The 2012 crop of Cool Vendors in manufacturing operations illustrates the importance manufacturers place on product quality and safety, as well as safe and reliable production operations. The vendors apply innovative approaches to tackling these high-priority issues. ■ Combining real-time data and risk assessment models is a paradigm shift in the world of safety management, opening the door to ...

For firms remanufacturing their products, the total life-cycle costs and revenues from new and remanufactured products determine their profitability. In many firms, manufacturing/sales and remanufacturing/remarketing operations are carried out in different divisions. Each division is responsible for only part of the product’s life cycle. Practices regarding transfer pricing across divisions var...

This paper is concerned with providing a clear business basis for the emerging research field of holonic manufacturing systems. The holonic approach is to develop highly flexible manufacturing operations from a set of readily reconfigurable building blocks, which are designed to integrate easily and collaborate dynamically with one another as production demand changes. The business basis is ass...

The ability to track the location of goods throughout an agile manufacturing environment can provide for the mass production of customized products. When an agile manufacturing system controller knows where a particular product is within its manufacturing cycle, and what further operations are required for customization, it can make smart decisions as to how this product can be re-routed. Custo...

This paper describes the application of discrete event simulation to study continuous material flow. Logistics is an integrated part of most manufacturing companies. The purpose of this study is to determine the required logistics operations to allow continuous operations of a chemical manufacturing plant. The application has been used to provide critical decision support.

This paper analyses the relationship between employee turnover, timebased manufacturing practices, manufacturing performance and manufacturing efficiency. Consistent with theory, the results show that employee turnover is negatively associated to the implementation of some practices, and also to manufacturing efficiency. These results are discussed within the context of sustainable manufacturin...

Today’s internet-based business operations require agile manufacturing systems that can quickly respond to a changing business climate. Effective business operation in such an environment depends on information flow throughout the company. This need necessitates integration of information technology throughout the organization, including the business and manufacturing operations. Existing indus...

One of the basic manufacturing operations, mainly predetermining production quality, is assembly of the parts. Assembly automation is highly important manufacturing development trend, which makes possible to decrease duration of the manufacturing operations, save resources and increase production quality. Success of the automated assembly of the parts depends on parts feeding into assembly posi...

The objective of this paper is proposing a developed balanced scorecard approach to measure supply chain performance with the aim of creating more value in manufacturing and business operations. The most important metrics have been selected based on experts’ opinion acquired by in-depth interviews focused on creating more value for stakeholders. Using factor analysis method, a survey research h...

in competitive markets, the operations strategies of companies are normally formulated based on their competitive advantages. an effective operations strategy should maintain and improve competitive advantages based on the capabilities of the corporate operations resources. considering the market requirements and the operational performance of the rivals is the key for success and survival of a...