Education: MRP/GT: A FRAMEWORK FOR PRODUCTION PLANNING AND CONTROL OF CELLULAR MANUFACTURING

American industry typically uses material requirements planning (MRP) for manufacturing control. This paper presents production planning and control procedures based on group technology (GT), which is used in British manufacturing. A translation between these ideas and the American approach is made, and it is suggested that a combination of MRP and GT is viable. The problems that arise, especially in the areas of lot-sizing and sequencing/scheduling, and their possible solutions are discussed. Since increased adoption of GT is expected within the next decade, an intensified research effort is warranted in these and other areas so that existing MRP systems can be modified or extended to handle cellular manufacturing control problems. Subject Areas: Material Requirements Planning and Production/Operations Management.     

A Virtual Cellular Manufacturing Approach to Batch Production*

In this paper, Virtual Cellular Manufacturing (VCM), an alternative approach to implementing cellular manufacturing, is investigated. VCM combines the setup efficiency typically obtained by Group Technology (GT) cellular manufacturing (CM) systems with the routing flexibility of a job shop. Unlike traditional CM systems in which the shop is physically designed as a series of cells, family-based scheduling criteria are used to form logical cells within a shop using a process layout. The result is the formation of temporary, virtual cells as opposed to the more traditional, permanent, physical cells present in GT systems. Virtual cells allow the shop to be more responsive to changes in demand and workload patterns. Production using VCM is compared to production using traditional cellular and job shop approaches. Results indicate that VCM yields significantly better flow time and due date performance over a wide range of common operating conditions, as well as being more robust to demand variability.     

Order Dispatching and Labor Assignment in Cellular Manufacturing Systems

Although order and labor dispatching in the job shop manufacturing setting have been investigated extensively over the last three decades, its representation of actual processes found in practice today is limited due to the move to cellular manufacturing (CM). Manufacturing cells have become an important approach to batch manufacturing in the last two decades, and their layout structure provides a dominant flow structure for the part routings. The flow shop nature of manufacturing cells adds a simplifying structure to the problem of planning worker assignments and order releases, which makes it more amenable to the use of optimization techniques. In this paper we exploit this characteristic and present two mathematical modeling approaches for making order dispatching and labor assignment/reassignment decisions in two different CM settings. The two formulations are evaluated in a dynamic simulation setting and compared to a heuristic procedure using tardiness as the primary performance measure. The formulations are superior to the heuristic approach and can be incorporated into detail scheduling systems that are being implemented by corporations employing enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems today.     

资源输出型地区的技术创新与经济增长——对"资源诅咒"现象的解释

以Romer的R&D内生增长模型为基本框架,将一个被动接受技术外溢的劳动密集型的自然资源开采部门引入其中,建立了资源输出型地区的4部门内生增长模型,并对其进行了市场竞争动态均衡分析及平衡增长路径上稳态解的比较静态分析,为资源输出型地区面对的"资源诅咒"问题提出了机理解释,即资源开发对技术创新的挤出效应.分析表明,丰裕的自然资源和较高的资源价格可以吸引劳动力去从事缺乏技术含量的简单的初级资源开采活动,使制造业部门和R&D部门的劳动力投入相对减少,从而导致技术创新和长期经济增长的速度减缓.最后,利用我国西部11个省区的面板数据实证分析为理论解释提供了有效的经验支持.     

基于厂商理论的区域产业边界和最优要素配置结构

区域经济发展核心是产业结构优化升级和资源的优化配置。在全球经济结构亟待优化升级和要素资源呈现不同层次紧缺的大背景下,如何合理配置和引导区域资源配置,优化产业发展方向,确定包括新兴产业在内的产业发展战略,是每一个地区新形势下面临的重要问题。一方面,在经济全球化和零边际成本趋势驱动下,区域产业发展不再局限于区域内部资源禀赋,资源流动性加强,区域产业发展的选择更加广泛和灵活;另一方面,资源日益短缺和经济快速发展推动了劳动力成本和资本成本上升,产业的生产要素配置也随之变化。基于厂商理论,将区域作为市场经济中的生产主体,在考虑区域交易成本和生产要素成本的基础上,构建区域产业边界模型和产业的最佳要素配置结构模型,开创了资源和商品全球化趋势下的产业升级战略的研究范式,探索了成本约束下的产业生产要素优化配置模式,为经济新常态下的区域产业升级战略和资源配置研究提供理论指引,为区域制定个性化的产业发展战略提供实践依据,同时对零边际成本社会趋势下的产业格局进行了初步的探索。研究得出：产业边界能够在一定程度下反映区域产业长期演化趋势,在完全市场经济下产业边界是产业发展的最优规模;区域产业的要素配置格局取决于产业的资源占用和资源贡献情况,最优配置结构受各要素的相对贡献率和相对成本影响;产业边界与成本的关系取决于规模经济与否,在规模经济状态下与生产成本成正相关关系,与交易成本成负相关关系;大部分地区的农业有较大提升空间,最佳资源配置方案是加大机械动能投入。     

高端装备制造业技术创新资源配置效率及影响因素研究——基于两阶段StoNED和Tobit模型的实证分析

新常态下,高端装备制造业在推动国民经济稳定增长、加快传统工业转型升级、提升产业链核心竞争力的过程中,先导性和战略性作用日益凸出,但其技术创新资源配置的合理性和有效性却成为产业持续发展的主要瓶颈。本文从投入产出角度出发,基于价值链理论,将技术创新活动分为技术研发和技术转化两个阶段,并构建两阶段StoNED模型,采用2011-2014年的行业面板数据作为样本数据,对高端装备制造业技术创新资源配置效率进行测度和比较;以产业组织为视角,利用Tobit模型分析影响效率的关键因素。实证研究表明,我国高端装备制造业技术创新资源配置的整体和阶段效率在子行业间存在不同程度的波动和差异,技术研发阶段效率偏低制约着整体效率的最优化;甄别影响因素发现,企业规模对技术研发阶段效率具有负向作用,对整体和技术转化阶段效率具有正向作用;市场垄断不利于整体和技术转化阶段效率的提升;政府支持对整体和两阶段效率均具有负面影响。在此基础上,进一步提出应对产业技术创新资源配置现状的对策建议。     

资源配置最优控制模型研究

针对我国当前所面临的资金短缺和劳动力过剩的实际情况,本文从经济发展的内在规律和长期趋势出发,建立经济发展过程中的资源配置最优控制模型,并通过对模型的实证分析,探索在各种资源约束下经济发展最优化的有效途径,为制定经济发展规划、各种资源的最佳配置等方面提供一定的参考。     

大型建筑工程项目资源配置模型及策略研究——基于系统动力学的建模和仿真

大型建筑工程项目多类型资源的有效配置,是现阶段项目管理理论与工程管理实践面临的关键问题,特别是在考虑工艺顺序和间歇时间的工作可操作性特点,以及多资源之间反馈影响的情况下。通过整合挣值法和系统动力学理论,在分析资源可用性和工作可操作性之间因果关系的基础上,本文构建了大型建筑工程项目多资源配置的系统动力学模型。以上海市重大工程投资统计数据作为模型参数依据,模型的仿真结果表明:建筑工程项目不同类型资源其配置重要性与系统影响性存在显著差异,在制定资源配置策略时应同时考虑项目运作方式的特征与多资源之间的匹配,资源不匹配则容易导致资源配置系统失去稳态或策略失效。这为进一步研究项目管理中多资源配置提供了理论参考和实践支持。     

Adoption and Termination of Employee Involvement Programs

Using an interview survey of manufacturing establishments that provide 10 years of retrospective data on labor practices, we investigate factors associated with the adoption and termination of employee involvement programs and the relation between these and other human resource policies. In the period studied, more firms introduced than terminated such programs but a sufficiently large number chose to eliminate such programs to indicate that employee involvement does not fit in all business settings. Our results show that business strategy and the use of other complementary human resource policies affect the dynamics of employee involvement use in US manufacturing establishments.     

基于随机理论的多项目资源配置模型及应用研究

为解决多项目管理中共享资源配置问题,在对信息环境下企业资源特点研究的基础上,应用随机理论确定了企业资源多项目并行配置时的资源等效效率和效率转换系数,由此建立了资源配置效率模型,通过对其数学方程的分析给出了相应的算法.运用该模型和算法,通过实例分析实现了资源的合理配置.     

制造业国际竞争版图:基于竞争优先权理论的实证研究

从竞争优先权的视角,本文研究了制造企业国际竞争版图。在对竞争优先权理论文献研究的基础上,提出研究命题:由于外部环境的差异,不同地区制造企业的竞争优先权呈现不同的组合特征。在国际制造业战略调查2009的支持下,分析了制造企业竞争优先权的组合特征以及不同地区制造企业竞争优先权的特征差异。数据分析结果显示了四类竞争优先权——全面型、责任型、创新型和看守型。根据研究成果,绘制出制造企业的国际竞争版图,并构建了制造企业国际化竞争决策路径模型。     

Changing perspectives on the capital investment process

The environment within which institutions undertake commercial and industrial activity changes both as a result of decisions dependent on the institution itself and as a result of decisions independent of the institution. In recent years many of these changes have resulted in changing perspectives on the range of criteria which should be considered when determining how and where large corporations should invest their money. This paper examines these changes in corporate practice and identifies the cumulative results of these changes in the environment of corporate activity. The paper also examines some of the key elements in new approaches which corporations are adopting to capital investment decisions by utilizing data on a broadly based research project which examines in depth the capital investment/ resource allocation processes of five large, worldwide, manufacturing firms. The subject is of vital importance to large and small businesses, both because of the crucial importance of investment decisions and because of the importance for future strategic planning of identifying the environment within which corporate activities take place.     

新贸易理论与外商在华制造企业的出口决定

本文探讨外商制造企业出口的决定因素。现有的实证研究主要将重点放在企业的各种特征上 ,包括它们的规模、研究与开发强度以及劳动生产率。我们认为 ,区位因素也是影响外资企业出口决定的重要因素。我们的结论支持了强调内部和外部规模经济对出口的重要性的新贸易理论。比较优势和其他区位因素也起到重要作用。本研究采用1995年外商在华全部制造企业的数据 ,并构建一个二项分对数模型 (binomiallogitmodel)进行实证分析。结果表明 ,外资企业的出口决策决定于企业规模、产业以及区位特征。外资企业和产业在空间上的集中促进了外商制造企业的出口。此外 ,外资企业特别是亚洲投资者和采用劳动密集型生产工序的企业更倾向于出口。     

报酬方案和资源分配对预算松弛影响的实验研究:基于调整型资源分配方式的一个检验

本文基于管理控制理论,探索如何发挥预算的行为驱动及组织学习作用。运用实验方法研究了不同报酬方案下,对前期预算松弛调整的竞争性资源分配与控制方式对预算松弛的影响。研究结果显示,一方面通过模拟市场竞争诱导下属提交真实的预算目标,优化资源分配;另一方面对预算参与人的松弛行为实施有效控制,二者的交互作用可以有效降低预算松弛,体现了预算控制的双重优化作用。     

A variable neighborhood search algorithm for human resource selection and optimization problem in the home appliance manufacturing industry

The increase in human resource cost puts forward higher requirements for the optimization of home appliance manufacturing processes. This paper studied an integrated human resource optimization problem considering the human resource selection, learning effect, skills degradation effect, and parallel production lines. There are multiple different manufacturing tasks with different normal processing times. Human resources have different abilities and costs. The actual processing time of a task is determined by its normal processing time, position, and ability of the human resource. The objective is to minimize production time and the labor cost. To solve the studied problem, we first consider the case where the human resources have been selected and assigned to the production lines. Then, some structural properties are proposed and a heuristic is developed to arrange tasks on every single production line. Also, we derive a lower bound for the problem. Since the investigated problem is NP-hard, a Variable Neighborhood Search is designed to solve the problem in a reasonable time. Finally, computational experiments are conducted and the experimental results validate the performance of the proposed methods.

     

基于场景分析的应急资源布局模型研究

突发事件越来越频繁地发生,对应急物资保障提出了更高的要求,好的资源布局方案对地区需求的保障程度至关重要。本文利用场景分析的方法,给出一个适于多点需求,多点救助的应急资源布局多目标规划模型,并根据资源的具体配置情况决定选址,以期为选址决策者提供选址的依据。求解该问题时,针对模型设计了算法,并进行了算例分析。     

Multi-objective machine-component grouping in cellular manufacturing: A genetic algorithm

The cellular manufacturing system (CMS) is an important group technology (GT) application. The first step of CMS design is cell formation, generally known as machinecell formation (MCF) or machine-component (MCG). A genetic algorithm (GA) is a robust adaptive optimization method based on principles of natural evolution and is appropriate for the MCG problem, which is an NP complete complex problem. In this study, we propose a GA-based procedure to solve the MCG problem. More specifically, this study aims to minimize (1) total cost, which includes intercell and intracell part transportation costs and machines investment cots; (2) intracell machine loading imbalance; and (3) intercell machine loading imbalance under many realistic considerations. An illustrative example and comparisons demonstrate the effectiveness of this procedure. The proposed procedure is extremely adaptive, flexible, efficient and can be used to solve real MCG problems in factories by providing robust manufacturing cell formation in a short execution time.     

Managing Retail Budget Allocation between Store Labor and Marketing Activities

The performance of a retail store depends on its ability to attract customer traffic, match labor with incoming traffic, and convert the incoming traffic into sales. Retailers make significant investments in marketing activities (such as advertising) to bring customers into their stores and in‐store labor to convert that traffic into sales. Thus, a common trade‐off that retail store managers face concerns the allocation of a store's limited budget between advertising and labor to enhance store‐level sales. To explore that trade‐off, we develop a centralized model to allocate limited store budget between store labor and advertising with the objective of maximizing store sales. We find that a store's inherent potential to drive traffic plays an important role, among other factors, in the relative allocation between advertising and store labor. We also find that as advertising instruments become more effective in bringing traffic to stores, managers should not always capitalize this effectiveness by increasing their existing allocations to advertising. In addition, we discuss a decentralized setting where budget allocation decisions cannot be enforced by a store manager and present a simple mechanism that can achieve the centralized solution. In an extension, we address the budget allocation problem in the presence of marketing efforts to shift store traffic from peak to off peak hours and show that our initial findings are robust. Further, we illustrate how the solution from the budget allocation model can be used to facilitate store level sales force planning/scheduling decisions. Based on the results of our model, we present several insights that can help managers in budget allocation and sales force planning.     

Robust allocation of a defensive budget considering an attacker's private information

Attackers' private information is one of the main issues in defensive resource allocation games in homeland security. The outcome of a defense resource allocation decision critically depends on the accuracy of estimations about the attacker's attributes. However, terrorists' goals may be unknown to the defender, necessitating robust decisions by the defender. This article develops a robust-optimization game-theoretical model for identifying optimal defense resource allocation strategies for a rational defender facing a strategic attacker while the attacker's valuation of targets, being the most critical attribute of the attacker, is unknown but belongs to bounded distribution-free intervals. To our best knowledge, no previous research has applied robust optimization in homeland security resource allocation when uncertainty is defined in bounded distribution-free intervals. The key features of our model include (1) modeling uncertainty in attackers' attributes, where uncertainty is characterized by bounded intervals; (2) finding the robust-optimization equilibrium for the defender using concepts dealing with budget of uncertainty and price of robustness; and (3) applying the proposed model to real data.     

基于柔性资源约束的前摄性项目调度优化研究

不确定环境中，项目进度计划鲁棒性的高低直接影响项目能否顺利实施。本文研究了具有随机活动工期的柔性资源约束下的前摄性项目调度优化问题，目标是在柔性资源和项目工期的约束下，借助对活动开始时间合理的进行安排进而得到拥有最大鲁棒性的进度计划。首先对研究问题进行界定；随后构建优化模型，并根据问题NP-hard属性和模型特点设计了双层嵌套禁忌搜索启发式算法，通过内外两层交互搜索寻找满意解；最后通过一个实际案例对本文研究进行说明，并分析关键参数对进度计划鲁棒性的影响，得到如下结论：相对于资源无柔性情况下的项目进度计划而言，资源具备柔性后得到的项目进度计划的鲁棒性更高，具有更强的抗干扰能力，能够保证项目稳定执行；同时，项目进度计划鲁棒性分别随着项目工期的延长、资源可用量的增加或资源柔性的提高而上升。