Advances in Production Management Systems. Competitive Manufacturing for Innovative Products and Services

Quality and efficiency increased in importance over the last years within the manufacturing industry. To stay competitive companies are forced to constantly improve their products and processes. Today’s information technology and data analysis tools are promising to further enhance the performance of modern manufacturing. In this paper, at first, the concept of the product state based view in a distributive manufacturing chain is presented, followed by a brief introduction of relations between product states along the chain. After showing that a in detail description based on cause-effect models is not economical viable today, the possibilities of using machine learning on intermediate product states to analyze the process sequence is introduced and discussed. Providing a chance to analyze large amounts of data with high dimensionality and complexity, machine learning tools combined with cluster analysis are perfectly suited for the task at hand within the product state based concept.

The main advantage of tree classifiers is to provide rules that are simple in form and are easily interpretable. Since decision tree is a top-down algorithm using a divide and conquer induction process, there is a risk of reaching a local optimal solution. This paper proposes a procedure of optimally determining the splitting variables and their thresholds for a decision tree using an adaptive particle swarm optimization. The proposed method consists of three phases – tree construction, threshold optimization and rule simplification. To validate the proposed algorithm, several artificial and real datasets are used. We compare our results with the original CART results and show that the proposed method is promising for improving prediction accuracy.

This paper presents an analysis of the potential and a methodology for handling context events and adaptations in maintenance services. A significant number of industrial IT systems employ data models and service frameworks whose design specifications where drafted on the basis of functional requirements for non context-aware systems. Such systems were modular in nature but little care was taken for providing data fusion in a context-aware manner. Though system intelligence might have been a feature for a subset of such systems, two major requirements kept implementations away from wider adoption: (i) refactoring and reengineering of the system’s base services (ii) customising and modifying the structure of a data model tightly connected with inter-process organisation. This paper discusses a methodology for injecting industrial asset management systems with modelling semantics and software mechanisms that enable context awareness via portable clients and application-agnostic data fusion services.

WSNs are largely deployed nowadays in “smart factories”. However, their smooth operation is hindered by device heterogeneity and lack of integration with the current IT systems. The SIMPLE project aims at seamless inter-working of sensors, actuators, tags and devices with business IT systems and distributed control systems towards simpler integrated manufacturing processes. SIMPLE delivers a novel hierarchical network architecture, based on the envisioned manufacturing processes and reflecting the functional hierarchy of aggregations of goods or production processes found in the manufacturing use case.

Systematic and robust condition monitoring of crucial equipment is the cornerstone of any successful preventive maintenance policy in the industrial environment. Recent advances in low-cost wireless sensor network (WSN) technologies and products indicate a promising future for a cost-effective, wider and more permanent deployment of a distributed sensing and processing infrastructure. This paper aims to provide a comprehensive assessment of main WSN technology alternatives available today, based on a qualitative and quantitative analysis of the typical range of requirements in the specific application domain of industrial machine condition monitoring.

The number and extent of supply chain-related RFID applications far exceed those in the general manufacturing domain. We discuss possible reasons for this state. We review existing applications of RFID in manufacturing and discuss possible applications and related advantages and challenges.

The management of engineering assets within an organization is a challenging task that aims to optimize their performance through efficient decision making. However, the current asset data management systems suffer from poor system interoperability, data integration issues as well as an enormous amount of stored data, thus preventing a seamless flow of information. The aim of this work is to propose a semantic data model for engineering asset management, focusing on the operation and maintenance phase of its life cycle. Ontologies are proposed because they can capture the semantics of data, create a shared vocabulary to describe the knowledge for sharing in the domain and provide reasoning capabilities. This model will gather all the knowledge necessary to assist in the decision making process in order to improve the asset’s availability, longevity and quality of operations.

In this paper, it will be shown how information and communication technologies (ICT) act as enablers to realize changeable production systems within the German machinery and equipment industry. A cybernetic structure is proposed to design and operate systems that have to cope with a high degree of complexity due to continuously changing environment conditions. The integration of IT-Systems along the order processing of small-and-medium-sized enterprises (SME) is shown to be one of the missing links of changeable production systems in practice. A demonstration case is presented in which standardized interfaces of IT-Systems enhance real-time data exchange between the relevant planning levels of producing companies, their suppliers and customers.

The paper presents integrative model-based approach in application of virtual engineering technologies in rapid product and process design and manufacturing. This has resulted in integration of so called CA- technologies and Virtual Reality in product design and FE numerical simulations and optimization of production processes, as digital prototyping of product and processes, from one side, and rapid prototyping techniques as physical prototyping, on the other side. Reverse engineering and coordinate metrology have been also applied in re-engineering of sheet metal forming process of existing product, with aim at generation of initial digital information about product and final quality control on multi-sensor coordinate measurement machine.

Expensive production equipment requires continuous monitoring to gather data in real-time, e.g., to detect problems, to assess the quality of produced parts, to collect information about the machine states, and consequently to optimize production processes. However, the increasing amount of data – from sensors or systems – and its continuous processing are a big challenge for an IT infrastructure.

This paper presents a hybrid system, consisting of a distributed CEP (complex event processing) system to process data in real-time augmented with an in-memory database to extend the available memory as well as the processing capabilities of the overall system. Besides the description of the system architecture, details about the implementation of the concepts in a real production environment are given.

Empowering autonomic control in the enterprise environment highly contributes in the quest for a higher level of flexibility. Multi-Agent Systems (MAS) may be utilized to this end along with the enterprise environment model leading to a decentralization of the manufacturing production processes. The current work proposes a framework along with the necessary software tools for the modeling of MAS through ontologies, its design and deployment in the enterprise / manufacturing environment.

Up to now, production systems only concern was to minimize production costs or optimize the utilization of production resources. But with the increasing energy prices and the growing concern over the environmental impact of production systems (industrial systems consume a quarter of all energy), efficient use of energy in manufacturing environment cannot be ignored any longer.

MANUbuilding concept brings together manufacturing systems requirements with building automaton concerns over the efficient energy use.

This contribution presents a scheduling domain ontology, named SchedOnto, devised to tackle the formal specification of batch scheduling problems, as well as integration issues associated with the scheduling function. More specifically, this paper describes the ontological engineering approach that led to SchedOnto. The ontology characteristics along with its development process are presented, starting from the challenges that motivated the construction, the competency questions that defined the scope of the ontology, going afterwards through conceptualization and implementation stages, and finishing with some validation issues. SchedOnto relies on both, the ISA-88 and ISA-95 standards, which are well accepted in the industrial domain. After presenting SchedOnto, and its associated design process, this contribution addresses an example that shows the benefits of a formal representation of temporal aspects.

Companies and ERP editors show an increasing interest for the Web 2.0 technologies, aiming at involving the user of a web site in the creation of content. We summarize in this communication what these tools are and give an overview of recent examples of their use in companies. We show on the example of the most recent ERP of SAP, Business By Design, that if "2.0 tools" are now available in some ERPs, their integration in the business processes is not yet fully done. We suggest in that purpose the first draft of a methodology aiming at developing "2.0 business processes" using an ERP 2.0.

Research on the product development process lacks of investigation on the aspects related to its potential integration in a web-based collaborative environment, especially when considering the practical needs of Small Medium Enterprises (SMEs).Our study aims at investigating how is it possible to design and develop a web-based platform aimed at supporting SMEs in the product development process. On the basis of a thorough literature review and a mapping of the existing platform and tools available in the design domain, this paper describes in detail the development of a ICT platform, called iCommunity, which constitutes the backbone and the foundation upon which to build an ecosystem of innovation, that helps SMEs to: (1) manage the distributed collective intelligence in the new product development; (2) design and develop modular products in a collaborative way. The action research methodology has been chosen for its appropriateness to the characteristic of this study.

This study aims at exploring how ICT affects CPFR with focus on information flows in planning and control processes. A case study of a pharmacy supply chain in Norway is conducted to investigate process changes related to an APS system implemented to support a CPFR initiative. Process changes are investigated in view of enhanced information, automated processes and organizational transformation. This study shows that the main impact of ICT is associated with enhanced information flows and transformed processes that its contribution to reducing labour is more limited, and that large information volumes are critical. Adding to current CPFR literature this work provides insights to the contribution of ICT with focus on enhanced information and process transformation. The importance of automatic features of ICT in information processing and exchange and its contribution to improved planning and control information as well as to implementing a joint CPFR approach is especially highlighted.

In the traditional sense, IT has often been viewed as a contributor to waste within lean production. However, as the business world changes and competition from low-cost countries increases, new models must be developed which deliver competitive advantage by combining contemporary technological advances with the lean paradigm. In order to make a contribution within this field of research, we evaluate the support functionality of Manufacturing Execution Systems (MES) for lean production. We address the fundamental principles of lean production and compare them to the functionality offered by MES, and by combining existing theoretical contributions with practical insights we develop a five-stage capability maturity model for MES support for lean production.

This paper highlights the important factors that influence the effectiveness of the event handling process in production control activity (PAC). Five key factors have been identified by the literature study. Production schedule generation and execution strategy under uncertainty, information and communication technology usage, coordination and feedback, human factor and interaction, and the performance measurement approach are the identified factors to be taken into account. Industrial interviews with three case companies, that are participating to the research program called The Norwegian Manufacturing Future (SFI NORMAN), have been carried out in order to gain practical insights as well as support and revise the findings by relevant empirical data.

A method to model the interaction between a production control process and an information system is presented. Colored Petri Nets are used to model the process and UML static structure. When the tokens in the internet are modeled as objects in the data model, the transitions in the process model can be specified as formal expressions over the data model. Thus the model verifies the consistency between the process and the information system and can be used as formal specification for e.g. an ERP implementation.

Ports are integral parts of many supply chains and are as such a contributing factor to the overall efficiency of the supply chain. As the role of the ports is increasingly changing towards being more integrated into the supply chain, ports need to start focusing on optimising the activities and striving for low-lead time. Ports are also complex entities comprising of different companies. The dynamic nature of ports is also a problem when trying to optimise the utilisation of resources and ensure a low lead-time. Information sharing is crucial in the attempt to improve ports operations. This paper attempts to explain how information sharing is enabled in such an environment, and which considerations are relevant, both in regards to the information and required technology. The paper highlights trust, availability of data, and complexity of solutions and technology, as being the main hurdles.

With the emergence of concerns regarding pollution and the exhaustion of resources, original equipment manufacturers have begun to take responsibility for environmentally sound manufacturing according to regulations that have been established. Manufacturers thus need to decide how much they will recycle and which options to pursue for minimizing operation costs and environmental impacts, while complying with regulations. They cannot, however, predict the quality of returned products, and as a result, the planning of recycling activities is not reliable. Moreover, the components of products all have different ages and lifetimes. Thus, there may be a number of components that can be recycled more than once. If the life history of these components is not available, though, recyclable components may be disposed of after being recycled once. In this paper, we propose an integrated data system that uses radio frequency identification technology to provide useful information that can make remanufacturing more efficient.

Sustainable supply chain has received growing attention in recent years. Due to the lack of relevant data to permit a credible analysis of sustainable supply chain, it is quite hard to propose an analytic method to guide sustainable supply chain strategies. Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) has provided companies with useful software to manage information using product as a central element. It consolidates all the information about product but also about production and distibution. For this reason it is interesting to integrate specific information in PLM systems necessary to manage sustainable supply chain and define a methodology to implement it. The proposal is a methodology based on a four steps process to guide companies which want to start a sustainable development using the information from their PLM tools such as Enterprise Resource Planning and/or Product Data Management.

Even if PLM offers a wide range of functionalities, they are currently not fully exploited by most of the companies, which use it mainly as a file manager. In this paper we aim at helping the full exploitation of PLM systems. To this aim, we propose a model of the product lifecycle management in the form of an ontology integrating both the static structure of product’s data and the dynamic description of the related processes.

Nowadays, in industry, the interoperability of Information Systems throughout the product’s life cycle is primordial for a successful Product Lifecycle Management approach. However, there are still scientific and technological locks that prevent the integration of information between enterprise Information Systems. Especially, the lack of interoperability between Product Data Management systems, Manufacturing Process Management and Enterprise Resource Planning to be able to ensure a continuous and bidirectional information flow from the design to the manufacturing and the assembling of a product. This paper presents firstly a literature review of research works developed to define and solve the problems of interoperability in general terms. Then, it exposes most of the recent works on interoperability on the product development linking the different Product Lifecycle Management tools. Finally we proposed an approach to guarantee the interoperability of Product Data Management, Manufacturing Process Management and Enterprise Resource Planning systems.

Lightweighting is the point of interest especially for automotive and aerospace industries. Wrought aluminum alloys have great potential in lightweighting. There is a need to increase post-consumer recycling and use of recycled aluminum in high-end structural components to exploit the full potential of wrought aluminum alloys. Closed-loop product life cycle management (PLM) may enable to increase the recycling of wrought aluminum alloys by providing essential information about the individual parts. Considering separate life cycle phases, products and processes may seem environmentally friendly, but it is not possible to be sure unless the entire life cycle is taken into account. LCA and LCC are scientific investigative processes which take into account entire life cycle of the products and help decision makers to evaluate between alternatives in product development.

High competition and low manufacturing costs in emerging countries, force European firms to improve quality, cost and delivery. Research and development departments have to look towards high production design methods and tools in order to stay competitive. Our research allow to reduce routine design process and thereby increase time for added value design tasks, particularly innovative design activities. We have applied our methodology onto a roller shutter tube. Existing abacuses are used to define tube deformation, but these abacuses are too restrictive. Our case determine the input information and create a model using our method to create new abacuses more relevant. Our contribution uses the explicit knowledge embedded in a KBE application to co-create or update parametric 3D models with its assembly environment. By implementing this method in an industrial company, we have reduced routine design tasks and improved the robustness of the product design and the product assembly.

The paper presents an initiative towards the harmonious and integrated management of lifecycle planning, such as assembly planning, disassembly planning, maintenance planning and so on. This stake currently meets industrial requirements and research issues, mainly in product lifecycle management, integrated design, and lifecycle engineering fields. The fact of managing X planning during product design requires therefore a complete understanding of the product lifecycle processes and various abstraction layers of data-information-knowledge. In such a way, the critical outcome is to ensure the development of well-balanced product by considering the rationale of lifecycle planning and managing its related data, information and knowledge.

Design and reconfiguration of industrial information systems is an important issue for SME/SMI. In this context, these small enterprises need tools and methods that allow them to adapt their system to their business while ensuring its consistency. The aim of this paper is to provide an approach for both the design method and the control method. This approach for PLM (Product lifecycle management) system is based on MDE (Model Driving Engineering). First, we will present a metamodel for PLM and the model transformation concepts. Then, we will present an application with the Audros PLM system.

Current process control systems are composed of a large number of components and subsystems operating at different layers of the control system architecture model (i.e. measurement and control devices, Distributed Control Systems, Advanced Process Control systems, and Manufacturing Execution Systems). The IMC-AESOP project aims at designing the next generation architecture of process automation systems. In order to ensure system scalability and modularity, the new architectural design follows the SOA (Service-Oriented Architecture) design principles. Moreover, the design assumes adoption of various technologies with the aim to enable the control systems to meet all functional and performance requirements. The CEP (Complex Event Processing) technology has been selected for being able to provide efficient asynchronous communication (within and across architecture layers) and the capability of temporal reasoning over large amounts of system-generated events. This paper describes the intermediate results of the IMC-AESOP project, outlining the architectural concepts related to the use of the SOA and CEP technologies in the context of advanced alarm management applications - alarm load shedding and state-based alarming.

Discrete Event Simulation (DES) provides computational models with different scenarios in which it is possible to check waste and capacity-constrained resources to generate comparative results. However, these analyses are guided by questions such as cost and production time without regard for wastes that impact on the environment. This paper examines how a tool of Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) can supplement DES in performing analyses of production systems taking into account environmental impacts, such as energy consumption and greenhouse emission. These ideas are demonstrated by a case study developed in an automotive company. The results ratify the importance of global projects with local solutions, even for layout planning.

This paper demonstrates the implementation of Logical Analysis of Data (LAD) methodology in the field of prognostics in Condition Based Maintenance (CBM). In this paper the LAD classification methodology, based on Sensitive Discriminating and Equipartitioning methods for data binarization, Mixed Integer Linear Programming (MILP) and Hybrid Greedy methods for pattern generation, is used. Using the generated patterns, two methods of calculating the survival function are introduced. The methodology is applied on Prognostics and Health Management Challenge dataset, which is a condition monitoring dataset provided by NASA Ames Prognostics Data Repository. The results obtained by using LAD methodology, are compared with that obtained by using the Proportional Hazards Model (PHM).

The paper addresses the topic of designing the shape of a warehouse and shows a comparison between a standard storage-handling system, which is designed taking into account the minimization of the handling planar path, and the one which is designed trying to minimizing the overall handling energy consumption. This comparison leads to a discussion on the opportunities which result from the construction of a shallow warehouse in term of building construction costs, layout management and storage surface efficiency. This paper is the first step in the analysis of a more comprehensive research about the life cycle assessment of a warehouse, the manpower utilization and the balanced equilibrium between handling energy requirement and performances of most used handling systems.

Today’s building and energy management market is heterogeneous and complex. Most of the players in the construction market are not in possession of the managerial capability to fully control the dynamics that affect their energy costs in terms of energy sourcing and energy management. Moreover, construction industry needs to rely on a stronger technical and commercial expertise. On one hand, there is a need of an in-depth and extensive level of technical know-how that most of facility managers, property developers and building owners at private and public level scarcely hold. On the other hand, this industry is characterized by a fragmentation within the single tiers of the value chain. In this context, the paper aims at proposing a new vision of the building value chain towards a collaborative network led by a new player, namely the Fourth Party Energy Provider, acting as the “one-stop contracting and managing” operator, integrating resources, capabilities, best available technologies and practices for providing energy-efficient building solutions.

Many leisure boat manufacturers have thrived on designing and building highly customized boats based on longstanding traditions of craftsmanship. The industry is to some extent moving towards the paradigm of “Mass Customization” in which the low cost of mass production is combined with customization.

Existing research on performance measurement systems (PMS), covers in little extent the implementation process and use of PMS in SMEs (small and medium sized enterprises). In this article, important elements for implementing a PMS and how it relates to creating a learning environment have been identified.

This state-of-the-art review analyses literature on resilience paradigm perspectives and conceptualizations in business and management. Attempts have been made to produce a definition that reflects on and attempts to resolve inconsistencies and pursue with the conception of operational resilience. Future research directions are indicated by arguing on the possible relationships among operational resilience and modern operations management paradigms like lean thinking in view of operational performance.

In this paper we propose the modeling and visual presentation of dependencies between key performance indicators. By doing this, explicit presentation and analysis of expert knowledge about dependencies between manufacturing processes can be achieved. This enables route-cause analysis and decision support. Further, using multiple techniques for the visual support we provide the user a high user experience, resulting in a quicker analysis and better user acceptance.

Performance indicators (PIs) are used to monitor and assess production systems. There are thousands of PIs described in standards or in commercial PI collections; however, the PIs implemented in the factories may differ enormously due to use-case-specific requirements. In this work a reference model is proposed to support the process from a generic description to a use case specific PI implementation. There are two exemplary implementations described utilizing data stream processing and database technologies.

At many companies, workers associate productivity or efficiency increase with something negative, it is interpreted as an increase in speed and the “sweat factor”. Productivity is not only made up of the speed factor, but these misconceptions and lack of knowledge tend to put “a wet blanket” on all attempts to increase productivity. It is therefore important to clarify what productivity is and especially how it can be improved.

In general, the productivity at shop-floor level can be improved through improving the method, increasing the performance, and increasing the utilization. The design of the products and the amount of scraped products also affects the productivity in both manual tasks as well as work performed by machines. These aspects of productivity will be elaborated in the theoretical model and the industrial applications presented in this article.

The trend for servitization is increasingly affecting manufacturing enterprises. Products are bundled with associated services to so called “Extended Products” (EP). However, the share of services becomes more and more important. This requires on the one hand an evolution of the EP concept towards greater interoperability of the physical product and on the other hand additional competencies in service innovation. Traditional manufacturing enterprises are not able to handle the related challenges by themselves. The paper presents a more open and service-oriented “EP 2.0” concept and introduces the Manufacturing Service Ecosystem as a model to support service innovation by facilitating collaboration.

This paper presents a simulation based analysis method for service diffusion in consumer networks. Services with good qualities do not always diffuse because service quality is often unstable because of the nature of service delivery systems involving human. Consumers cannot also confirm the quality of service before purchase because service has no shape. Therefore, it is necessary to study diffusion process of service by computer simulations to clarify the process of acceptance among consumers in consideration with heterogeneity of consumer utility due to the unstable service quality. This paper proposes a multiagent-based model for diffusion of plural competing services repeated purchased in consumer networks including heterogeneity of consumer utility. It is verified that the heterogeneity of consumer utility and network structure affect service diffusion process in the results of computer simulations. Finally, the diffusion process of services is concluded in terms both of the number of service and repetition of service purchase.

Due to the increasing global commercial competition, the current economic crisis and globalization, enterprises would like to shift from a pure product sales structure towards after-sales services and related activities. It is noteworthy that “profit generated by after-sale service is often higher than the one obtained with sales; the service market can be four or five times larger than the market for products” [1].

The purpose of this paper is to lay down the foundations for a governance framework, by using the models and methods which can support various levels of performance indicators in service, servitization, governance and innovation. The basic idea behind of a governance framework is to create a trust relationship between seller and buyer for covering the customer requirements.

We propose improvement method of service productivity for Taxi Company of rearranging taxi drivers working hours. There are two ways a taxi company gets customers. One is to deliver taxi for a telephone request, and the other is to get customers on street. In Japan, there are many taxi companies where the ratio of the former method is higher. Therefore we research rearrangement method of the taxi drivers working hours so as to operate many taxis with many telephone requests. We find it effective strategy to increase taxi drivers in midnight and early morning with many customers per taxi instead of decreasing taxi drivers in daytime with few customers per taxi.

It has been suggested that though many companies realize the importance of providing after-sales services, most do not fully understand the maximum benefit from such offerings. Though several research papers document an approach for the implementation of a service operations strategy, a practical guide for the development of after-sales services is lacking in the current literature. Therefore, in this paper, we apply existing theory and use practical insights in order to propose a nine-step methodology for the development of after-sales services. The methodology links customer value from services to portfolio management theory. Two case studies describe application of the methodology. It can be used by practitioners in order to exploit the untapped potential of providing product-service offerings, with the aim to generate greater profits and a higher level of customer service.

This study investigates whether consumers select foods based on the levels of carbon dioxide emissions by a real choice experiment. Respondents are asked to purchase one orange based on price and level of CO

2

emissions under no monetary incentives. The willingness to pay estimate for the reduction of 1g of CO

2

emissions per orange is significantly lower for the low environmentally conscious group than it is for the high environmentally conscious group.

Our purpose of this study is evaluating preferences for air travel services connected between the east and west central cities in Japan, Tokyo and Osaka, to consider the appropriate re-allocation design of airports in Japan. We employ a choice experiment and recruit more than 500 respondents in east and west areas in Japan and investigate their preferences. Our results are as follows. The existing airline connected west hub airport, Itami, in Osaka and east hub airport, Haneda, in Tokyo is much preferred to the other lines connected cities surrounding Osaka and Tokyo. Kobe and Kansai international airports are preferable to Itami airport, while Haneda is the much preferable to Ibaraki and Narita international airports. Increasing the mileage program and the availability of web check-in have positive significant effects but these impacts are small. These results imply that the most important factor for using air travel services is convenience for traveling by using the nearest airports. In this meaning, if the new airlines can be connected to Haneda, the government’s re-allocation plan from Itami airport to Kobe and Kansai international airports has a chance to succeed to minimize the economic efficiency loss for the people traveling between east and west areas in Japan.

Manufacturers have developed Product/Service-Systems (PSS) strategies to increase their competitiveness and reach objectives of profitability, satisfying customer’s specific and evolving needs as well as environmental needs in term of grasp reduction and pollution decrease. Despite, the announced success of such a strategy, industrialists fears that the strategy will not give the expected results. To avoid unsustainable developments and reach product-service systems features, manufacturers are looking forward methods and tools that can help them predicting an a priori level of performance of the whole system they intend to design in terms of sustainability, use, profit, etc. Precisely, we aim at proposing a demonstrator able to support decision in the design of new sustainable and eco-efficient product-service system.

For a long time, it was highlighted that services have specific characteristics mainly used to differentiate themselves from goods. Proposed definitions and characteristics led to debates between specialists in economics, marketing and management for several years and result in different points of view and approaches. There is still no consensus in these disciplines. More recently, new ones have contributed to define the concept of service. The goal of this paper is to present, on the one hand, the existing literature proposed by economists and managers about services (definitions and specificities) and, on the other, perspectives proposed by other disciplines such as computer science, engineering science or the SSME that challenge them. The bibliographical analysis results in a conceptual modeling of service and service delivery.

The research presented in this paper is oriented on the transition of the manufacturing industry towards the delivery of product-service system. The paper presents the first results in the development of a decision support system dedicated to help in configuring service-oriented production systems, notably with an objective of capacity management. An illustrative case study is presented, linked to the production of washing machines.

In the 1970s, the Japanese restaurant industry introduced the chain store system, which was later introduced into the retail industry in the USA to enhance productivity [1] [2]. The chain store system was designed to realize “low-cost operations”. For instance, chain store restaurants simplify and automate service operations to reduce the number of service staff. Moreover, they standardize service operations by introducing service manuals for use in training part-time staff. Prices of dining decreased throughout chain store systems, and Japanese consumers came to enjoy restaurants casually. Consequently, the market scale of the Japanese restaurant industry expanded from 8 trillion yen to 250 trillion yen during the 1970s to 1990s. Restaurants in Japan numbered approximately 737,000 in 2006 [3].

Industrial Service providers face the challenge of generating maximum customer value on the one hand and the efficient utilization of internal resources on the other hand. This challenge is further intensified by a worldwide growing market of industrial service providers. This paper presents a holistic approach for lean service management facing the named challenges. The framework is derived from various optimization projects in industrial service operations and supports companies to achieve excellent productivity within their service delivery.

This paper elaborates on the notions of extended products and product service systems. It argues that product service systems evolve rapidly into offerings which cross traditional domains of competition, and move into service ecosystems.

The paper investigates the role of ICT in the development of product services systems, and relates the concepts of software-as-a-service and cloud computing to product service systems. It shows that it is almost unavoidable to connect product service ecosystems to larger service ecosystems in other domains. This development has many consequences, opening many areas of future research.

Timely, reliable supply of customers with spare parts is a key factor for business success in many branches. In the field of aviation the competition and cost pressures in the MRO sector (Maintenance, Repair and Overhaul) increased strongly in recent decades. Large maintenance organizations offer component pooling services for aircraft operators. A main challenge in the processes of MRO service providers is the calculation of the optimal stock level for pool components. The basis of an optimal inventory planning for the supply of spare parts is the quality of the demand input parameters used for the calculation. This paper describes the processes and the challenges of the MRO spare parts management as well as the approaches of a research project to face these challenges.

Increasing competitive pressures have pushed manufacturers to increase the value of their offerings through the provision of Product-service systems. This shift results in an increased complexity of offerings and a higher degree of risk and responsibility taken by manufacturers concerning product availability, performance and product-enabled processes.

The paper investigates the impact and potential benefits of installed base information management practices on the offering of Product-Service Systems. A case study concerning an underwater system in a cruise vessel is presented: the data collected were used to develop a simple decision analysis tree, which allows to estimate the value of installed base information in the studied case.

This paper aims at defining a dedicated method to analyse existing systems and to implement target models for social and medico-social structures in France. Based on GRAI Method, one proposes generic models for decisional systems and processes. The first application presented here proves that reference models could be used to identify strengths and weaknesses but also specific performance indicators more adapted than existing ones. The main observed results are an improvement of the added value of service and an optimization of strategic management tools. In a second time, we demonstrate that it is necessary to specify reference models for each kind of the 15 structures in order to take into account the people particularisms on one hand and to improve information system to answer efficiently to user needs and institutional requests on the other hand.

Service is a concept difficult to define. It has been extensively used in different contexts. According with literature a service can be seeing: as an activity or as an output of a process.

By service customization we mean the definition and adaptation of a service according to the customer’ requirements, when this customization process is carried out in a systematic way.

A company can respond to user needs diversity offering services than can be customized easily, and/or increasing the service variety offered to the market. The increasing in the service offer variety raises also the variety and complexity in the company transactions that involves cost increments for these transactions. Therefore, the challenge will be to extend the range of services offered to the market maintaining the efficiency, that is similar to the Mass Customization concept.

More and more manufacturing enterprises realize that, by operating as single enterprises in traditional supply chains, they cannot cope with the challenges of the modern demanding environment, and that they need to adopt new and innovative strategies in order to remain competitive. The establishment of Dynamic Manufacturing Networks (DMNs) brings together various innovations, such as just-in-time delivery, flexible manufacturing, organizational streamlining, and total quality, and emerges therefore as an advanced reaction of collaborating enterprises to the constantly changing business environment and its characteristics. This paper aims to expose the benefits and risks involved in such networks, and create thereby the foundation for elaborating further on the key factors that could be utilized for attracting organizations and enterprises into embracing the vision of DMNs, supporting thus not only industrial organizations and practitioners interested in implementing such solutions, but also scholars and researchers who study these new forms of business.

“Monitoring and Governance” is the most important phase of every Dynamic Manufacturing Network (DMN) lifecycle and aims at managing and controlling in a continuous way the operations of the network, resulting either in “small and corrective” actions towards the network’s operation optimisation or to “larger and structural” changes, which are fed back to the initial phases of the network’s lifecycle, for reconstructing the network towards better results. The study at hand aims to review current approaches for controlling and monitoring plant operation or traditional supply chains, and to examine thereby their maturity and adequacy for the management and monitoring of dynamic manufacturing networks, leading to useful conclusions with regard to the requirements and challenges encountered in this particular phase of the DMN lifecycle.

Large corporations are increasingly implementing lasting corporate improvement programmes based on lean thinking in their global production networks. The aim is to improve operational efficiency by sharing best operational practices and foster continuous improvement among all subsidiaries. However, it remains an open question why implementation success differs substantially across cultures and sister plants for most companies. We review the existing literature on improvement programmes and culture, and compare the current state of the art with unique quantitative data from 80 factories belonging to two global manufacturing companies. We surprisingly find no explanatory power in national culture (measured with Hofstede’s model) and propose that other factors such as the organisational culture and the strategic role of the plant matters far more.

This paper provides a methodology to support researchers in the identification of SMEs needs encountered when establishing collaborative processes within non-hierarchical manufacturing networks. Furthermore, the methodology also determines the needs when non-hierarchical networks internationalise their processes and operations to overcome globalisation and competitive environments. The major goal of this study is to provide a methodology to enable researchers to underline factors of SMEs integration with particular emphasis on the internationalisation of operations and the establishment of collaborative processes with networked partners. The provided methodology is the first step to develop a future empirical study to explore the findings of the literature review applied to SMEs and to identify the enterprises needs appeared when internationalised and collaborative processes are established in non-hierarchical networks.

In the current dynamic, volatile and competitive playground, the design and managing of global production and logistic networks has become a crucial issue even for SMEs, although with the difficult added that they have limited resources. Thus, how dealing with these complex production networks present a real challenge for this kind of companies. In order to do so, it is necessary to provide business managers a useful guideline to face the internationalization process in an effective way. Therefore, the aim of this paper is to propose a framework, which takes into account the three main problems (new facilities implementation, global supplier network and multi-site network) related to Operations configuration, to aid managers in the different stages of the decision making and propose useful principles, methods and techniques depending on the problem.

Ever-increasing cost pressure and global competition has forced many Western manufacturing companies to offshore some or all of their production; i.e. to establish a manufacturing operation/facility in a low-cost country that replaces a facility in the country of origin. Literature concludes, however, that businesses do not make offshoring decisions in a systematic manner. This emphasizes the need for models, methodologies and tools supporting companies in making sound offshoring decisions. This paper proposes such a methodology for one of the crucial questions many offshoring companies face: For which products should production be offshored, for which should it be kept back? The proposed methodology consists of five steps: (1) Identify constants and variables (scoping); (2) Determine and characterize product groups; (3) Perform a strategic (qualitative) analysis; (4) Perform a financial (quantitative) analysis; and (5) Take a decision. The paper briefly describes each step, with a focus on the first three steps.

The paper presents results of empirical research, which explores systemic background of increasing turbulences and disruptions within globally distributed manufacturing networks. Among the identified factors three have biggest impact: (1) the level of completeness and connectivity of the networks, i.e. topological characteristics of the manufacturing network (2) the herd behavior of clients and decision makers, which enhances or tames the demand due to occasional asymmetry of their perception of the demand (3) the diversity of operational environments within the network, which itself may be a dominant factor of turbulences or even disruptions of the operational processes. It means that in some circumstances, the internal resources of companies may have limited value as a countermeasure against the unlikely effects of turbulences and disruptions. The research has also identified some other factors of idiosyncratic behavior of globally distributed manufacturing, which are rooted in some particular operational policies.

The paper deals with cross-functional disciplines affecting product industrialization in companies organized around an international production network. Aim of the paper is the development of a framework to support a company along the industrialization process taking into consideration that more than one plant located globally could be affected by the introduction of a new product. The framework is based on the use of the general morphological analysis and can be used at both strategic and tactical level by managers in medium sized manufacturing enterprises. The framework is tailored to a case study company and then some operational guidelines are provided to develop the industrialization framework for other organizations.

Many enterprises expanded their manufacturing environment from localised, single-site facility to more globalised, multi-site facilities. This paper proposes a multi-agent system, using its characteristics of autonomy and intelligence, to integrate process planning and production scheduling across different facilities, so as to secure the most efficient and cost-effective plan and schedule to meet the demand. A currency-based agent iterative bidding mechanism is developed to facilitate the coordination of agents. A genetic algorithm is employed to tune the currency values for agent bidding. In this paper, a case study is used for simulation in order to demonstrate the effectiveness and performance of the proposed agent system.

This paper presents an Environmental Excellence Self-Assessment (EEA) model based on the structure of the European Foundation of Quality Management Business Excellence Framework. Four theoretical scenarios for deploying the model are presented as well as managerial implications, suggesting that the EEA model can be used in global organizations to differentiate environmental efforts depending on the maturity stage of the individual sites. Furthermore, the model can be used to support the decision-making process regarding when organizations should embark on more complex environmental efforts to continue to realize excellent environmental results. Finally, a development trajectory for environmental excellence is presented.

The study of supply networks or supply chains is an emerging theme in the world of Production Engineering. The complexity of how companies relate to their networks cannot be resolved through a single management strategy anymore. At the same time, quality can no longer be seen as something inherent to individual companies. This paper studies the alignment of three important aspects: product type (functional or innovative) network strategy (agile, responsive, flexible or lean), Quality Management System - QMS (Hashin Kanri, Total Quality Management, Six Sigma and / or ISO Standards). To do this developed a method that aims to check the alignment mentioned and suggest to companies the quality management system best suited to each situation. The method presented an accuracy of over 90% in its use in research conducted.

Whereas many countries are still suffering from the aftermath of the financial crisis, China’s continuous economic growth offers an opportunity for Western companies to reach their growth targets. More and more, Western companies are starting to see Chinese companies not only as sourcing partners but also as potential customers (B2B). While internationally operating Chinese companies are used to purchasing goods from Western companies, for Chinese SMEs this process constitutes a huge challenge. By addressing buyer-supplier relationships from the point of view of Chinese SMEs as buyers, this paper approaches an often neglected topic. Based on an interview series conducted with representatives from Chinese companies, this paper discusses the sourcing behavior of Chinese SMEs and the change of supply base over time. The paper offers valuable insights for Western suppliers and Chinese buyers on how to build and improve their relationship and on how to strengthen their competitive position.

This paper focuses on the multi-attribute negotiation between Manufacture Agent (MA) and Material Supplier Agent (MSA) of supply chain network (SCN). A modified two-stage negotiation protocol is proposed based on the two-stage negotiation protocol proposed in the previous work. The negotiation between MA and MSAs, where the quantity of the order of MA depends on the demand of Consumer Agent (CA), are discussed to decide the final supplier and the final strategies. The strategies of the negotiation are the wholesale price of the product, the quantity of the order, and the lead time. The final solution is solved by finding the Stackelberg equilibrium of MA-Stackelberg game. Numerical case is provided to illustrate the proposed protocol.

Original Equipment Manufacturers (OEMs) collaborate with their key suppliers in a new form of hands-on partnership. The Fractal supply network is distinct from the traditional supply chain because of the inherent congenital fractal characteristics. This paper uses the Analytic Hierarchy/Network Process (AH/NP) approach to provide a strict methodology and criteria ranking in the complicated decision-making process of exploring the suitability, selection and maintenance of few, albeit reliable and high quality suppliers prior to going into the Fractal Manufacturing Partnership (FMP). Selecting the right set of suppliers without undermining essential competitive factors and material costs is of strategic importance in forming this alliance and could help or hinder the inherent strength in the collaboration. The outcome from this research project is a simple, systematic, logical and mathematical guide to user of OEMs in making robust and informed supplier selection decision prior to going into FMP from a fractal supply network perspective.

Due to environmental and ecological responsibility, enterprises are trying to reuse, remanufacture and recycle the used products to reduce the negative impact on environment. Reverse logistics is one of essential elements to implement such sustainable supply chain system. This paper proposes simulation-based test-bed system for supply chain management incorporating reverse logistics.

Control of supply chains has been discussed in supply chain literature from various viewpoints. While previous studies have generally examined only buyer’s perspectives of control, we expand on such previous research by comparing both the buyer’s and supplier’s views. In this paper our objective is to analyze why the control is distributed in a certain way in the buyer-supplier relationship, and how does the distribution of control affect the buyer-supplier relationship. We categorize the explanations for the distribution of control. We argue that control in the buyer-supplier relationship might look different from buyer’s and suppliers’ perspectives. We used a multiple case study methodology with six dyadic buyer-supplier relationships and conducted 43 interviews.

This work presents a decision support system (DSS) enhancing users to effectively integrate classical purchasing portfolio approaches with additional strategic oriented priorities and information in order to effectively support the definition of purchasing directions and action plans.

With these aims, a fuzzy-based DSS is designed and implemented. The decision process gets inputs from the Kraljic (K) matrix and draws directives on the traditional Olsen-Ellram (O-E) portfolio model integrating additional information about the purchasing context to validate their feasibility and suitability. The fuzzy DSS is applied to a demonstrative case study of an American multinational company operating in the field of Electric Power Systems and Alternative Energy Systems.

Growing awareness in cutting transport costs and minimizing the environmental impact means that companies are increasingly interested in using the full truck load strategy in their supply tasks. This strategy consists of filling trucks completely with one product type or a mixture of products from the same supplier. This paper aims to propose a mixed-integer linear programming model and procedure to fill trucks which considers limitations of stocks, stock levels and unbalanced demand and minimization of the total number of trucks used in the full truck load strategy. The results obtained from a case study are presented and are exported in a conventional spreadsheet available for a company in the automotive industry.

Many companies (especially SMEs) still feel poorly prepared and notice a deficiency of financial know-how when facing situations such as limitations in working capital. To reduce the amount of capital employed, close linkage of financial measures to the daily operations within the companies is required. Yet, supply chain performance measures are often not directly linked to overall financial targets (e.g. cost of capital vs. service level). This paper proposes taking financial parameters into consideration when making supply chain management decisions. It outlines supply chain finance (SCF) solutions available to bigger corporates, analyses current financial metrics for supply chain management and proposes concepts for a greater linkage between finance and supply chain performance measures. Finally, this paper will also reveal gaps where current concepts and metrics have limitations and future research is needed.

The selection of the best suppliers is a key issue for many companies. Nevertheless, it is important to highlight that the most economical supplier may not be the one that has the lowest purchase price. The cheapest supplier is the one that represents the lowest cost to the company, after being considered various aspects of supplying, such as quality, reliability of deliveries, the history of supplier performance, its location, its financial condition, etc. The goal of this paper is to discuss the application of the methodology Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) as a tool to support supplier’s selection. The case studied allowed to understand TCO in practice, to study the contribution of the various cost parameters for the TCO and to demonstrate the procedures that support the systematic application of the TCO in a worldwide company.

Launching a new technology involves more than innovation within an organization. It often requires innovations in downstream firms adopting the technology and greater interaction and knowledge exchange among supply chain partners. This paper examines the introduction of new bio-based products into existing supply chains, the location of the innovations needed to successfully commercialize the product, the nature of relationships among chain members and the impact of modularization on bio-based product introductions.

The recent development of information technologies and communications as well as the miniaturization always more pushed of mecatronic components has allowed the emergence of intelligent product paradigm. An intelligent product is an instrumented product which is able to store data, to perceive its environment and to participate in decisions about its own future. The intelligent product paradigm can be used as performance lever in several sectors of the supply chain: the production and manufacturing system, warehousing, reverse logistics, etc. However, few studies exist for the application of the intelligent product paradigm to transportation problem. In this paper, we propose a methodology based on the intelligent product paradigm as well as the transshipment with the aim to show how we can improve, and optimize the transport of products in the supply chain in static or dynamic context.

Hybrid production environments that combine MTO and MTS strategies have emerged to enable production systems to better respond to changes in consumer and market demand. This paper discusses some of the tactical and operational production planning and control (PPC) issues involved in such hybrid production environments, using the food industry as an illustrative case. The discussion identifies MRP combined with WLC as a promising approach for incorporating MTO items into an MRP planning environment on the tactical and operational levels. Additional techniques are required to incorporate uncertainty and provide flexibility in this particular context and these should be further investigated taking different food supply chain characteristics into consideration.

The literature concerning the bullwhip effect is mostly focused on determining expressions for the theoretical bullwhip measure given specific theoretical system setups, whereas it must also be of interest to deal with the problem of how in fact to make a proper choice as to a sensible bullwhip level. Such a management approach to the bullwhip phenomenon has to be of quite some importance, as the bullwhip effect on the one side definitely is a system malfunction, but on the other also an effect the size of which common intuition tells us should be possible to control. The control is based on a decision as to what variation in demand should be locally absorbed and what variation should be passed on upstream. This paper will focus on design aspects of a bullwhip control policy in order to decide on sensible trade-offs between the bullwhip level and the local inventory variability.

In this paper, we focus on the One-of-a-Kind Production (OKP) industry, where each product is designed and manufactured based on specific customer requirements to a large extent, according to an Engineer To Order (ETO) approach. This research has been carried out among the “SIGI-X” project, funded by the Italian Ministry of Economic Development (MISE). The paper illustrates an empirical study on the state-of-the-art of information systems supporting the leading processes in OKP companies. Through a set of 21 case studies in Italian companies producing special machines, we aim to: identify and investigate strengths and weaknesses of the main OKP business processes; analyze the ICT support and its level of integration among the different ICT solutions; identify levers for improvement, concerning organizational, methodological and informatics aspects; build a practical framework that could define and link the main processes in order to obtain a sort of guideline useful for re-engineering the processes, and laying the foundation for a new integrated ICT business template for OKP companies. The lack of support of three fundamental tasks such as project management, planning and cost control underlines that there is substantial room for improvement under the ICT support perspective. Finally, the development of an integrated IT environment to support (in particular) project management and planning activities, specifically addressed to OKP context, would help these companies to improve their performance and competitiveness.

Recent manufacturing systems are required to be flexible to cope with variable situation. This requirement has driven development of distributed methods of production simulation and scheduling. Recent advances in computer network technology is achieving

highly distributed manufacturing systems (HDMSs)

where each facility is computerized and manages itself autonomously by communicating with other facilities. A distributed simulation method for HDMSs was proposed. To take the full advantage of this method, scheduling problem should be also discussed. Conventional distributed scheduling methods would be inappropriate for HDMSs, since some elements perform processes for information integration and decision making and are therefore subject to heavy computational load when those methods are applied to HDMSs. This paper proposes a distributed scheduling method based on a dispatching rule where the processes for decision making are not performed by any elements but indirectly by a communication protocol.

This paper investigates the re-order point inventory management models sensitivity to demand distributions, demand dependencies and lead time distributions. The investigated performance measures are four different versions of service level. The conclusion is for all measures that the single most critical aspect adversely affecting service level performance is the presence of asymmetrically distributed demand.

We present in this paper some initial ideas of Revenue and Yield Management in the container shipping industry, namely a regression study of the behavior of the currently used indicator for measuring pricing and revenue performance in a leading shipping line. We consider the properties of the indicator used and discuss options of developing a better indicators of revenue or yield optimization, being either revenue or yield per available unit. At the end we also formulate implications for a future research work to be done on development of relevant measures for the industry.

In modern industry there are well defined methods for planning and optimising the efficiency of the production. However, when looking at supply chain operations there are often problems with lack of communication and planning between nodes. By not communicating the risk of creating non-value adding work also increases as the organisations becomes less synchronised. Therefore the focus in this paper is on how information can improve the performance of a container terminal. It was found that information relating to the containers is currently not widely used. Further it was found that there are improvements to be found in terms of reducing non-value adding activities by utilising information sharing.

This paper is based on an exploratory research project into perishable inventory challenges in the retail industry. This paper investigates how inventory control of perishable items is managed and identifies the perishable inventory challenges. The paper includes a review of relevant literature and identification of models dealing with perishable inventory control. The paper is based on a case study in the retail industry in Denmark about how the current procedures are operating in the retail supply chain. Based on the case study and literature review it is found that product quality deterioration and the aftercare of the items in the retail stores are two important parameters in perishable inventories. Furthermore, the length of periods as well as the total cost and profit margin function of the inventory control models are does not often fit reality. Therefore there is a need for further research into models dealing with these parameters.

This paper describes the application of a model, initially developed for determining the e-business requirements of a manufacturing organization, to assess the impact of management concerns on the functions generated. The model has been tested on 13 case studies in small, medium and large organizations. This research shows that the incorporation of concerns for generating the requirements for e-business functions improves the results, because they expose issues that are of relevance to the decision making process relating to e-business. Running the model with both and without concerns, and then presenting the reasons for major variances, can expose the issues and enable them to be studied in detail at the individual function/ reason level.

Traditional cost accounting systems are rarely capable to fully support management decision making in organizations. The design of innovative costing systems like Activity Based Costing (ABC) can offer a valuable alternative, however, their design proves to be very challenging. Although the use of business process modeling in cooperation with Activity Based Costing and Activity Based Management (ABM) has been extensively covered in the literature, few articles can be found that refer to the design of a full costing system with the use of a modeling architecture. This paper presents the use of a proposed business process modeling architecture for the design of a full hybrid traditional accounting and Activity Based Costing system of a company operating in the gas industry. The results of the study suggest that business process modeling can enhance the design of a costing system, minimize errors and maximize the acceptance level of all the stakeholders of the system.

In this paper we extend earlier work that analyzes a single echelon single item base-stock inventory system where Demand is modeled as a compound Poisson process and the lead-time is stochastic. The extension consists in considering a cost oriented system where unfilled demands are lost. The case of partial lost sales is assumed. We first model the inventory system as a Makovian M/G/( queue then we propose a method to calculate numerically the optimal base-stock level. A preliminary numerical investigation is also conducted to show the performance of our solution.

Engineer-to-order products are customized to a particular client’s specification. Planning can be a problem as the products may be large and complex especially due to uncertainties in the duration of the operations. A conceptual project manufacturing planning and control (PMPC) framework is presented in relation to typical engineer to order (ETO) companies. The existing approaches, problems, solutions, and limitations of current manufacturing planning and control (MPC) for ETO environment are discussed. This paper contributes to the development of an improved understanding and more robust definition of MPC in ETO industries, and highlights how the key challenges and the opportunities that PMPC offer in an ETO sector.

The purpose of making efficient and flexible manufacturing systems is often related to the possibility to analyze the system considering at the same time a wide number of parameters and their interactions. Simulation models are proved to be useful to support and drive company management in improving the performances of production and logistic systems. However, to achieve the expected results, a detailed model of the production and logistic system is needed as well as a structured error analysis to guarantee results reliability. The aim of this paper is to give some practical guide lines in order to drive the error analysis for discrete event stochastic simulation model that are widely used to study production and logistic system.