Eero Eloranta

Demand chain management in a global enterprise-information management view

The strategy and role of Information Management as an enabler and contributor to successful business strategy is discussed. Global Demand Chain Management is used as an example. Basic principlesand differences of Supply Chain Management and Demand Chain Management are explained, focusing on the perspective of Information Management. Key drivers and criteria for Information Management system design are outlined. The gaps of current application software platforms are discussed.

Improved project management through improved document management

By drawing from field studies on three different types of business projects the paper outlines a improved document management approach. The three global cases, which comprise business process re-engineering (BPR), new product development (NPD) and one-of-a-kind manufacturing, enable to track a common set of document based operations which hold the vital information for the success of respective cases. This information reveals what is the true active organisation of the enterprise, what are the document usage profiles of the people and how knowledge-related creative processes are really performed by the organisation. In addition, the management is provided with new means to measure operational performance with better encompassing metrics. The approach and its partial implementation act as glue between various systems used within and between the collaborating companies.

Using Value Reengineering to Implement Breakthrough Solutions for Customers

It is evident from examples such as Dell that successful shapers of the supply chain really do change the game, but how can your company do it? Value reengineering is a new approach for how a company can systematically implement breakthrough solutions for its customers. The key is finding the right value offering point in the customer:s demand chain. A company can then carve‐out a new business model that offers better value to the customer in a way that also helps lower costs.

Distributed form management

An open architecture for distributed form management is described. The model employs object-orientation in describing organizational units as well as individual users as entities with uniform external interfaces. Each entity is represented by an autonomous user agent which operates on local and migrating forms. The form concept encapsulates data, layout, and rules into a unified object which is the basic unit of presentation, processing, storage, and communication. All functionality of the system appears in rules of form classes and all data in instances of these form classes. This approach applies the techniques of computer supported cooperative work to provide a flexible mechanism for interpersonal, intraoffice, and interoffice procedures. The main challenge is to organize the collaboration without affecting the autonomy of individual user agents. In this respect, the contribution of the model is the mechanism for form migration. The dynamic integration of forms into different agents is solved with the coordinated interchange of form classes. A specific inheritance scheme provides the desired flexibility by separating the interrelated private and public form operations within each agent. The paper first describes the architecture by starting from a single agent and moving progressively towards a set of cooperating agents. Then an agent implementation called PAGES is described, experiences reported, and the open issues discussed. A typical distributed ordering procedure is used as an example throughout the text.

Information and communication technology driven business transformation---a call for research

Information and communication technologies are in the process of transforming the way business is conducted in a large number of industries. The impact of this change is not well understood. This paper develops a research agenda that helps to investigate the implications of information and communication technology on selected management fields. In particular, the implications are investigated for strategic management, demand and supply chain management, logistics, organization and leadership, and management education. The research agenda is developed by first identifying impacts of information and communication technologies in the domains discussed. From these impacts, research needs are derived.

Experiences of different approaches in logistics

Abstract This paper focuses on the problems of logistics from several viewpoints relevant in practice. Empirical observations are extracted from different branches of industry. Based on these observations we classify a set of approaches. We consider that an appropriate approach in future is the integrated paradigm having a basis on traditional industrial engineering discipline supported by information, communication and calculational technologies. This paper is associated with an ongoing Esprit II project 2277-CMSO (CIM for Multisupplier Operations).

Fast, flexible and cooperative supply Chains—key issues for the survival of European industry

Abstract The future of the European industry is in its capability to innovate and upgrade. This requirement concerns products, manufacturing and the underlying support systems ranging from organizational arrangements down to decision support systems. Europe has a desperate need for effective and flexible innovation, improving industrial infrastructure where the most value-adding nodes of the supply chains are those in the roles of subcontractors on the one hand and distributors on the other. The necessary managerial changes (such as JIT, lean manufacturing and simultaneous engineering) have so far just superficially influenced these crucial nodes. It can be estimated that by responsive customer-driven supply chains the profitability of these chains could be improved drastically. This potential for improvement is based on the reduction of inventory-carrying costs, reduction of indirect and direct labour costs and the increase of sales and sales margins via better delivery performance at the operative level...

Demand‐supply chain representation: A tool for economic organizing of industrial services

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to propose demand‐supply chain representation as a tool to support economic organizing between original equipment manufacturers going downstream and customers considering how to better outsource maintenance and asset management.Design/methodology/approach – This paper is a presentation of a representation tool using a design theory template.Findings – The concept of demand visibility point and requirements penetration point can be used to describe different ways of economic organizing as interaction between demand and supply. The proposed representation scheme supports the identification of visibility‐based changes in economic organization, such as vendor‐managed inventory and reliability‐based maintenance services.Research limitations/implications – The paper is conceptual and requires further empirical work.Practical implications – The representation tool can be used both by practitioners engaged in outsourcing maintenance and practitioners involved in the developm...

Object oriented programming in production management ― two pilot systems

This paper discusses AI-oriented production management systems using object oriented programming. The two pilot systems described here are both implemented using the Smalltalk-80 programming environment. One of the systems concerns production planning in dairy industries, while the other is a simulation tool for production flow analysis. The merits of object oriented programming in the design of the user interfaces are emphasised. The flexibility of the object oriented approach for stepwise development has been observed. Simulation method as a communication tool is used in both systems and the applicability of Smalltalk in simulation is demonstrated. Design effectiveness and efficiency has proven surprisingly good. The experiences introduced in the paper are based on two geographically disjoint research groups, having thus impact on the generality of the observations made.

Investigating the effect of product variants, and demand distributions on the optimal demand supply network setup

In todays marketplace, consumers are looking for product variety and low prices. In this paper, we investigate how product variation and demand distributions affect demand supply network optimality in a real-life based setting. The research methodology was based on a novel Petri net formulation, which employs reachability analysis to demand supply network optimisation. We found that in our case study localised final assembly is justified with one or two product variants, but a centralised production should be favoured with three or more product variants. We also noted the sensitivity of this result to transport cost/inventory carrying cost tradeoff.