法国公司创新的高标定位

本文对法国企业创新的成功实践进行了高标定位分析,并描述了这些公司的战略、组织机构、技术资源与人力资源的特征.     

Benchmarking Safety Climate in Hazardous Environments: A Longitudinal, Interorganizational Approach

Safety climate is an important element of organizational reliability. This study applied benchmarking strategies for monitoring safety climate across nine North Sea oil and gas installations that were surveyed in consecutive years. Examination of absolute changes in safety climate complemented the benchmarking approach. Discriminant function analyses (DFA) identified the elements of safety climate predictive of self-reported accidents; correlational analyses were applied to the scale scores and accident proportions across the year period. Absolute improvements were substantial, with safety climate profiles converging in the second year. Large relative improvements were also observed. DFA highlighted perceived management commitment to safety and willingness to report accidents as significant predictors of personal accident involvement. Changes in perceived management commitment to safety were closely associated with changes in safety behavior.     

Multimedia Benchmarking Analysis for Three Risk Assessment Models: RESRAD, MMSOILS, and MEPAS

This paper is one in a series that describes results of a benchmarking analysis initiated by the Department of Energy (DOE) and the United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). An overview of the study is provided in a companion paper by Laniak et al. presented in this journal issue. The three models used in the study—RESRAD (DOE), MMSOILS (EPA), and MEPAS (DOE)—represent analytically-based tools that are used by the respective agencies for performing human exposure and health risk assessments. Both single media and multimedia benchmarking scenarios were developed and executed. In this paper, the multimedia scenario is examined. That scenario consists of a hypothetical landfill that initially contained uranium-238 and methylene chloride. The multimedia models predict the fate of these contaminants, plus the progeny of uranium-238, through the unsaturated zone, saturated zone, surface water, and atmosphere. Carcinogenic risks are calculated from exposure to the contaminants via multiple pathways. Results of the tests show that differences in model endpoint estimates arise from both differences in the models' mathematical formulations and assumptions related to the implementation of the scenarios.     

Introduction to the Special Issue on Theory Development in Operations Management

Rigorous development of theory in operations management has been lacking. Although many theories have been proposed, they are often not developed in a format and depth that can be falsified, refined, or supported. This special issue includes three papers that illustrate rigorous development of theory for future testing using mathematical, simulation, or managerial approaches.     

Addressing the Challenge of Modeling for Decision‐Making in Socially Responsible Operations

Companies seek sustainability by combining the quest for profitability with the pursuit of social responsibility. Since socially responsible operations are characterized by the presence of multiple stakeholders with conflicting goals, applying classical optimization models would seem premature; we first need to capture the behavior of the entire system before attempting to optimize sub‐systems to ensure that we focus on the ones driving the behavior of interest. Alternative methodologies are required if we are to gain insight into the most important drivers of socially responsible operations in order to apply traditional operations research (OR)/management science (MS) models correctly. This study presents an umbrella approach which combines different methodologies to tackle the complexity, unfamiliar context, and counter‐intuitive behavior of socially responsible operations at the overall system level.     

Operations Strategy Research in the POMS Journal

In this paper, we examine the operations strategy literature in the POMS journal to determine what has been learned and to suggest new directions for further study in this important area of research. Our review of this literature resulted in the selection of thirty‐one relevant articles, many of which draw upon multiple theoretical perspectives. We identify eight such theoretical perspectives, and go on to classify these perspectives in terms of the scope of inquiry employed in the research (focused versus aggregated) and the researcher's assumptions about choice processes (behavioral versus rational). In doing so, we show that this body of work is dominated by papers that draw upon theoretical perspectives enabling a more holistic scope of inquiry, with a bias towards a view of strategy as a highly rational process. Building on our systematic review and integration of the literature, we suggest multiple areas for future research.     

Research Constituents and Authorship Patterns in the Production and Operations Management Journal

The Production and Operations Management Society is the largest professional society dedicated to creating and disseminating knowledge in product and process design, operations, and supply chains for the management of manufacturing and services. Its research journal, Production and Operations Management (POM), covers all topics in the discipline and all research paradigms to serve the entire community. Since its inception in 1992, POM has become recognized as a top tier outlet for operations management research. We identify research institutions in the operations management community that have played major roles in developing the journal based on the research of their faculty members and doctoral graduates. Our findings show that the constituency of the journal reflects the constituency of the society.     

Elwood Buffa's Pioneering Contributions to Production and Operations Management

Elwood Spencer Buffa, a pioneer in production and operations management (P/OM), passed away in the summer of 2005, leaving his legacy behind. During his academic career Buffa made lasting contributions to teaching and research of P/OM. We review those contributions and their impact on the evolution of the P/OM discipline.     

Operations in Financial Services—An Overview

We provide an overview of the state of the art in research on operations in financial services. We start by highlighting a number of specific operational features that differentiate financial services from other service industries, and discuss how these features affect the modeling of financial services. We then consider in more detail the various different research areas in financial services, namely systems design, performance analysis and productivity, forecasting, inventory and cash management, waiting line analysis for capacity planning, personnel scheduling, operational risk management, and pricing and revenue management. In the last section, we describe the most promising research directions for the near future.     

The Backroom Effect in Retail Operations

Traditional inventory models fail to take into account the dynamics between the retail sales floor and the backroom, commonly used by retailers for extra storage. When a replenishment order for a given item arrives at a retail store, it may not fit on the allocated shelf space, making backroom storage necessary. In this article, we introduce the backroom effect (BRE) as a consequence of misalignment of case pack size, shelf space, and reorder point. This misalignment results from the fragmented nature of inventory policy decision making in the retail industry and affects basic trade‐offs in inventory models. We specify conditions under which the BRE exists, quantify the expected amount of backroom inventory, derive an optimal short‐term inventory policy, and assess the impact of the BRE on the optimal inventory policy and total costs. Our results indicate that ignoring the BRE leads to artificially high reorder points and higher total costs. The paper concludes with a discussion of theoretical and managerial implications.     

Implementing Operations Strategy: How Vertical and Horizontal Coordination Interact

We study the implementation of operations strategy at six German manufacturers in mature businesses. Search theory argues that vertical coordination (i.e., unilateral top‐down adjustment of lower‐level search actions) balances stability against the improvement potential enabled by frontline search and also that horizontal coordination (i.e., bilateral adjustment among lower‐level search actions) is required to ensure compatibility among the initiatives generated in various organizational subunits. Much less is known about how vertical and horizontal coordination interact in operations strategy implementation—that is the focus of this study. We first study how horizontal and vertical coordination affect the compatibility and creativity of distributed search, triangulating our cross‐level interviews with data on the manufacturers' productivity gains and their strategic projects. We then examine whether and how vertical and horizontal coordination interact. Our case comparisons suggest that leaving either one of them “loose” and keeping the other one “tight” results in a useful balance between compatibility and creativity; in contrast, tightening both types of coordination suppresses creativity and loosening both types risks incompatibility of initiatives across units. These results lead to a theoretical framework that identifies vertical and horizontal coordination as partial substitutes for operations strategy implementation.     

Knowledge Creation and Dissemination in Operations and Supply Chain Management

During the last 25 years, the ecosystem of knowledge creation and dissemination in operations and supply chain management has improved remarkably. We now see OM as a vibrant community and an ecosystem in steady state. Yet, there are many opportunities ahead to revitalize our field and to expand our influence. In the spirit of continuous improvement, we propose that we focus our major efforts on accelerating the following four developments: First, having greatly expanded the domain of operations management, we should continue to expand its boundaries. Second, after a visible increase in exploratory studies, our community should accelerate our pursuit of such research. Third, we encourage OM faculty to develop programs that enable Ph.D. students to carry out part of their work in actual organizational settings. Fourth, we should further strengthen our interactions with the business community and create mechanisms to systematically disseminate our research to its members.     

A Note on the Growth of Research in Service Operations Management

We present an empirical assessment of the productivity of individuals and institutions in terms of service operations management (SOM) research. We reviewed five mainstream operations management journals over a 17‐year time period to generate a sample of 463 articles related to service operations. The results indicate that SOM research has been growing and key contributions are being made by an array of researchers and institutions.     

On the Risk Management and Risk Governance of Petroleum Operations in the Barents Sea Area

In this article, we discuss issues of risk management and risk governance with respect to petroleum operations in the Barents Sea area. We will focus on the decision problems related to whether or not to open the Barents Sea for petroleum activities in special vulnerable areas. We will explore to what extent the International Risk Governance Council risk governance framework provides valuable insights for and assistance to the decisionmaker and other stakeholders (including the industry and NGOs). The study covers issues related to risk assessment and appraisal, risk acceptance and tolerability, the use of the precautionary principle, risk perception, stakeholder involvement, risk communication, and risk management. The overall aim of the article is to point to areas where the risk governance could have been and can be improved for these and similar decision problems.     

Operations in the Service Industries: Introduction to the Special Issue

This special issue of Production and Operations Management offers a sample of ongoing research that focuses currently on the services industries. The articles selected cover a spectrum of application areas as well as methodologies.     

System Dynamics as a Structural Theory in Operations Management

The purpose of the paper is to demonstrate the usefulness of (1) system dynamics as a structural theory for operations management and (2) system dynamics models as content theories in operations management. The key findings are that, although feedback loops, accumulation processes, and delays exist and are widespread in operations management, often these phenomena are ignored completely or not considered appropriately. Hence, it is reasoned why system dynamics is well suited as an approach for many operations management studies, and it is shown how system dynamics theory can be used to explain, analyze, and understand such phenomena in operations management. The discussion is based on a literature review and on conceptual considerations, with examples of operations management studies based on system dynamics. Implications of using this theory include the necessary re‐framing of some operations management issues and the extension of empirical studies by dynamic modeling and simulation. The value of the paper lies in the conceptualization of the link between system dynamics and operations management, which is discussed on the level of theory.     

Cost Allocation in Manufacturing–Remanufacturing Operations

For firms remanufacturing their products, the total life‐cycle costs and revenues from new and remanufactured products determine their profitability. In many firms, manufacturing/sales and remanufacturing/remarketing operations are carried out in different divisions. Each division is responsible for only part of the product's life cycle. Practices regarding transfer pricing across divisions vary significantly among companies, affecting the life‐cycle profit performance of the product. In this research, we identify characteristics of transfer prices that achieve the firm‐wide optimal solution. To this end, we consider a manufacturer who also undertakes remanufacturing operations and we focus on price (quantity) decisions. We determine that a cost allocation mechanism that allocates a portion of the initial production cost to each of the two stages of the product life cycle should be used. We also conclude that cost allocation should be implemented as a fixed cost allocation, where charges to the remanufacturing division should be determined independently of the actual quantity of units remanufactured.     

Exploiting the balanced scorecard in the Operations Department: the Ducati Motor Holding case

The literature has widely discussed how to measure manufacturing performance. However, even though several indicators have been proposed, manufacturing reporting systems still suffer from a number of problems, which according to recent contributions, can be solved through the adoption of integrated performance measurement systems (PMSs). This article aims at understanding whether such integrated PMSs–namely the balanced scorecard–can actually solve the problems, which usually affect the reporting system of the Operations Department. The article presents a case-study developed in Ducati Motor Holding and then outlines the main conclusions and managerial implications. The empirical analysis demonstrates that the key benefits brought about by the balanced scorecard concern a higher responsiveness of the decision-making process and more intense cooperation among all units related to operations management (namely, manufacturing, logistics, quality management, procurement, maintenance).     

A Retrospective Look at Production and Operations Management Articles on New Product Development

We present a retrospective look at the articles on New Product Development that appeared in the first 50 issues of Production and Operations Management (POM). We discuss some of the strengths and weaknesses of this POM literature stream. This article is not intended to be a literature review or an exhaustive review of the articles. Rather, we seek to identify new opportunities for rigorous and relevant research, research that has the potential of differentiating and enhancing POM within the Operations Management literature.