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The purpose of this paper is to examine whether Korean multinational corporations (MNCs) in the electronics and steel industries do shift their production across their foreign subsidiaries, located in different countries, as exchange rates fluctuate in foreign countries.

A case study was taken as a qualitative methodology to examine whether MNCs actually shift their production as multinational operational flexibility perspective predicts.

From a case study of two Korean MNCs (LG Electronics and POSCO), it was found that even facing heightened production costs associated with host country currency appreciation, Korean MNCs do not shift their production to less costly locations due to industrial characteristics, limited capacity, and high tariff barriers. It was also found that they reduce the production costs internally and they also negotiate the costs with employees and suppliers to adjust the production costs associated with appreciated currency.

Our findings imply that certain industrial and environmental constraints make it difficult for MNCs to take flexible actions as multinational operational flexibility perspective predicts. The findings also shed additional light on the less‐explored argument over operational flexibility and vertical integration associated with cross‐country shifts of value chain activities, including production or sales.

Almost all literature taking the multinational operation flexibility view argues that MNCs are able to shift their productions for their own benefits. However, the authors of this paper find from their case studies that firms take advantage of other methods than production shifts in their responses to exchange rate fluctuations in their host countries. Thus this study gives an insight into when and how firms behave as the theory predicts.

This chapter examines the miners’ occupational culture of planisa at the level of supervisor–worker relations. The chapter presents a tale of two frontline production supervisors or shift-bosses as they were called on the mine – Jimmy and Lee. In this context, the ability of the production supervisor to make a plan in ways that enhance the social organisation of the production process and people management is crucial to the development of a reciprocal working relationship. The chapter argues that planisa also entails a valuable social organisational skill through which frontline supervisors could effectively use to manage work group dynamics and team performance associated with teamworking, intra-team conflict, effort-bargain and resistance.

The chapter reveals that by ‘getting on and getting by’ with his charges – going an extra mile to making plan for his mining teams wherever possible – Jimmy created a working environment that enabled his subordinates to achieve their production targets and increase their capacity to earn the much-desired productivity and safety bonuses. The case of Jimmy and his charges highlights the role of the frontline supervisor as a vital agent of workplace change that elicits worker cooperation and support for new work processes, not for the sake of pleasing management but in ways that benefit and make sense to them – going above and beyond organisational requirements to achieve the organisational performance goals at the point of production. On the contrary, the case of Lee, another frontline supervisor, demonstrates the opposite and highlights the harmfulness of poor supervisor–worker relations to the achievement of organisational, employee and team performance goals.

The purpose of this paper is to develop an extensive economic production quantity (EPQ) model on the basis of previous research. Considering an imperfect three‐state production process, this paper makes contributions to an integrated model combining conceptions of quality loss and design of control chart based on EPQ model. The objective is to minimize the total production cost with the determination of EPQ and design parameters of control chart subjected to quality loss and other process costs.

In this paper, imperfect process is defined as a three‐state process, and the quality cost corresponding to each state contributes to the eventual total expected cost formulation. Control chart is used to monitor the shift from the target value within whole process and its control limits are set to be related to the quality cost.

The proposed integrated model conforms more closely to the real situation of production process considering the process shift as a random variable.

Numerical computation and sensitivity analysis through a case study are presented to demonstrate the applications of the model.

Few research efforts investigate an integrated model considering EPQ, control chart and quality loss simultaneously. In particular, compared with the former researches, the process shift, due to which the quality cost incurs, is considered as a random variable in this paper.

This chapter examines and discusses the unintended outcomes of the production bonus scheme the mine had instituted to motivate and increase the productivity of the frontline mining teams. This is crucial given that the maladministration of the bonus system could lead to a range of undesired outcomes such as deteriorating levels of trust between management and frontline workers, prioritisation of production at the expense of safety, poor work relations and ultimately low levels of organisational, employee and team performance. There are a number of organisational, management and labour factors that can render a production bonus scheme effective or ineffective. These factors influence the nature and extent of worker reactions to the bonus scheme.

This chapter examines and discusses the factors that influenced the reaction of the mining teams to the team-based production bonus scheme and the extent to which mine management fulfilled its side of the bargain in the implementation of the production bonus. The chapter highlights the manner in which the team-based bonus system influenced teams of stope workers to engage in their informal organisational practice of making plan (planisa) in order to offset the snags that jeopardised their prospects of earning the production bonus. The chapter reveals that, to a large extent, the productivity bonus generated conflict rather than cooperation at the point of production down the mine. As a result, the incentive scheme failed to live up to expectations by not eliciting the desired levels of organisational, worker and team performance at the rock-face.

This paper aims to examine the interaction between formal and informal organisation of work inside the pit, with reference to the informal working or coping strategy of “making a plan” (planisa).

The research for this paper was ethnographic in nature and the participant observation was the main research technique used in the field.

The underground gold miners make a plan or engage in planisa to offset the production bottlenecks which affected their capacity to achieve their production targets and increase their bonus earnings. They “get on and get by” underground in order to cope with organisational constraints and management inefficiencies.

The paper highlights the limits of formal organisation of work and the significance of gold miners’ informal work strategy of making a plan (planisa) as an existing and alternative working practice that shapes their subjective orientation, agency and resilience to work structures and managerial strategies. Any strategy designed to improve the health, safety and productivity of underground miners must recognise, elaborate and systematically articulate the workplace culture of planisa as an existing work practice in the day‐to‐day running of the production process down the mine.

The paper proposes a model aiming at the explanation of the formation of coordinative knowledge practices in distributed work. Findings from a pilot study aiming at the preliminary testing of the model are presented and discussed.

The explanatory model was developed by combining concepts and findings developed in studies of social capital, knowledge sharing and computer supported cooperative work. The empirical data were gathered in 2007‐2008 in a multi‐unit Finnish chemical company production site. The methods used were structured observation of work processes, semi‐structured interviews and a web‐based questionnaire.

The model suggested that coordinative knowledge practices are shaped by four major factors: work coupling, social capital, spatio‐temporality and affordances of collaboration technologies. The empirical study showed that these concepts can be successfully applied in empirical research to better understand and support the development of coordinative knowledge practices.

The findings can be utilized in the analysis and assessment of coordinative knowledge practices between distributed work groups in multi‐unit organizations. The findings can also be used in the development of solutions for knowledge sharing and communication in distributed work organizations and communities.

The model developed provides a novel perspective for the study of knowledge practices in the context of distributed group work. The model proposes that varying degrees in work coupling intensity, social capital, spatio‐temporality and affordances of collaborative technologies explain the emergence of coordinative knowledge practices. The study shows how coordinative knowledge practices can be studied empirically. The empirical study resulted in a typology of coordinative knowledge practices.

The purpose of this study is to examine the delocalization trend of the EU's clothing production to Central and Eastern European Countries (CEECs) and North Africa, focusing on the geographical shift of outsourced clothing production pattern within the two developing regions.

In total, 14 CEECs and North African countries were selected and classified into 1st‐tier and 2nd‐tier regions according to their GDP/capita values. Clothing trade statistics were obtained from the Eurostat database, and the clothing trade pattern was examined during 1995 to 2004. Trade Specialization Coefficient (TSC) was employed to measure the international competitiveness of clothing exports of the selected CEECs and North African countries.

Results concluded that the EU's clothing production had significantly delocalized to the proximate CEECs and North African regions, with further geographical shift to less‐developing 2nd‐tier clothing supplying countries in recent years. The TSC analysis reflected that the competitiveness of clothing industry in 2nd‐tiers had outperformed the 1st‐tier economies, indicating Western European firms had shifted their sourcing practices to those lower‐waged countries.

This study gives insight into the EU clothing production industry and their delocalized pattern to the CEECs and North Africa.

thyssenkrupp Steel Europe, a major European steel company, operates a so-called push-pickling line (PPL) in Bochum, Germany. The PPL produces a particular type of steel strips that are sold to B2B customers, mainly in the automotive industry. In spring 2014, a senior vice president of thyssenkrupp Steel's production operations and one of his production managers notice that over the span of ten years the production facility regularly did not meet its planned production volumes. They set out to determine the drivers for the deviations from planned production figures with the ultimate goal to improve the production planning process at the Bochum PPL. Students will step into the shoes of Markus Schulze a production manager at thyssenkrupp Steel as he searches for performance drivers at the Bochum PPL and analyzes recent production data to build a forecasting model for production planning.

There is growing evidence of a knowledge gap in the association of maintenance with production activities in bottling plants. Indeed, insights into how to jointly optimise these activities are not clear. In this paper, two optimisation models, Taguchi schemes and response surface methodology are proposed.

Borrowing from the “hard” total quality management elements in optimisation and prioritisation literature, two new models were developed based on factor, level and orthogonal array selection, signal-to-noise ratio, analysis of variance and optimal parametric settings as Taguchi–ABC and Taguchi–Pareto. An additional model of response surface methodology was created with analysis on regression, main effects, residual plots and surface plots.

The Taguchi S/N ratio table ranked planned maintenance as the highest. The Taguchi–Pareto shows the optimal parametric setting as A4B4C1 (28 h of production, 30.56 shifts and 37 h of planned maintenance). Taguchi ABC reveals that the planned maintenance and number of shifts will influence the outcome of production greatly. The surface regression table reveals that the production hours worked decrease at a value of planned maintenance with a decrease in the number of shifts.

This is the first time that joint optimisation for bottling plant will be approached using Taguchi–ABC and Taguchi–Pareto. It is also the first time that response surface will be applied to optimise a unique platform of the bottling process plant.

When sales vary significantly according to season, the manufacturer makes special provisions to integrate the acquisition of raw materials and labour with an effective production schedule which satisfies customers′ requirements. The recommended procedure is called aggregate planning, and many algorithms produce a good definitive solution. However, they have been ignored by industry. The empirical research presented here looks at such planning in a sample of 20 Australian factories. It sheds some light on the acknowledged gap between theory and practice, and suggests that business strategy, the extent of the seasonal distortion, and the tactical remedies available, are all linked. Strategic and tactical considerations tend to bypass the aggregate planning step, and the problem is ultimately resolved at the master production schedule level.