In general companies continuously have to improve their operations to be able to survive in the global competition. They have to be better in utilizing their resources today compared to what they were yesterday. The production systems have changed during the 20 century and factories today do not look like they did hundred years ago. Focus has moved from mass production towards flexibility. The ...

In this paper, we expand upon recent research by Frohlich and Westbrook [J. Operations Manage. 19 (2) (2001) 185] that characterizes the influence of supply chain integration on performance. Introducing supply chain integration intensity as a proxy variable for Frohlich and Westbrook’s [J. Operations Manage. 19 (2) (2001) 185] ‘outward-facing supply chain strategy’, we investigate the ways that...

The paper extracts the process parameters from a sheet metal part model (B-Rep). These process parameters can be used in sheet metal manufacturing to control the manufacturing operations. By extracting these process parameters required for manufacturing, CAM program can be generated automatically using the part model and resource information. A Product model is generated in modeling software an...