Emrah Arica

Strategies for customized shipbuilding with different customer order decoupling points

The ship design and construction industry serves a considerable range of market segments, with different levels of required customization, different demand volumes, and other product and market variations. In order to effectively respond to various market requirements, strategies and related work processes need to be differentiated. An important strategic concept to make distinctions among strategies is the customer order decoupling point, that is, the point in the value chain where the product is linked to a specific customer order. This article aims to analyse and compare strategies for customized, low-volume ship design and construction from the perspective of the customer order decoupling point and to link them to product and market characteristics. It is based on a case study at the Ulstein Group, an established Norwegian ship designer and builder. The study allowed us to define ‘customized design’ and ‘standardized design’ as two different strategies that fundamentally differ in terms of the customer order decoupling point. In the former, customized ships are offered in a process where most activities are driven by the expectations and requirements of a particular customer. In the latter, the customer is given only a limited choice of predefined, standardized, and well-proved options. We conclude that customer order decoupling point positions upstream in the value chain imply high levels of flexibility and customization, while downstream positions allow short lead times, high delivery precision, and lower prices. The customer order decoupling point perspective provides a useful framework in which to analyse the ship design and construction industry.

Tactical and Operational Issues in a Hybrid MTO-MTS Production Environment: The Case of Food Production

Hybrid production environments that combine MTO and MTS strategies have emerged to enable production systems to better respond to changes in consumer and market demand. This paper discusses some of the tactical and operational production planning and control (PPC) issues involved in such hybrid production environments, using the food industry as an illustrative case. The discussion identifies MRP combined with WLC as a promising approach for incorporating MTO items into an MRP planning environment on the tactical and operational levels. Additional techniques are required to incorporate uncertainty and provide flexibility in this particular context and these should be further investigated taking different food supply chain characteristics into consideration.

A Concept for Project Manufacturing Planning and Control for Engineer-to-Order Companies

Engineer-to-order products are customized to a particular client’s specification. Planning can be a problem as the products may be large and complex especially due to uncertainties in the duration of the operations. A conceptual project manufacturing planning and control (PMPC) framework is presented in relation to typical engineer to order (ETO) companies. The existing approaches, problems, solutions, and limitations of current manufacturing planning and control (MPC) for ETO environment are discussed. This paper contributes to the development of an improved understanding and more robust definition of MPC in ETO industries, and highlights how the key challenges and the opportunities that PMPC offer in an ETO sector.

Status and future of manufacturing execution systems

This paper proposes a taxonomy for characterizing manufacturing execution systems and discusses how they can benefit from the recent developments of Industry 4.0. The study is based on a literature review. The taxonomy contributes to theory and practice by providing a framework for benchmarking of manufacturing execution systems. The taxonomy can be utilized in the selection or design process of the manufacturing execution systems. Outlining the further opportunities provided by Industry 4.0 technologies, the paper also provides directions for future improvements of manufacturing execution systems.

A framework for production rescheduling in sociotechnical manufacturing environments

Abstract No plan survives contact with reality. Despite the rich research base regarding handling uncertainty in production planning and control systems, there is an intellectual gap between theory and practice with regard to handling unforeseen events generated by internal and external factors, such as unforeseen machine downtimes and changes in demand. Motivated by longitudinal observations in two industrial settings and an analysis of the relevant literature, a framework for rescheduling decision-making in the face of unforeseen production events is proposed. In practical settings, the effectiveness of decisions depends on a set of situational factors. The findings of this research can be utilised further to provide guidelines for developing effective decision support principles and systems, addressing the needs of organisational decision-makers.

Detecting Early Warning Signs of Delays in Shipbuilding Projects

Ship design and construction involves numerous activities that have to be effectively performed, coordinated and integrated. Various elements can influence the effectiveness of the process due to projects’ large number of stakeholders and the high level of uncertainty. One of the most challenging issues is the delay in product delivery. However, the elements which might result to delay do not develop overnight and there might be early warning signals addressing that the delay, is likely to happen. This paper discusses that by following an early warning procedure, it will be possible to identify possible early warning signs of potential problems which might cause delay. These signs can provide an aid for the project team to take actions before the problem reaches its full impact, thus delaying the project delivery.

Automating scheduling tasks; experience of a real case

The fit between the off-the-shelf scheduling systems and the real life scheduling task has been pointed out as one of the important reasons behind the implementation challenge of advanced scheduling solutions in practice. Recent studies indicate the need for scheduling tools that focus on the actual work routine, characteristics of the scheduling environment, and cognitive tasks of the schedulers. This paper represents results of an action research conducted in a dairy facility in Norway to evaluate functionality and effectiveness of a developed solution for scheduling routines of a case company. A scheduling tool is developed and uses aheuristic approach to address all routine scheduling needs at the case company. The research team went through the tool execution phase. Based on this experience it is concluded that automating scheduling tasks reduces the needed resources and human error, so custom automation of those tasks can be sufficient.

Designing a Decision Support System for Production Scheduling Task in Complex and Uncertain Manufacturing Environments

The production planning and control process is performed within complex and dynamic organizations made up of equipment, people, information, IT systems, and influenced by a multitude of external factors. How to effectively schedule in uncertain and complex manufacturing environments, still remains a central question to academics and practitioners. In this paper, we propose a framework that can be utilized to design/enhance decision support systems for scheduling activities in complex and uncertain manufacturing environments. The framework is based on the analysis of the relevant literature that addressed human, organizational, and technological aspects of the production planning and scheduling.

Barriers and Success Factors for Continuous Improvement Efforts in Complex ETO Firms

This paper focuses on the factors that may influence the implementation of continuous improvement efforts, in an Engineer-to-Order (ETO) manufacturing setting. In general, one-of-a-kind production nature and temporary organizational structures of ETO firms may hinder the successful implementation of continuous improvement programmes. This study investigates this issue deeper through a single case study in a producer of offshore oil platforms and outlines the barriers and success factors for continuous improvement in ETO manufacturing.

Performance Measurement in Sensorized Sociotechnical Manufacturing Environments.

Industry 4.0 entails the digitization of the shopfloor operations combining technologies such as internet of things-enabled sensing, cyber-physical systems, data analytics, augmented reality, and wearable devices and robots that transform the manufacturing environment into a workplace of human-machine interactive symbiosis. With the digitization of the manufacturing environment, new opportunities emerge concerning performance measurement as new sources of real-time data become available, including data collated from the operator on the shopfloor. Traditionally, the human dimension had been disjoint from the situation analysis of shopfloor performance that drives evidence based decision making. This paper presents the features and advantages of performance measurement in human-workplace interactive manufacturing where detailed data on human performance is provided by sensors and utilized to improve the performance goals. The paper is concluded with a discussion on the impact of context information management for interactive manufacturing workplaces, as a means of delivering more informed situational awareness, a critical enabler for human-machine interaction, as well as for handling complexity in disparate data sources.