Search results

During the past ten years, product proliferation, the trend toward larger facilities serving more markets, dramatic increases in the cost of labour and of plant and equipment and customers requiring faster, more dependable deliveries of smaller quantities have greatly increased management's awareness of the need for product flow planning and control. It is now well recognised that the movement and storage of goods is a vital link between production and marketing which is capable of having a significant impact on the overall profitability of the firm and, therefore, must be carefully planned and controlled.

Outsourcing, or contract manufacturing, is becoming an increasingly popular alternative to in‐house production. It has wide implications for the firm. Since logistics is evolving to include inbound material movements, it stands to play a central role in this trend. Outsourcing arrangements require inventory, timing, storage, transportation and other decisions pertaining to the facets of flow control. Outsourcing, why it is used, and why logistics plays a logical role in it, are examined, some key managerial issues and concerns that outsourcing presents to the firm and to logistics are provided.

A new product design required the addition of a second layer of electronics to control a base module. This product was designed with significant overhangs of heavy leads and components which presented a significant challenge to many different solder assembly processes. Only the heated gas jet process was able to solder the product successfully without damaging the printed wiring boards.

To answer the challenge, a new machine was developed, combining dispensing of solder paste with hot gas jet reflow technology. This provided a combination of capabilities resulting in a flexible process which was significantly superior to alternative technologies.

Other soldering processes such as laser, focused xenon lamp, robotic soldering iron, and focused IR soldering technologies were evaluated. Each of these technologies causes some damage or defect to the assembly due to the heat sinking aspect of the circuit assembled. These alternative processes would create damage or defects to the assemblies by burning the laminate, delaminating the pads on the printed wiring board, or not soldering the pads.

Proof of concept tests before machine designs were initiated demonstrated the potential and capabilities of this technology for automated assembly soldering. Testing indicated that the heated gas jet processing would provide a means of soldering the assemblies at a controllable rate without damaging the circuit boards.

While evaluating the machine ion its design phase, a designed experiment was initiated to help understand the relationships between head temperature settings versus gas flow rates, the measurable output was time to reflow.

The process meets all expectations in terms of solder fillet appearance, volume, and overall visual quality while maintaining process cycle time requirements.

Ancient and Modern The ability of zeolite granules to act as a molecular sieve has been known to science for many years: now NGL have adapted this age‐old process and by harnessing it to modern electronic technology have created a new concept in aircraft Life Support systems.

The dilemma faced by many batch‐manufacturing operations is the trade‐off between reducing lead times and manufacturing throughput. Using Little’s Law and the theory‐of‐constraints analysis, the authors have developed a methodology to optimise such dilemmas. The solution to this problem is to find the point in the operation of the plant where throughput is maintained at acceptable levels, but the lead time through the plant is maintained at or near a minimum. At such a point, the optimum level of work in progress (WIP) will be obtained. Such principles have been applied in this research project to a metals manufacturer. The difficulty with this case study is that complexity of the product mix and manufacturing flow renders simple analysis incomplete. By utilising a discrete event simulation of the manufacturing facility, we have been able to identify bottlenecks within the plant. From here we have developed a tool that automatically predicts the optimum level of WIP, depending upon such parameters as product mix and batch sizes. The results show significant improvement over the current practices, and over maintaining a constant WIP level. The results highlight the power of the constraint principles, and the value in evaluating and choosing the best methods for managing change through simulation.

Operations management.

Management post graduate and corporate executives.

ProdVal Flow Controls Pvt Ltd was company in the SME sector in India. The company focused on quality products and timely delivery. The major challenge for ProdVal was increasing their production capacity. They had no control over their existing suppliers resulting in delay in raw materials delivery. Retention of vendors had an effect on inventory carrying cost. The company had limited production facilities and the workers were outsourced. The company operated with unskilled workers. The case presents the various issues faced by the company based on which strategies to practice and plan the company's future plans could be designed. This is a disguised case and all excerpts from interviews have been anonymized.

This case study will give an insight to students to understand how inventory management; impacts production. It even gives an idea about how ProdVal has used the strategy of outsourcing of technology and labour and maintained a good growth rate.

Production-related outsourcing.

Production management in small scale industry.

Organization structure of a manufacturing unit.

Concept of outsourcing HR and technology in an SME.

Teaching notes are available, please consult your librarian to access.

The purpose of this paper is to present the state-of-the-art E-commerce logistics in supply chain management by investigating worldwide implementations and corresponding models together with supporting techniques via furniture industry.

Typical E-commerce logistics companies from North America, Europe, and Asia Pacific are comprehensively investigated so as to get the lessons and insights from these practices.

Future technologies like Internet of Things, Big Data Analytics, and Cloud Computing would be possibly adopted to enhance the E-commerce logistics in terms of system level, operational level, and decision-making level that may be real time and intelligent in the next decade.

This paper takes the furniture industry for example to illustrate the E-commerce logistics and supply chain management (LSCM). Other industries like electronic appliance industry are not considered.

Opportunities and future perspectives are summarized from practical implementations so that interested parties like E-commerce and logistics companies are able to get some guidance when they are contemplating the business.

E-commerce is booming with the development of new business models and will be continuously boosted in the near future. With large number of enterprises carrying out E-commerce, logistics has been largely influenced.

Insights and lessons from this paper are significant for academia and practitioners for considering E-commerce LSCM.

Generic business process models for the supply chain do not cover the specific requirements of the cold chain catering to the needs of temperature-sensitive, perishable goods. The purpose of this paper is to draft a reference model specific to the cold chain.

Following an object-oriented modeling approach, conceptual elements that have been synthesized from a literature review are transferred into the static view (object model) of the reference model. In addition, the reference model’s dynamic properties representing the business process view are outlined.

While a few atomic process steps are sufficient to model the cold chain’s dynamic properties, the complexity of the cold chain lies in the object model. The classes of the object model are highly interrelated and cover four domains: perishable product, information technology, infrastructure/equipment and regulatory framework. This technical approach is more adequate to the complex nature of cold chains than typical business process models.

In the present draft status, the reference model is limited by the pure conceptual approach of this paper. As it is in the nature of things for a draft of a reference model, case studies to challenge the draft and a discourse of experts are required before detailed specifications can be added or any software implementation can be started. It is expected that the reference model is able to substantially support further research on cold chain design and optimization.

The cold chain reference model is intended to be a standard toolbox for planning and evaluating cold chains. By integrating the technical, information technology and regulatory objects behind the business processes, it allows to design and analyze cold chains from a more holistic perspective.

To the best knowledge of the author, this paper is the first to outline a reference model for the cold chain that goes beyond the business processes.

Historically goods and services have been distributed through networks in which loosely aligned firms have bargained at arm's length, negotiated aggressively over price and other conditions of sale, and otherwise behaved autonomously. However, planned vertical marketing systems are rapidly displacing these conventional marketing channels as the dominant mode of distribution in the American economy. These vertical marketing systems tend to be professionally managed, pre‐planned, rationalised, and capital intensive. According to McCammon, over 60 per cent of total retail sales are through firms affiliated with vertical marketing systems.