Ahm Shamsuzzoha

Managing product variety through component commonality: concept and application

In this paper, we have reviewed and analysed different factors and issues for product variety management and their effects on production planning strategies. An example is taken from a truck manufacturing company to demonstrate how component commonality issue influences on developing product-mix within same product family. Agile supply and demand network software is used to investigate the commonality value and its effects on product variety management. We have also applied design structure matrix methodology for better ordering or sequencing of components in order to create clusters or modules which might be useful for making variety.

ICT-based solution approach for collaborative delivery of customised products

Abstract Growing interest on business collaboration motivates today’s industries, especially small and medium enterprises (SMEs) to establish and manage dynamic and non-hierarchical business networks to respond to market opportunities with added business benefits. This business environment requires concurrent work and real-time information sharing between key business partners in order to design and develop customised products. The use of traditional communication media such as e-mail, phone and fax is not satisfactory to get real-time information and is time-consuming and most often ineffective. In such environments, an Information and Communication Technology (ICT)/Web-based technology supports real-time information sharing among networked SMEs for the collaborative design and manufacturing of customised products. This study proposes an innovative ICT platform supporting SMEs collaboration, through Web and the Internet of Things technologies, which follows the Net-Challenge conceptual approach and methodological guidelines for SMEs to form and operate virtual organisations for the collaborative development and delivery of customised products. The ICT Platform was assessed in three different industry domains, namely the textile and apparel, the footwear and the machine tools, respectively. This ICT solution promotes collaboration, with substantial advantages for SMEs including the reduction of costs and delivery time and improvement of the innovation potential.

Literature overview of modularity in world automotive industries

Nowadays global auto industries are going considerable changes in their production lines, which lead to increased competition and shorter product life cycles. Through producing variety products with higher quality and less cost could ensures more customers satisfaction. All automotive industries especially, car manufacturers are required to increase their market segment with corporate profit to ensure cost related objectives and success over competitors. It is therefore, essential for auto firms to reconsider their product development methodology in order to fulfill the objectives. The focus of this paper is to investigate the pros and cons of the concept of modularity that can be applied in auto industries in order to improve the product development processes. Modularity is gaining increasing importance in manufacturing firms recently; especially in auto industries. Modular product structures ensure real improvements and provide considerable benefits such as; reduce time to market, increase product variants, improve products quality, reduce Bill-Of-Material code etc. for the business firms. However, the concept of modularity has some limitations too. In this paper, a general overview of modularity, its application and prospects in auto industries along with its limitations are also discussed.

Virtual supply chain for networked business: perspective of collaborative bill-of-materials, scheduling and process monitoring for developing innovative product

This article presents a methodology applicable to the formation of collaborative bill-of-materials (C-BOM), coordinating production scheduling and monitoring operational processes. The concept of collaborative product development process is described in detail through an example network, where the participating organisations form a temporary virtual organisation (VO) and contribute throughout the entire product development processes. In this paper, the basic need for exchanging product information among the partners is carried out through IT-based software tools, where the partners are enabled to visualise and monitor the operational processes in a real-time environment. This research study concludes with the overall research outcomes and future research directions.

Green Virtual Business Network for Managing and Reusing Waste Between Partner Organizations

Today, industry is under intense pressure to stay competitive in market segment with limited resources. To withstand such challenges manufacturing organizations need to be collaborative. This collaboration not only benefits many aspects in their daily businesses but contributes other aspects like waste management. In this research, especial focus is given on managing industrial wastes through recycling and reuse between partner organizations as resources within a business network. This concept turns out mutual benefits between partners and managing Eco-friendly business environment based on substituting a new resource by an undervalued resource such as waste. This paper also presents a modelling approach for industrial wastes management within business network, which intends to support the identification of wastes substitution opportunities.

Virtual factories for sustainable business performance through enterprise portal

Sustainable business has become a valuable way to achieve competitive advantage and improve business performance. Virtual enterprise (VE), as a new business collaboration form, used to fulfil unique business requirements and make sure small- and medium-sized enterprises can adapt themselves to the modern business environment under increasing pressure towards sustainability. However, an advanced information management system is demanded for collaborative enterprises to share valuable knowledge and expertise. Enterprise portal (EP) plays a significant role to develop and maintain integrated environments for collaborative business, which makes it to approach VE for sustainable business performance. This research introduces a new form of factories collaboration, namely Virtual Factory, and also expresses EP and how it provides integrated services in the industry manufacturing domain. Therefore, an open source EP, Liferay, is selected. This Virtual Factory portal (ViFa portal) enables different factories meet their manufacturing targets and provides a single tool for all factories to access the real-time manufacturing information and products information. Two case companies are included to demonstrate the ViFa portal and its overall functionalities and capabilities. This research offers a significant method to improve the manufacturing processes and increase the ability to share information across different factories.

Strategic outsourcing: status and prospects in global product development processes

Nowadays, firms are realising that being alone in the product development process does not provide them with any differentiation in their production lines and is causing the emergence of a widespread moving towards the phenomenon of outsourcing. The objectives of such an approach are not only cost-effectiveness and focusing on core competition, but also firms are adopting outsourcing to obtain a distinct marketing edge and to score over their competitors. In this paper, the overall strategic views of outsourcing in manufacturing industries are critically analysed and discussed together with the potentials and pitfalls of this emerging approach.

Metrics of product modularity: lessons learned from case companies

Purpose Modular product development is a turning table concept in terms of benefits and impact in manufacturing companies. It offers added benefits to the companies with respect to reduce lead-time, improve assemble ability, agility in supply chain management, promote product family and enhances customers’ satisfactions. This research is conducted to identify the patterns of modular product development strategy with measurement techniques. Design/methodology/approach Both quantitative and qualitative approaches are taken to conduct this research. In the qualitative section, relevant data on product design is collected from six case companies. On the other hand, in the quantitative section, collected data is analyzed to measure the product modularity level with the case companies. Findings This research identifies potential metrics, which can be used successfully to measure product modularity level or index in manufacturing industries. Selection of such metrics also depends on individual company’s objectiv...

Development of sustainable platform for modular product family: a case study

Abstract Defining product platform architecture is a critical issue to design and develop product variants. Different factors are highly dependent on the architecture type, such as number of variants, to measure modularity level, component commonality, market demand, etc. It is directly related to manage product portfolios and setting up business plan of a company. Before defining a product platform, whether it is modular or integral product designers need to follow specific design guidelines and checklists. This research mainly focuses on to define the platform architecture as well as provides necessary design guidelines and checklists for the product designers. It also highlights an example product of a case company with the objective to clarify/validate the proposed product design approach. In conclusion, this paper outlines the findings from this research and proposed some critical questions need to be answered within the scope of future research potentials.

Virtual enterprise collaborative processes monitoring through a project business approach

In order to design a system for managing performance in collaborative project-based enterprises, it is necessary to undertake real-time monitoring of its business processes and activities. This paper presents a systematic approach to project business process monitoring (BPM) and identifies the key aspects of virtual enterprise (VE) process evaluation. A framework for VE BPM is presented with special emphasis in linking interest groups to the development of their targets, information and knowledge sharing. The proposed model defines the exclusive performance metrics, which are needed during BPM. This interdisciplinary study examines BPM through peer-to-peer information exchange in the VE domain, which is currently a research gap. The fundamental metrics to define business process performance monitoring are elaborated in the research reported in this paper. The identified performance metrics can be used to measure the overall performances for both a project business and VE. A reference architecture is also highlighted with a case example with the objective to measure the performance in a project business VE. An overall definition of collaborative BPM and performance management systems is also presented accordingly. Future research directions are identified regarding the nature of collaboration in a project business VE and the characteristics of performance indicators to support it.