainable supply chain management research. However, uncertainties and risks are seldom considered in quantitative models for green supply chain (SC) design. The paper at hand suggests a hybrid approach to configure an eco-efficient SC for a new product under consideration of economic and environmental risks. Discrete-event simulation is applied to assess the financial, operational and environmental performance of different SC configuration options while the value-at-risk concept is adapted to evaluate related SC risks. The analytic hierarchy process is employed to solve the resulting multi-criteria decision problem of choosing the best option. The approach is illustrated at a case example of a fast moving consumer goods manufacturer.