Modeling and simulation of order-driven planning policies in build-to-order automobile production

In adopting build-to-order order fulfillment systems, automotive companies strive to better synchronize their production output with market demand. This essentially gives rise to a new paradigm in production planning. Since all business is linked to customer orders, the operational performance is substantially determined by order-driven planning. Therefore, a clear understanding of the associated planning tasks, order promising and master production scheduling, as well as their dynamic interaction is essential. Based on the analysis of the decision situation of order-driven planning in build-to-order settings, we provide a framework comprising separate interlinked quantitative models for order promising and master production scheduling. The focus of the contribution is on the modeling and evaluation of both models in a dynamic setting. The approach is evaluated by means of a simulative analysis using empirical data from the automotive industry. Conclusions regarding the potentials of such systems with respect to customer service, the leveling of resource utilization, and holding are presented.     

The Flexible–Rigid Paradox of Employment Relations at Royal Mail (UK)

This article examines how flexibility and rigidity equally pose a dilemma for management and trade unions. It explores the issue by examining a range of features within the employment relationship at the Royal Mail in the UK. It seeks to demonstrate how, in practice, both management and trade unions can require, pursue and argue for different and competing combinations of flexibility and rigidity. It concludes that it is analytically more useful to examine the content and form of the 'flexible–rigid mix' and explore how this is mediated by political, social and operational/technical processes.     

Strategic flexibility, rigidity and barriers to the development of absorptive capacity in business markets: Themes and research perspectives

The marketing and strategy literature hail strategic flexibility as a key success factor in creating continuously customer value and generating competitive advantage. However, empirical evidence indicates that rigidity in market strategies and actions is more the rule than the exception in organizations. The focus of this special issue is on better understanding rigidity and flexibility in business markets. This lead article seeks to elaborate on why companies face rigidity and how they can create flexibility. To do this, we relate rigidity in organizations to the concepts of dominant logic, industry recipe and persistence. The case illustrations highlight barriers to the development of absorptive capacity in business organizations. Identifying such barriers is a first step in better understanding how companies can remain agile and flexible in demanding and fast changing markets. The paper then proceeds with a brief introduction to the other contributions of this special issue and concludes with a research agenda.     

Marketing in the emerging era of build-to-order manufacturing

Build-to-order (BTO) and lean manufacturing processes are changing the paradigms under which businesses-to-business marketers operate. For example, BTO processes allow marketers to customize products to a greater degree, creating a competitive advantage over traditional manufacturing. Business-to-business (B2B) marketers who take advantage of the operational efficiencies and effectiveness that emerge from BTO are outperforming firms that utilize traditional manufacturing processes in multiple industries, such as office furniture, personal computers, and windows. This paper examines the long-term impact of the adoption of build-to-order manufacturing strategies on the marketing function and identifies marketing strategies associated with successful BTO companies. Throughout, the paper highlights managerial implications and proposes directions for future research.     

Why integrating purchasing with marketing is both inevitable and beneficial

The shift away from manufacturing in Western developed economies has resulted in economies in which service industries are dominant. Marketing itself has undergone a paradigmatic shift from a focus on the exchange of goods to the provision of capabilities. This paper examines the relationship between marketing and purchasing as a result of the shift from product- to capability-focused commerce. We suggest that the marketing and purchasing departments will become closer due to two major reasons. First, as marketers increasingly become solution-oriented rather than product-focused, they will need to source products and services from third-party vendors and will require deeper involvement of the purchasing department. Second, with the emergence of customer-centric marketing coupled with build-to-order manufacturing, marketing and purchasing will have to be better aligned to deliver solutions to customers. These new dimensions in the marketing–purchasing interaction will also lead to changes in the selection, training, and recruitment of marketers and purchasers as well as their roles in the supply chain. We elaborate on these changes likely to occur in business-to-business organizations and along with implications for managers.     

Constraint programming for project-driven manufacturing

Project-driven manufacturing, based on the make-to-order or the build-to-order principle and predominant in small and medium-size enterprises (SMEs), calls for an efficient solution of large combinatorial problems, especially in such areas as task scheduling or resource management. This paper addresses the problem of finding a computationally effective approach to scheduling a new project subject to constraints imposed by a multi-project environment. A constraint programming (CP) modeling framework is discussed in the context of an efficient decomposition of the constraint satisfaction problem (CSP) and the evaluation of strategies for pruning the search tree. The proposed approach is illustrated through examples of its application to the evaluation of a new production order.     

Virtual forms for the organization of production: A comparative analysis

In the present competitive environment, excellence in each phase of the productive process and flexibility are critical requirements in every business. Virtual enterprises have been proposed as an inter-organizational model characterized by both strong incentives to suppliers’ performance and high flexibility. Nonetheless, virtual enterprises are not ubiquitous as some suggest they should be. This paper compares virtual enterprises with other models for the organization of production: Markets, vertically integrated firms and networks. We formulate hypotheses that virtual enterprises are suitable for firms producing complex, modular products, with frequent changes in components, but low knowledge specificity. Virtual enterprises are suitable for a group of industries that is limited, but of growing importance.     

Decision support for build-to-order supply chain management through multiobjective optimization

This paper aims to identify the gaps in decision-making support based on multiobjective optimization (MOO) for build-to-order supply chain management (BTO-SCM). To this end, it reviews the literature available on modelling build-to-order supply chains (BTO-SC) with the focus on adopting MOO techniques as a decision support tool. The literature has been classified based on the nature of the decisions in different part of the supply chain, and the key decision areas across a typical BTO-SC are discussed in detail. Available software packages suitable for supporting decision making in BTO supply chains are also identified and their related solutions are outlined. The gap between the modelling and optimization techniques developed in the literature and the decision support needed in practice are highlighted. Future research directions to better exploit the decision support capabilities of MOO are proposed. These include: reformulation of the extant optimization models with a MOO perspective, development of decision supports for interfaces not involving manufacturers, development of scenarios around service-based objectives, development of efficient solution tools, considering the interests of each supply chain party as a separate objective to account for fair treatment of their requirements, and applying the existing methodologies on real-life data sets.     

Featuring Capability: How Carmakers Organize to Deploy Innovative Features across Products

Innovative features such as hands‐free car entry and ignition systems, stop‐start devices, telematics systems, and panoramic windshields are increasingly important to carmakers' innovation strategies. However, while product‐centric innovation has been extensively studied, there is less insight into the way companies implement their feature‐innovation strategies. The capability to explore, integrate, and deploy such attractive features is a critical dynamic capability; it allows carmakers to refresh their products, develop their competences, and maintain the efficiency of their traditional new product development. This research investigates the structures and processes of feature innovation in the automotive industry. It is based on a global investigation encompassing 9 generalist carmakers and 26 cases of feature innovation. The results show a clear trend, over the past decade, toward a structure of autonomous “advanced engineering” units and processes that are responsible for exploring innovative features and transferring them to multiple products. This paper details the key attributes of these units, and the role they play along the multiproduct learning cycle. Supplementing this structural analysis, the paper also identifies the coordination patterns between exploration and new product development activities. These results provide industry‐level insights into the way firms organize their feature‐innovation capability, and bring empirical elements to the ambidexterity literature.     

Examining Proactive Strategic Decision‐Making Flexibility in New Product Development

While strategic flexibility is widely accepted as a prerequisite for a firm's success, its application in strategic decision making to a firm's new product development (NPD) activities is limited to only a few studies. Furthermore, many organizations still have difficulties creating proactive strategic flexibility in their decision‐making processes. Past research studies have largely ignored the relationship between strategic decision‐making flexibility and firms' resources and/or capabilities and success in the context of NPD. This study advances strategic flexibility by adopting the proactive approach of NPD decision‐making flexibility and by examining its role in translating organizational resources and capabilities into NPD success. This study draws upon the resources, capabilities (i.e., flexibility), and performance framework to show how proactive strategic decision‐making flexibility plays a crucial role in developing new products that can create new opportunities and comply with market needs. Therefore, this research aims to (1) develop an operational definition of strategic decision‐making flexibility and (2) propose a framework to understand the drivers and the subsequent new product performance outcomes of strategic decision‐making flexibility. This study adopts the proactive perspective of strategic decision‐making flexibility and defines it as a capability that enables firms to develop NPD strategies to respond to future changes in the environment. The analysis, based on data collected from 103 European firms, shows that that the effects of long‐term orientation, strategic planning, internal commitment, and innovative climate on proactive strategic decision‐making flexibility are significant. The findings indicate specifically the roles of both champions and gatekeepers, who infuse a firm's knowledge with a clear understanding of its resources, constraints, and market needs, thereby enhancing decision makers' motivation to behave proactively to precipitate transformation. The results also reveal a positive association between proactive strategic decision‐making flexibility and NPD performance outcomes. As such, strategic flexibility provides firms with an ability to adapt to changing environments and to create new market opportunities, product, and technological arenas, and to deliver successful new products. When firms open new market, technological, and product arenas, they can easily foresee their new demands and changes and successfully deliver new products, meeting customer needs/demands, and offering benefits such as quality, cost, and timeliness. This study therefore provides a valuable reference point for future research in strategic decision‐making flexibility in NPD.     

Reconfigurable organisation to cope with unpredictable goals

The paper proposes a methodology and design rules for organisational structures facing higher necessity of rapidly reconfigure themselves to cope with unpredictable situations—new markets, new products, changing mix of production, problems in production process or flows etc. It implies changing and often conflictive criteria for production goals and for the allocation of work. The methodology was developed based on a large field action research and consulting. Their basis is the design of auto-reconfigurable working groups—or groups with variable geometry, depending on the events to face.     

中频感应加热在弹簧生产中的应用

对中频感应加热表面淬火在弹簧生产中的应用进行了实验研究。结果表明:中频感应加热淬火后,工件表层能得到针状马氏体组织,内部有足够的强度和韧性,故淬火硬度比普通热处理要高HRC3～5,从而提高了弹簧表面的硬度和质量。     

Rethinking contextual ambidexterity through parallel structures

This paper offers an alternative perspective on achieving contextual ambidexterity in organizations. Building on a collaborative research project within Renault’s Innovation Department, we identified that the corporate Fab Lab acted as a parallel structure in support of contextual ambidexterity. These findings provide three main contributions. First, we locate a source of contextual ambidexterity outside of the traditional business unit. In doing so, we challenge the dominant focus on managers, and show that, despite non-supportive contexts, employees can demonstrate ambidextrous skills through individual autonomous initiatives and bootlegging behaviors. Second, we delineate four key functions and related features – spatial, technical, methodological, and cultural – of parallel structures that nurture contextual ambidexterity. Finally, we recommend that the facilitation of a parallel structure should combine both flexibility and stability.     

Does Rigidity of Prices Hide Collusion?

Cartel detection is one of the most basic and most complicated tasks of competition authorities. In recent years, however, variance filters have provided a fairly simple tool for rejecting the existence of price-fixing, with the added advantage that the methodology requires only a low volume of data. In this paper we analyze two aspects of variance filters: (i) the relationship that can be established between market structure and price rigidity, and (ii) the use of different benchmarks for implementing the filters. This paper addresses these two issues by applying a variance filter to a gasoline retail market that is characterized by a set of unique features. Our results confirm the positive relationship between monopoly and price rigidity, and confirm the variance filter??s ability to detect non-competitive behavior when an appropriate benchmark is used. Our findings should serve to promote the implementation of this methodology among competition authorities, albeit in the awareness that a more exhaustive complementary analysis is required.     

Coordinated capacity migration and expansion planning for semiconductor manufacturing under demand uncertainties

Semiconductor industry is very capital intensive in which capacity utilization significantly affect the capital effectiveness and profitability of semiconductor manufacturing companies. Due to constant technology advance driven by Moore's Law in semiconductor industry, multiple production technologies generally co-exist in a wafer fabrication facility with utilization of a pool of common tools for multiple technologies and critical tools dedicated for a specific technology. Because part of the equipment is common for products of different technologies, production managers have limited flexibility to dynamically allocate the capacity among the technologies via capacity migration. The possibility of capacity migration and interrelationship among different technologies make capacity planning difficult under demand and product-mix uncertainties.This paper aims to develop a dynamic optimization method that captures the unique characteristics of rolling demand forecast mechanism to solve capacity expansion and migration planning problems in semiconductor industry. In semiconductor industry, demand forecasts are rolling and updated when the latest market and demand information is available. This demand forecast mechanism makes forecast errors in different time periods correlated. We estimate the validity and robustness of the proposed dynamic optimization method in an empirical study in a semiconductor manufacturing company in Taiwan. The results showed practical viability of this approach and the findings can provide useful guidelines for capacity planning process under rolling forecast mechanism.     

Using influence strategies to advance supplier delivery flexibility: The moderating roles of trust and shared vision

This study explores trust and shared vision moderate the relationship between the manufacturer's influence strategies and supplier delivery flexibility. The major components of this study are based on reviews of marketing research that focus on influence strategies and literature regarding supply chain flexibility. The results show that the request strategy has a negative effect on supplier delivery flexibility. The model predicts that trust and shared vision have an asymmetrical effect across recommendations, information exchange, and promises influence strategies. When the relationship contains a highly shared vision, a manufacturer's use of the recommendation influence strongly promotes supplier delivery flexibility, whereas the use of a promise strategy depresses supplier delivery flexibility. In contrast, an information exchange strategy will have a negative effect, but the promise strategy will have a positive effect on supplier delivery flexibility when trust is high. This paper contributes to guidelines for management on how to align their suppliers for delivery flexibility to respond quickly to customer demands.     

Organizational structures in the R & D sphere

Integration of R & D and production activities poses a major managerial problem, which arises because of fundamental differences in the nature of the two kinds of activity, requiring distinctly different management systems. A study of 100 teams of both types showed marked differences between the two in the organizational climate leading to maximum effectiveness. A taxonomy of organizational types, integrating the two activities in a spectrum of ways, is described. A study conducted among Polish electrical engineering enterprises showed that project-type organizations produced products with the greatest degree of originality (measured on the Kesselring scale), while matrix organizations introduced the greatest number of new products into the organizational system. A venture team concept, combining features of both organizational types, is proposed as a means for capitalizing on the good points of each.     

Diversification,coordination costs,and organizational rigidity: evidence from microdata

This paper examines the impact of coordination costs and organizational rigidity on the returns to diversification. The central thesis is that coordination costs offset economies of scope, while organizational rigidity increases coordination costs, further constraining economies of scope. The empirical tests of this proposition identify the effects of coordination and organizational rigidity costs on business unit and firm productivity, using novel data from the Economic Census on taxicab and limousine firms. The key results show that coordination and organizational rigidity costs are economically and statistically significant, while organizational rigidity itself accounts for a 16 percent decrease in paid ride‐miles per taxicab in incumbent diversifiers, controlling for the other costs and benefits of diversification and incumbency. The findings suggest that coordination costs, in general, and organizational rigidity costs, in particular, limit the scope of the firm. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

输电钢管杆稳定性分析的阶梯折算法

应用一维非均质体结构的阶梯折算法理论,建立了输电钢管杆的数值分析模型,推导了钢管杆的整体稳定计算方法,算法运用计算机易于实现,解决了荷载和刚度沿杆体变化的复杂杆结构整体稳定二阶计算问题,在电网工程建设和设计中有较好的实用价值。