Implementing Operations Management in Manufacturing Companies

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ernest Ansah ◽  
Thomas Akrofi ◽  
Emmanuel Harrison Nuertey
2018 ◽  
Vol 25 (4) ◽  
pp. 373-389 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jurandir Peinado ◽  
Alexandre Reis Graeml ◽  
Fernando Vianna

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to assess the differences in importance assigned by manufacturing or service organizations to topics related to operations management and its attendant body of knowledge. Design/methodology/approach The authors did this by cataloguing and analyzing vacancy announcements related to operations management, presented by manufacturing and services companies in major Brazilian human resources websites. Findings The results show that manufacturing companies primarily hire personnel with skills in routine process management, quality management, lean manufacturing, ergonomics and work organization. Service companies generally seek professionals with knowledge and experience in logistics, supply chain management and project management. Research limitations/implications This study presents some limitations that reduce the power of its conclusions. There is some degree of subjectivity in the interpretation of the contents of the analyzed ads. In order to reduce this problem, the authors who did the tabulation of data marked the situations for which there were some doubts about the classification, discussing them with the other author, until they reached a consensus on the best way to classify each one. Originality/value The discussion about the importance assigned by manufacturing and service companies to the topics of operations management is crucial for not only the results obtained, but also to stimulate the debate on topics that comprise or should comprise the body of knowledge of operations management, and the way they are incorporated into business practice. This provides an additional opportunity to reflect on the potential of operations management in supporting business managers now and in the future.


2012 ◽  
pp. 1312-1335
Author(s):  
Dmitrij Slepniov ◽  
Brian Wæhrens ◽  
Hiroshi Katayama

The purpose of this chapter is to contribute to the knowledge on how production offshoring and international operations management vary across cultural contexts. The chapter attempts to shed light on how companies approach the process of offshoring in different cultural contexts. In order to achieve this objective, the authors employ a qualitative methodology and compare three Danish and three Japanese manufacturing companies. On the basis of this comparative investigation, the authors find that the parent companies from both contexts employ offshoring as a remedy for the challenges of globalisation. Yet there are clear differences in how offshoring is conducted in Denmark and Japan. The main differences are outlined in a framework and explained employing cultural variables. The findings lead to a number of propositions suggesting that the process of offshoring is not simply a uniform technical-rational calculation of the most efficient organisation of activities across national borders, but it is rather specific to the parent companies’ national contexts.


2019 ◽  
Vol 11 (13) ◽  
pp. 3640 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rubén Jesús Pérez-López ◽  
Jesús Everardo Olguín Tiznado ◽  
María Mojarro Magaña ◽  
Claudia Camargo Wilson ◽  
Juan Andrés López Barreras ◽  
...  

In globalized times the integration of information and communication technologies in companies and their supply chains is required, but there is uncertainty regarding the true impact that these have on efficiency indices or benefits gained in the productive system. This article reports a structural equation model that contains ten hypotheses with five latent variables associated with the integration of information and communication technology in production systems such as information exchange, operations management, production control, distribution activities, and operational benefits obtained. The paper aims to quantify the relationships among those variables, facilitating managers to make decisions in information and communication technologies (ICT) implementation. The model is validated with information from 80 responses to a questionnaire applied to manufacturing companies, and partial least-squares technique is used to statistically validate the hypotheses; the results indicate that the implementation of information technologies facilitates the exchange of information, operations management and production control. This means that ICT integration can create visibility for a supply chain in a material’s flow among partners, facilitate operations management in production lines and distribution activities, and these benefits are ultimately transformed into operational benefits that managers measure as flexibility, low cost and short cycles times with customers.


2019 ◽  
Vol 11 (9) ◽  
pp. 2560
Author(s):  
Hyun Ahn ◽  
Tai-Woo Chang

As the adoption of information technologies increases in the manufacturing industry, manufacturing companies should efficiently manage their data and manufacturing processes in order to enhance their manufacturing competency. Because smart factories acquire processing data from connected machines, the business process management (BPM) approach can enrich the capability of manufacturing operations management. Manufacturing companies could benefit from the well-defined methodologies and process-centric engineering practices of this BPM approach for optimizing their manufacturing processes. Based on the approach, this paper proposes a similarity-based hierarchical clustering method for manufacturing processes. To this end, first we describe process modeling based on the BPM-compliant standard so that the manufacturing processes can be controlled by BPM systems. Second, we present similarity measures for manufacturing process models that serve as a criterion for the hierarchical clustering. Then, we formulate the hierarchical clustering problem and describe an agglomerative clustering algorithm using the measured similarities. Our contribution is considered on the assumption that a manufacturing company adopts the BPM approach and it operates various manufacturing processes. We expect that our method enables manufacturing companies to design and manage a vast amount of manufacturing processes at a coarser level, and it also can be applied to various process (re)engineering problems.


10.5772/56803 ◽  
2013 ◽  
Vol 5 ◽  
pp. 20 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrea Fumi ◽  
Laura Scarabotti ◽  
Massimiliano M. Schiraldi

This work presents the effect, in terms of travel distance and material handling time reductions, of an optimal rather than a uniform item allocation in one-block picking warehouses, both with and without the use of a simple picking heuristic. Since developing efficient product-location strategies represents a critical issue in Operations Management, due to the impact on warehouse performance in terms of both service level and operation costs, this paper focuses on an effective quantification of obtainable travel time reductions, obtaining a significant result for manufacturing companies aiming to determine the most appropriate material handling resource configuration. Building on previous work on the effect of slot-code optimization on travel times in single/dual command cycles, the authors broaden the scope to include the most general picking case, thus widening the range of applicability and realising former suggestions for future research.


2020 ◽  
Vol 16 (3) ◽  
pp. 155014772090976
Author(s):  
Jin Sung Park ◽  
Sung Jin Lee ◽  
Jesus Jimenez ◽  
Soo Kyun Kim ◽  
Jun Woo Kim

The primary role of modern information and communication technology infrastructures in smart factory is to collect a wide range of digital data from manufacturing resources; however, many manufacturing companies still have significant trouble in collecting data relevant for operations management. Especially, it is difficult to collect data about movement of mobile resources, such as human operators and material handling equipment. Moreover, managers of manufacturing companies often have significant troubles in utilizing the raw data collected by information and communication technology infrastructures due to its complexities and vast amount. To fill these gaps, this article proposes indoor positioning-based mobile resource movement data management system, which can be used to collect and process the mobile resource movement data flexibly. The indoor positioning technologies enable to track the positions of physical objects in real time; however, they generate time series data for 3D coordinates of object position not suitable for practical use. Therefore, this article aims to integrate the indoor positioning technology with a specialized user application, which allows the users to define what kinds of data should be collected and how the raw data should be transformed.


2014 ◽  
Vol 19 (5/6) ◽  
pp. 480-503 ◽  
Author(s):  
Maria Fischl ◽  
Maike Scherrer-Rathje ◽  
Thomas Friedli

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is both to provide an overview of existing knowledge pertaining to the management of price risks in manufacturing companies from an operations management (OM) perspective and to establish an agenda for future research. Risks related to the purchase prices of industrial consumption factors (raw materials, semi-finished/finished goods, auxiliary materials and operating materials) exert an increasing influence on manufacturing companies’ business continuity and economic sustainability. Design/methodology/approach – A systematic literature review was conducted following the literature search approach of vom Brocke et al. (2009). In total, 138 relevant articles were identified, analysed and synthesised. Findings – The literature review reveals that the existing OM literature devotes little attention to price risks and their management in manufacturing companies. In particular, further empirical investigation is required to support decision-making in various risk contexts. Social implications – This paper emphasises that in addition to existing national resource funds and inter-company alliances, alternative concepts are required to secure both stable prices and access to natural resources. Otherwise, in the future, small- and medium-sized companies, along with companies based in countries lacking available resource funds, will not have an opportunity to engage in fair competition. Originality/value – To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first literature review to focus on price as a specific supply risk.


2017 ◽  
Vol 24 (4) ◽  
pp. 1065-1081 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrea Chiarini ◽  
Emidia Vagnoni

Purpose This research enlarges the debate on the operations management strategies pursued by manufacturing companies. The purpose of this paper is to focus on issues concerning servitisation and customisation, enterprise resource planning (ERP) and Lean-agile, supply chain orchestration, corporate social responsibility (CSR) and Lean for design management. Design/methodology/approach A questionnaire of eight questions which stemmed from a literature review was completed by 152 senior operations managers from 120 large European manufacturing companies. Responses were scaled from strongly agree to strongly disagree. The results were tested for reliability using Cronbach’s α test. The questions were tested through a one-sample t-test. Findings The 152 respondents consider servitisation and standardisation to be a trade-off. They consider integration of ERP strategies with Lean and agile systems and customised products/processes to be difficult. Furthermore, suppliers’ orchestration is considered not that suitable for manufacturing companies and suppliers’ CSR performance measurement excessive. By contrast, a CSR internal performance measurement is helpful for increasing sales. The respondents also indicate that there is a lack of Lean tools for design and development processes and Six Sigma is the only strategy for improving quality performance in design and development processes. Research limitations/implications The findings are applicable only to the manufacturing sector. The findings of this research indicate many avenues of research for scholars. Practical implications The findings can be very useful for manufacturing operations managers deciding their future strategies on operations. Originality/value Findings related to servitisation and customisation, ERP and Lean-agile, supply orchestration for manufacturing companies and Lean and agile for product design are original and open a valuable debate.


2021 ◽  
Vol ahead-of-print (ahead-of-print) ◽  
Author(s):  
Xiaodie Pu ◽  
Meng Chen ◽  
Zhao Cai ◽  
Alain Yee-Loong Chong ◽  
Kim Hua Tan

PurposeThis study aims to examine the impact of lean manufacturing (LM) on the financial performance of companies affected by emergency situations. It additionally explores the role of advanced manufacturing technologies (AMTs) in complementing LM to enhance financial performance in emergency and non-emergency situations.Design/methodology/approachBoth survey and archival data were collected from 219 manufacturing companies in China. With longitudinal data collected before and after an emergency situation (i.e. Typhoon Rumbia), regression analysis was conducted to investigate the effects of LM and AMTs on financial performance in different contexts.FindingsOur results reveal an inverted U-shaped relationship between LM and financial performance in the context of emergency. We also found that AMTs exerted a positive moderation effect on the inverted U-shaped relationship, indicating high levels of AMTs that mitigated the inefficiency of LM in coping with supply chain emergencies.Research limitations/implicationsThrough simultaneous investigation of LM and AMTs as bundles of practices and their fit with different contexts, this study takes a systems approach to fit that advances the application of contingency theory in the Operations Management literature to more complex patterns of fit.Originality/valueThis study illuminates how AMTs support LM practices in facilitating organizational performance in different contexts. Specifically, this study unravels the interaction mechanisms between AMTs and LM in influencing financial performance in emergency and non-emergency situations.


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