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.     

Improving operational performance through knowledge exchange with customers

Drawing upon a knowledge-based view of the supply chain, this study analyses the antecedents and consequences of tacit and explicit knowledge transfer, from the supplier's standpoint. The proposed conceptual model is tested using survey data from a sample of 218 Canadian manufacturers. Results show that the exchange of tacit and explicit knowledge in the context of a relationship between a supplier and a customer has a positive impact on the supplier's operational performance. As expected, tacit knowledge exchange appears to have a stronger impact on performance than explicit knowledge exchange. Results also confirm the importance of the level of integration and inter-firm trust for the exchange of both types of knowledge. Although many studies of knowledge transfer in the supply chain have been published to date, no empirical study has specifically examined the simultaneous effect of both types of knowledge.     

Designing effective team-based performance measurement systems: an integrated approach

Measuring the performance of teams and, in particular, designing effective team-based performance measurement systems (TPMS) can be a difficult task. The purpose of this paper is to take the reader through the development and testing of a construct that provides an integrated approach to facilitate the design of TPMS. This construct was developed and tested based on a rigorous set of criteria adopted from constructive research theory as well as from existing performance measurement literature. The construct was tested in a series of workshops described in this paper. The data gathered during these workshops demonstrates the novelty and validity of the construct. The paper should be of interest to managers, team leaders and indeed anyone who is interested in monitoring and managing team performance. The paper will also be of interest to academics working in the fields of performance measurement and team management.     

战略控股过程:目标企业所有权结构的影响研究

一个企业在另一个企业实现具有控制地位的持股(Holding)具有重要的战略意义。本文采用过程的观点把这种战略控股(Strategic Holding)实现过程分为急进型(Outright)实现控股和渐进型(Incremental)或者顺序型(Sequential)实现控股两种过程类型。本文集中探讨目标企业所有权结构对战略控股实现途径选择的影响。基于中国上市公司数据,我们对129例战略控股过程进行了回归分析。结果显示,目标企业所有权越集中,战略控股的实现过程越倾向于渐进型;政府在推动企业重组进程中起着关键作用;目标企业中员工股份比例较低,对战略控股过程似无影响;作为目标企业持股者,机构持股人的作用无明显倾向。另外,结果显示民营企业作为买方倾向于采取走渐进型的方式来实现对上市公司的战略控股。     

The role of cognitive load in effective strategic issue management

Firms have different ways of addressing issues emerging from outside their regular calendar-driven strategy processes. These practices tend to be unstructured, organization specific, and highly dependent on the characteristics of the strategic issues themselves. Building on three dimensions of cognitive load—intrinsic, germane, and extraneous cognitive load—we extend existing research on strategic issue management by showing how different team-level choices in strategic issue processing and organizational congestion interact in their effects on a firm's strategic issue management performance. Based on an in-depth analysis of all 92 strategic issue decisions in a large multinational firm during a three-year period, we find that organizational disturbances influence strategic issue initiation by top management, which in turn influences the quality of strategic issue management practices and subsequent performance outcomes. We conclude by providing recommendations for managers on how they can decrease the sensitivity of their companies' strategic issue systems to external disturbances.     

Procurement Contracts in the Presence of Endogenous Disruption Risk

We consider a manufacturer facing an unreliable supplier with high or low type on initial reliability. The private reliability can be enhanced through process improvement initiated by either manufacturer (manufacturer‐initiated improvement, MI) or supplier (supplier‐initiated improvement, SI). We derive optimal procurement contracts for both mechanisms and find that the moral hazard does not necessarily generate more profit for high‐type supplier. Furthermore, information asymmetry causes a greater possibility of not ordering from low type in SI than MI. For low type, when an upward effort distortion appears in both mechanisms, a decreased (increased) unit penalty should be imposed in MI (SI) compared with symmetric information case. Although possibly efficient effort from the supplier could yield greater channel profit in SI, several scenarios violate this expectation. However, the manufacturer's expected profit in MI is no less than that in SI. When MI is extended to MSI where both manufacturer and supplier can exert effort, the expected profits of two parties are equal to those in SI. We further extend SI to SID, where both process improvement and dual‐sourcing are available. The manufacturer considers the trade‐off between the benefit from diversification and the loss from dual information rent to decide to choose SID or MI. By comparing SID with pure dual‐sourcing, we find that supplier's process improvement could either accelerate or retard the exercise of dual‐sourcing.     

The magic matrix as a smart machine evaluator: Machine performance measurement,level of competitiveness

Today's competitive environment compels companies to be the best at the work they do. Machining efficiency establishes the plant level of performance and thus the ability to compete in the market. However, as product mix changes, and new machines possessing more and better capabilities are introduced, machining efficiency varies over time. Therefore, continuous evaluation of machine fitness for product mix has to be made. This is a huge task and is seldom done due to a lack of efficient tools to perform such an evaluation. This paper presents a computerized method that may be used to perform the evaluation task and establish the company level of competitiveness in an honest, and just way, free from improper influence. Conclusions drawn, and actions and decisions made as a result of the evaluation, are the prerogative of management. The evaluation method employs a matrix concept, which is fully described in this paper.     

A stakeholder perspective on process improvement behaviours: delivering the triple bottom line in SMEs

Abstract

The primary focus of operations management is to add value through operational processes. Considerable attention has been given to using process improvement (PI) techniques to reduce costs and time, in order to develop a competitive advantage for the wider organization. However, this narrow definition of value at times overlooks the triple bottom line (TBL) which can result in a number of unintended consequences, specifically issues related to environmental and social measures of performance. To address this, a stakeholder theory lens will be used to analyze PI activities within the context of small and medium-sized enterprises. The TBL will be used to complement the stakeholder perspective, to interpret the benefits that are realized from PI activities. This article highlights both the direct benefits from PI as well as more indirect benefits realized by involving a selection of salient stakeholders in PI. It will show how a developed view of PI can provide an important mechanism for delivering improvements to a firm’s TBL. The work concludes by highlighting the contributions made to both PI practice and stakeholder theory, while acknowledging the need for more research on PI, both from a stakeholder perspective and how it impacts a firm’s TBL.     

Global Multisourcing Strategy: The Emergence of a Supplier Portfolio in Services Offshoring

In today's global services outsourcing arena, increasing numbers of companies adopt “multisourcing,” that is, they select and combine information technology (IT) and business services from multiple providers. The literature on IT outsourcing and supply chain management has identified critical tradeoffs involved in increasing the number of suppliers and has strongly recommended focusing on a handful of strategic partners to balance these tradeoffs. Committing to a few strategic partners, however, may prevent a firm from discovering new suppliers, or even supply regions. Such missed opportunities may be particularly limiting in the context of offshoring professional services, which has exhibited rapid changes in supplier markets in the last decade. Thus, firms may want to engage in a more intensive multisourcing in services. If they do so, their success will depend on a global sourcing process that effectively addresses the critical tradeoffs involved. To explore how a global sourcing process can support multisourcing, we conducted a qualitative longitudinal case study of a large financial services institution that developed a varied global supply base to obtain offshore professional services. Our analysis results in a theory that emphasizes (i) advantages of a multiple provider strategy in rapidly changing global supply markets; (ii) the critical role of middle managers in enabling continuous innovation in the supplier structure; and (iii) the importance of the global sourcing process combining top–down and bottom–up decision making in multisourcing.     

Technological newness: An empirical study in the process industries

Technological change in product development is a crucial issue in the management of technology. The entire sweep of technological changes over the past hundred of years is, in essence, the sum of thousands of individual product development projects in thousands of firms. Yet the degree of technological change in individual development projects has not been extensively studied. This paper presents a four-dimensional characterization of technological newness for product development projects in the process industries in which product development is closely tied to process innovation. The characterization uses four dimensions of change that are required in the development of new products: chemistry, production equipment, fabrication technology and process control. Based on the framework of technological newness, the paper presents data collected on the degree of process change in a set of 20 product development projects conducted by a large manufacturer of advanced polymers. The data provide a clear demonstration of the value of the measurement framework, showing a strong relationship between the characterization of change and the project performance.     

Mitigating the Impact of Functional Dominance in Cross‐Functional Process Improvement Teams

Manufacturing process improvement teams often draw upon cross‐functional expertise. However, teams dominated by a single or few functions often do not achieve the desired interdisciplinary learning and cooperation, which in turn could negatively affect the performance of that cross‐functional team. Through an empirical analysis of 149 manufacturing process improvement teams in six SIC industrial categories, we show that even after controlling for several factors such as team size, number of functions, gender diversity, ethnicity, number of management levels, and geographic dispersion of team members, psychological safety of work environment fully mediates the relationship between functional dominance and team performance. We also confirm that a team leader possessing high interpersonal justice mitigates the deficiency of dominated teams and improves team performance by fostering a psychologically safe work environment. Our recommendation therefore is that when a dominated team is unavoidable due to the needed skill sets or other organizational considerations, to ensure success it is imperative that the firm chooses a team leader who can promote psychological safety by being just, and who can effectively encourage input from all functional team members and give them objective feedback.     

Quality control practices in Saudi Arabia: Survey result

Quality improvement is essential in gaining a competitive edge in today's market. This paper is an assessment of quality awareness in the manufacturing sector in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. A survey is conducted in the Eastern Province, a centre of the petrochemical industry and other types of industries in the Kingdom. The survey includes 87 companies. The use of statistical process control tools and the adoption of modern quality control concepts, such as quality circles and total quality management, are investigated. Results show an encouraging trend of adopting modern quality control technology specially among large companies. This technology is transferred mainly through joint ventures with foreign companies.     

Aligning operations,marketing, and competitive strategies to enhance performance: An empirical test in the retail banking industry

The close linkage between competitive strategy and functional strategic activities is asserted to be a precondition to the achievement of optimal business performance. This study explores how the relationship between (and among) operations, marketing, and competitive strategies affects organizational performance in the banking industry. Our findings show that: (a) competitive strategy moderates the relationship between operations and marketing strategic activities, and organizational performance, (b) certain integrated strategic decisions of operations and marketing functions have a significant impact on organizational performance, and (c) the performance of retail banks within a strategic group differs depending on the quality of the strategic fit.     

Fostering Risk Taking in Research and Development: The Importance of a Project's Terminal Value

Large firms face a conflict in managing a portfolio of high-risk projects. When an ongoing project is thought to have a low likelihood of success, project team members take risks to improve its chances of success. However, upper-level managers who allocate resources tend to withhold resources from a project with a low likelihood of success in favor of others in the portfolio that look more promising. Because this paucity of resources influences project team members to avoid risk, the total effect of success likelihood on risk taking is conflicted. The influence on risk taking of a project's terminal value—defined as the value that remains in the firm in the event of project failure—is unequivocally positive, because both senior management resource allocation and project team risk-taking propensity are encouraged by terminal value. Thus, firms can override the ambivalent effect of likelihood of success on project decision making by focusing attention on a project's terminal value.     

Improving innovation performance through environmental practices in the fashion industry: the moderating effect of internationalisation and the influence of collaboration

In recent years, the scientific literature on supply chain management has increasingly debated on environmental sustainability as well as collaboration, presenting these issues as an important source of innovation along the supply chain. By combining literature streams on environmental sustainability, supply chain collaboration and innovation at the supply chain level, this paper aims to analyse whether the adoption of environmental sustainability practices and collaboration along the supply chain implies better innovation performance, in terms of differentiation from the competitors for higher quality, product or process. The paper also investigates whether the internationalisation, in terms of both production and distribution activities, negatively moderates this relationship. The study focuses on the fashion industry, and a survey of major Italian fashion companies was conducted. The main results of the research clearly show the positive impact of these practices on innovation performance. The paper also proves the existence of a moderating effect exerted by internationalisation on the relationship between environmental sustainability and innovation performance.     

Optimal dispatching control of an AGV in a JIT production system

This paper deals with an FMS (Flexible Manufacturing System) in a JIT (Just-In-Time) production system. The FMS consists of m workstations, one dispatching station and a single AGV (Automated Guided Vehicle). Each workstation has an input buffer of limited capacity and its processing times are distributed stochastically. When the processing of a new component starts at the workstation, a withdrawal Kanban attached to it is sent to the dispatching station. The AGV chooses one from workstations whose withdrawal Kanbans are accumulated at the dispatching station, and conveys a component with a withdrawal Kanban from the dispatching station to the workstation. The main purpose of this paper is to find an optimal dispatching policy of the AGV that maximizes the long-run expected average reward per unit time. The problem is formulated as a semi-Markov decision process and an optimal dispatching policy is computed. Numerical experiments are performed to make several comparisons.     

Shopfloor control practices in three Pacific basin countries: a comparative view of small machine tool industry

The strategic importance of manufacturing decisions to the competitive position of a firm is well known. As the sphere of competition has expanded from regional to national to international, successful manufacturing decisions have become ever more complex. The success of manufacturing strategics ultimately rests on proper tactical implementation at the shopfloor level. In order to explore various operating policies and procedures at a basic level, and to contrast them with some commonly held beliefs, this paper examines and compares the shopfloor practices of companies in the small machines too! industry in selected countries in the Pacific rim, namely; Japan,

China and South Korea. While many popular views on manufacturing practices in these countries are supported by the study, the results challenge other commonly held views.     

The use of performance measurement as a basis for project control of offshore modification oil and gas projects

The methods presented in this article are based on the qualitative and quantitative analysis of close-out data drawn from a portfolio of 38 modification projects. The primary premise is that modification projects are intrinsically subject to quantity and complexity growth during the course of detailed engineering as a consequence of the indeterminate interface with the existing facility. The normative project control routines need to be supplemented by material take-offs-based weight monitoring as a basis for re-estimation and re-calibration of the project baselines as detailed engineering proceeds in order to mitigate this uncertainty as early as possible. Similarly, estimating needs to be based on norms drawn from performance measurement of modification work rather than extrapolations from greenfield projects, particularly the work performed on the platforms. This article presents a portfolio of project control methods based on the performance measurement principle covering the short term of single projects as well as the longer term multi-project perspective.     

Knowledge sharing for innovation performance improvement in micro/SMEs: an insight from the creative sector

Abstract

As economies become more reliant on innovative, knowledge-intensive firms, understanding the interaction between knowledge and improving innovation performance is increasingly important. Although most UK businesses are micro, small or medium-sized enterprises (micro/SMEs), knowledge management research has tended to focus on large companies Knowledge sharing can be critical for innovation performance, especially for smaller players with limited resources. Our study presents an insight from micro/SMEs operating in the highly knowledge-intensive and innovative games/entertainment software development sector. Using a mixed method approach, we investigate knowledge sharing and its contribution to firm innovation performance improvements. Our findings suggest that micro/SMEs are at the forefront of the creative sector precisely because of their smaller size. Our study reveals evidence of knowledge donation but limited evidence of knowledge collection in the knowledge sharing process. We develop a model highlighting the importance of industry context, individual knowledge and organizational size in knowledge sharing for innovation performance.