Samenvatting Design and Planning of Production
Week 1
- Lecture1
Operations Management (OM): Area of Management concerned with designing and controlling
the process of production and redesigning business operations in the production of goods or
services.
Why, when and how do I get raw materials to finished goods? → decisions
Wheelwright, s.c. (1984) Manufacturing strategy: defining the missing link
A manufacturing strategy provides the umbrella under which day-to-day operating decisions are
made.
Main choice: Competitive priorities
→ Dominant orientation: What is my identity?
→ Diversification patterns: Which products in which markets?
→ Strategy for growth: What are my goals?
External perception: Price, Product, Dependability, Volume flexibility, Product flexibility
Internal Organisation: Efficient production, Product features, performance and durability, Ontime
delivery and consistent quality, Ramp up/down, Innovate
Distinguish order winners and qualifiers.
- Qualifiers: Minimum level of performance
- Winners: enables you to distinguish yourself, performance frontier
Your competitive priorities must be congruent with the decisions that you make at all levels:
identity, diversification, growth
Dominant orientation: market, product, technology
→ drives you focus and culture, mixing them is risky
Diversification patterns:
- Multiple products in the same market
- Different markets with the ‘same’ product
- Multiple links in the supply chain (vertical integration)
- Multiple products in different markets, spreading the risk
Perspective on growth: opportunities and threats
An empirical analysis of the product-process matrix (1996)
Investigates if deviating from the diagonal on the product-process matrix is indeed
uncommon/disadvantageous.
Three basic design decisions of production control:
- Management/ control focus: product or process
- Direction of flow to create a product: unidirectional or multidirectional
- Physical layout: Product, Dock, Process, Operator
Product orientation: Multiple departments, each responsible for a product. All necessary
processes are done within the department. No coordination is needed between departments
Process orientation: Machines are grouped according to the process they perform, functional
layout, because machines are grouped according to their function. Multiple departments, each
, responsible for a process. Products go from one department to another. Coordination is needed
between departments.
There are criteria to choose between product or process focus.
Unidirectional flow: flow shop, all products need the same sequence of operation.
Multidirectional flow: Job shop, each product can have a different sequence of operations.
Physical layout in a functional focus, it is practical to put the machines that perform the process
together. Otherwise you could lose oversight of your machines and operators during the day.
In a product focus, it is practical to put the machines that create the product together. If you
distribute machines over different departments, you need lots of coordination and transportation
again.
The combination of decisions lead to a blueprint of the production system, and
dictates the appropriate production control techniques. → basic process types
Volume/variety trade-off:
- Projects, usually large scale processes for one or a few unique products, product might
be at one place during production.
- Job shops, few products of a type, based on customer specifications, many different
types of products possible. Usually small scale production. Processes are done by
skilled operators that are expert in the specific operation.
- Batch processes, production of multiple or many of the same products. Still general
machines and tools, batches to prevent spending time setting up the machine.
- Mass production, similar products produced in large batches, only few interruptions of
the process, almost no setup time. Emphasis on efficiency, less on product flexibility.
- Continuous production, the same product in very large quantities, no discrete products
anymore.
Flow characteristics and volume/variety are linked through competitive priorities.
Article proposition was that positioning too far away from the diagonal is not sustainable. The
methodology was a survey.
The authors investigated the relation between the score on these performance factors and the
position in the product/process matrix.
The study provides lots of evidence that the propositions regarding product-process matrix are
correct.