Singapore’s electronics manufacturers are facing many questions. In the computer hard-drive industry, where the problem of obsolescence is common and where a product’s lifecycle may be only six months, manufacturers are anxious to know what the next order-winning criteria will be. Since low labour costs are no longer a key factor, many organisations are developing their competencies in rese…
Manufacturing Resources Planning (MRPII) is recognized as being an effective management system that has an excellent planning and scheduling capability which can offer a dramatic increase in customer service, significant gains in productivity, much higher inventory turns, and a greater reduction in material costs. Many companies world‐wide have attempted to implement MRPII systems. Many of th…
In this paper, the management of variety in automobile manufacturing is broadened from simply considering the choice of models, options and parts to include strategic issues in sourcing and logistics systems. Some of the major cost elements associated with varietal increase are identified, leading into a discussion of how logistics system redesign can reduce or, indeed, eliminate the unwanted i…
The purpose of this paper is to examine whether the level of logistics information systems (LIS) adoption in manufacturing companies is influenced by organizational profile variables, such as the company’s size, the nature of its operations and their subsectors.
Organizes the wide‐ranging literature on “new wave manufacturing” factors which impact on the flow of materials into six themes which are related to a conceptual model. The six themes are: the effects of under‐capacity loading; the role of pull scheduling; the reduction of variability; the reduction of throughput time; the effects of reduced throughput time and of schedule stability o…
Modern manufacturing systems enable manufacturing management to plan, control and record manufacturing activities. However, manufacturers have been found to adopt practices and incur overheads to deride the benefits arising in other operational areas of their activities from the implementation of traditional systems. Current manufacturing practices are burdened by the legacy of these traditiona…
Mass customization is coming to the forefront of international supply chains and this is contributing to an increasing focus on postponement in international channels. Third party logistics service providers, traditionally positioned in this channel are targeting postponement applications as an extension of their service portfolios. Previous findings however suggest that this expansion is not a…
Examines the logistics environment and the manufacturing logistics strategy in Hong Kong, based on six case studies. The manufacturing structure of Hong Kong industry is identified. The following logistics strategies adopted by Hong Kong companies are discussed: market intelligence, sourcing, front‐end activities, manufacturing distribution, back‐end activities, vertical integration, ethn…
The design of manufacturing systems is a complex and expensive task for both SMEs and large organisations alike. Many problems relating to the design and operation of manufacturing systems are too complex to allow for mathematical treatment, and as a result there is increasing recognition of the applicability of simulation in the manufacturing environment. This has in turn resulted in a growt…
It is estimated that over 100 MRPII systems are available in the market, many of them are mature enough to meet most of the users' requirements. Manufacturing companies worldwide have attempted to implement these MRPII systems, however, failure is often experienced by many companies. Very often this failure is due to managerial rather than technical issues. In order to overcome this difficulty,…
Twoof the most sought after properties in today’s dynamic and competitive manufacturing environment are labour flexibility and effective teamworking. This is due in no small part to the growth of modern manufacturing philosophies which strongly advocate the need for both teamwork and flexibility. This paper aims to explore the impact of two labour flexibility strategies (functional flexibilit…
In recent years a growing number of firms have reported dramatic results from an operation's improvement technique called Constraint Management (CM). For example, Ford Motor Company's Electronics division attributes reductions in manufacturing cycle time as high as 89 per cent, 76 per cent fewer product returns, reductions in inventory of 49 per cent and 43 per cent lower freight costs to its…
Over the last ten years scores of methodologies have emerged in management science/operations research/statistics that employ techniques such as mathematical programming, simulation, artificial intelligence, and clustering to convert a flexible manufacturing system into a cellular one. Based on a real-life case that involved over 1,000 components and 3,000 operations, related to a world-class f…
Much research has been done on how e-commerce has allowed companies to integrate business processes and reduce operational costs. The intent of this study, however, is to understand how e-commerce has affected companies’ abilities to serve the customers’ needs and to raise their level of satisfaction.
The purpose of this paper is to define dimensions for describing information quality deficiencies and to describe forecast and customer order information quality deficiencies on various manufacturing planning and control levels.
Aims to conceptualize flexible logistics programs and information connectivity as two important aspects of logistics flexibility and to examine the role of information connectivity in making flexible logistics programs successful.
The topology of manufacturing systems is specified during the design phase and can afterwards only be adjusted at high expense. The purpose of this paper is to exploit the availability of large-scale data sets in manufacturing by applying measures from complex network theory and from classical performance evaluation to investigate the relation between structure and performance.