Search results

This monograph examines research needs in computer aided production management (CAPM). Recommendations for future research and its organisation are made. The monograph is based on an in‐depth study of current CAPM practice in a varied sample of 33 companies. The study conclusions confirm many existing beliefs. Many companies are paying inadequate attention to the necessary prerequisites for successful CAPM implementation. The prerequisites change as the extent of CAPM system integration increases. Organisational rather than implementation issues dominate as integration increases. The proposed research would bring together existing knowledge of best CAPM practice to form methodologies for the audit, design and implementation of CAPM systems. The aim is to reduce the time‐span of the learning curve required for successful CAPM integration. The methodologies need to be specific to particular industrial sectors.

This paper supports project based research and agrees with the view that it is impossible to draw a boundary around a group of subsystems in the real world so as to research only these. All aspects of the manufacturing system including strategy, management style and organisational structure are involved potentially. Project based research has produced little in the way of generalisable results, and in some cases is difficult to distinguish from management consultancy. What needs to be understood better are the methodologies of a general nature. The main movements are likely to be away from calculation towards data analysis and definition, and away from mathematical models towards formal descriptive models.

Since the first Volume of this Bibliography there has been an explosion of literature in all the main areas of business. The researcher and librarian have to be able to uncover specific articles devoted to certain topics. This Bibliography is designed to help. Volume III, in addition to the annotated list of articles as the two previous volumes, contains further features to help the reader. Each entry within has been indexed according to the Fifth Edition of the SCIMP/SCAMP Thesaurus and thus provides a full subject index to facilitate rapid information retrieval. Each article has its own unique number and this is used in both the subject and author index. The first Volume of the Bibliography covered seven journals published by MCB University Press. This Volume now indexes 25 journals, indicating the greater depth, coverage and expansion of the subject areas concerned.

It has been argued that production/operations management (P/OM) emerged as a true functional field of management only during the 1980s. If this is the case then one can hypothesize that P/OM research must have changed considerably during the last decade. To test this hypothesis all the articles published in the first ten volumes of the International Journal of Operations & Production Management were categorized using a framework based on research process reported. Explains the development of this framework and presents the data generated from the categorization process. These clearly show that during the 1980s the content of P/OM research increasingly became of a macro and soft nature.

This paper provides an overview of a series of research projects investigating the diffusion and appropriation of technologies for production and inventory control (PIC). These technologies are referred to, collectively, as production and inventory control systems (PICS) though also appear under a number of other names (for example, computer‐aided production management). PICS are information technologies used, predominantly by operations management or logistics personnel in manufacturing industry, to plan and schedule production runs and materials handling so that materials are available when required for production without holding unnecessary inventory. Typically, though not always, the technologies are computer‐aided. Like other technologies, they involve a significant amount of organisational as well as technical innovation (c.f. Damanpour, et al, 1989).

There has been a growing call from within the operations management (OM) academic community for research of more managerial relevance. This has implied a greater emphasis on empirical research: surveys, cases, and action research. But in fact these types are quite different. However, the great majority of empirical OM work published is based on postal surveys and/or interviewing executives, where research method selection is made for reasons of practical convenience and academic expectation. Given the level of complexity involved in understanding the OM perspective of business issues then the emphasis should be placed on plant‐based research. Conducting research on‐site and investigation through the analysis of relevant data, issues, developments and events ensures relevance and a validity essential to making an impact on business practice. There are obstacles to increasing the amount of plant‐based research which is carried out, such as practical and personal difficulties, a mistaken concern over research rigour, and academic institutional inertia. Each of these needs to be overcome if OM research is to influence business practice more in the future than it has in the past.

In 1986 a study was carried out in a number of small companies in the UK that manufacture to customer requirements. The primary objective was to assess the relevance and importance to industry of ideas developed in earlier research at Lancaster University, relating the order quotation process to production and sales. However, in the course of the study a great deal was learnt about the industrial sectors examined.

A survey of investment in new production technology and specific AMT techniques in larger UK firms are described. Though the majority of the responding firms were in the manufacturing sector, some were not. Interestingly, some of these considered that they had invested substantially in new production technology. Companies were also questioned about which factors they considered most important in making investment decisions. These showed an unexpected emphasis on the importance of “intangible” factors. Responses were analysed separately for manufacturing companies belonging to process industries and those classified as belonging to “general manufacturing”. As might have been expected, companies in the latter category had invested more heavily in AMT techniques. However, process industry companies had also invested significantly. Around two‐thirds of companies in the general manufacturing category reported difficulties in assessing the benefits of AMT investment. About a quarter of process industries companies had experienced similar difficulties. However, few companies appeared to have altered their investment appraisal systems to treat AMT investments any differently to ordinary ones, despite the literature that suggests that this may be necessary.

Computer production management systems are far more common than they were even five years ago, as a result of reductions in the costs of computer hardware and the growing use of package software by both large and small firms. However, there are still many problems associated with such computer systems. Though the symptoms are somewhat different depending on whether we are concerned with large or small companies, the root cause is the same: a lack of any clear philosophy of what production management systems do and how they should be designed. In addition companies face a need to integrate hardware from many different suppliers and the ability to do this would also be helpful to smaller firms. At the moment such integration is difficult to carry out.

In 1986 a comprehensive study into the state of the art in Computer Aided Production Management (CAPM) in UK industry commissioned by the ACME (Application of Computers to Manufacturing Engineering) directorate of the Science and Engineering Research Council (SERC) revealed a number of deficiencies in existing CAPM systems and approaches. As a consequence of this report, a number of specific sectors were identified including the small company sector, large company sector, make to order sector and the electronics sector. This article outlines the results of the work of the research team engaged in developing a CAPM implementation methodology for the electronics sector, which was the largest of the ACME CAPM projects. The research team believe that the results are equally applicable for CAPM implementation in other manufacturing sectors.