Fabrizio Salvador

Supply‐chain linkages and operational performance

In order to improve performance at the operational level, more and more firms are developing explicit linkages with suppliers and with customers. While the question of “what beneficial impact do linkages with suppliers and with customers have for a firm” has been addressed in numerous studies, the equally important question of “why” this beneficial impact arises deserves further discourse and explication. This paper borrows and applies the Resource‐Based View of the Firm, a theoretical perspective prevalent in the strategic management literature, to develop a conceptual framework to describe, explain, and predict the advantages of a firms linkages with entities in its supply chain on its internal operations. The proposed framework can be used to justify decisions to develop, strengthen, and protect relationships with suppliers on the upstream side and with customers on the downstream side. The framework can also be used to evaluate practices implemented to link a firm to its suppliers and customers and to provide a decision roadmap for firms to better understand how to maximize operational performance benefits from these supply chain linkages.

Managing for variety in the order acquisition and fulfilment process: The contribution of product configuration systems

Abstract Flexible production is not enough to offer the customer variety without compromising company profitability. In conditions of product proliferation, in fact, the order acquisition and fulfilment process can turn out to be a serious bottleneck, as the multiplication of the product features induces an exponential growth in the volume of information exchanged between the firm sales organisation and its customer base. Furthermore, this information has to be fed back in appropriate formats to manufacturing, with the risk of errors and delays due to the variability and complexity of product information. This study, through the discussion of a case example, reports the first results from a research on a class of information systems that support the order acquisition and fulfilment process in high product variety environments, called product configuration systems. The research indicates that the implementation of a product configuration system significantly contributed to increase the effectiveness and efficiency with which the studied company translates the customers needs into product documentation. Moreover, the benefits pertaining to product configuration system stretch beyond operational performance, as it offers the company a way to incorporate into organisational memory product knowledge otherwise retained by individual employees. However, the introduction of a product configuration system may require significant and potentially painful changes in the way the order acquisition and fulfilment activities are organised, and necessitate a high initial investment in terms of man-hours.

Toward a Product System Modularity Construct: Literature Review and Reconceptualization

Product modularity has been discussed in engineering and management literature for over forty years. During this time span, definitions and views on the meaning of product modularity proliferated to the extent that it is difficult to understand the essential traits of the concept. While definitional ambiguity is often a byproduct of academic debate, it hinders the advancement of scientific knowledge as well. This paper aims to move a step forward toward a more precise definition of product modularity, by articulating a product system modularity construct in the domain of tangible, assembled artifacts. More precisely, the paper constitutively defines product modularity in terms of component separability and component combinability. An indirect operational definition for product modularity is then proposed by operationalizing component separability and component combinability. The proposed definition is finally related to other definitional perspectives synthesized by a literature review: component commonality, function binding, interface standardization, and loose coupling. In this way, the nomological network of the product modularity construct is laid out. Construct validation activities are left to further research

Supply chain interactions and time‐related performances: An operations management perspective

Many studies claim that when an organization interacts with suppliers and with customers across the supply chain, the organization would achieve improved time performances. This claim, however, has undergone limited theoretical development, as well as subsequent systematic empirical testing. As a result, we still have incomplete understanding of the “why” (i.e. the rationale) and the “how” (i.e. the mechanisms by which) of such interaction’s impact on time performances. This study addresses these issues through both model development and empirical analyses of 164 plants. Our analyses suggest two findings. First, when an organization interacts with suppliers and with customers on quality management issues, the organization would improve its time performances indirectly as a result of complete mediation by internal practices for: quality management; low management; inter‐unit coordination; and vertical coordination. On the other hand, when an organization interacts with suppliers and with customers on materials flow management issues, the impact on time‐related performances can either be completely or partially mediated by internal practices.

Application support to product variety management

Offering a large variety of products at competitive prices and reasonable delivery times is a complex managerial challenge that many companies have to address. Software vendors responded to this challenge by developing and proposing various solutions, such as product configuration (PC) systems, product data management (PDM) systems and customer relationship management (CRM) systems. The relative newness, complexity and mutual interdependencies among these systems make it difficult to understand how they—individually and as a whole—actually support a firm in managing its product variety. Precisely these complexities, ultimately, add to the risks of software selection, leading companies to make inconsistent choices or to implement the wrong systems. Starting from this theoretical and practical concern, the present paper provides a conceptualization of the essential functions of PC, PDM and CRM systems, discussing how these functions help a company to manage its product variety and how they relate to each other. This paper proposes that two core data structures of PC systems—namely the sales and technical configuration models—are essential elements of the information management infrastructure of a company offering a large variety of products, because they enable a number of important product variety management functions also present within PDM and CRM systems.

Assessing some distinctive dimensions of performance feedback information in high performing plants

A primary function of the Performance Measurement System is to provide employees with information on their past performance, allowing them to assess the outcomes of their actions, and therefore if they are meeting or not the objectives they are given. This work aims at contributing to the understanding of how the effectiveness of performance feedback information can be improved by defining a set of distinct performance feedback dimensions based on a PMS literature review, and by validating it empirically on an international sample of 164 manufacturing organisations. The proposed dimensions are: relevance as performance feedback orientation to the achievement of objectives; dynamic adjustment of performance feedback; relevance as usefulness of cost performance feedback; relevance as usefulness of non‐cost performance feedback; timeliness of shop‐floor performance feedback; personal performance feedback; and feedback on the overall process performances. The analysis shows that these dimensions are distinct, thus allowing to deal with them separately both in PMS design and audit. As far as the effectiveness of the performance feedback is concerned, it emerges that for several dimensions higher scores are associated to higher operating performances (cost, time and quality), but in one case this only holds for managers and in another one only for supervisors.

Mix flexibility and volume flexibility in a build‐to‐order environment

Purpose – This paper aims to investigate the factors enabling or hindering the simultaneous pursuit of volume flexibility and mix flexibility within a supply chain through the lens of a manufacturing plant seeking to implement a build‐to‐order (BTO) strategy.Design/methodology/approach – To accomplish this empirical investigation, an in‐depth case study involving a manufacturing plant and its supply chain was designed. Prior to primary and secondary data collection, this research setting had already decided to implement a BTO strategy and had, moreover, carefully assessed several practices for BTO strategy implementation, as well as their interactions.Findings – The studied case suggests that a number of approaches typically used to increase volume flexibility, actually negatively affect mix flexibility and vice versa. The existence of such trade‐offs may ultimately inhibit the implementation of a BTO strategy and this was the case in the studied company. Nevertheless, empirical evidence also suggests tha...

Information flows for high-performance manufacturing

Abstract The successful implementation of many management best practices (just-in-time, total quality management, concurrent engineering, etc.) heavily depends on proper organisational communication and information management. In this paper, we address the issue of how these best practices, labelled as high-performance manufacturing (HPM) practices, can affect a firms communication structure. The paper firstly develops a reference framework for the analysis of information flows in operations. This reference framework integrates research in operations management and in organizational communication. The paper then applies the proposed framework to investigate how information flows tend to be characterised in HPM. In doing so, the proposed framework relates cost, time and quality performances to three operational processes (physical transformation, product development and material flow management) and to three classes of information flows: vertical, horizontal and external information flows.

Form postponement effects on operational performances typological theory

Form postponement postulates that changes in product form occur at the latest possible point along a production and distribution process. The potential benefits of form postponement have been widely investigated in the literature on the subject. However, conflicting or hard-to-relate findings are quite frequent in this literature. In this paper, we demonstrate that past research findings can be reconciled by distinguishing among three mutually exclusive types of form postponement. We build this thesis by developing a typological theory that formalizes how, why and under which assumptions each type of form postponement affects inventory holding costs, delivery lead times, processing costs...

Product Information Management for Mass Customization

ion, level of 71, 72, 73 add-delete bills of materials 90–2, 90, 94–8 Analyses for implementing product configurators macro160, 161, 164–7, 165, 169, 174 micro160, 161, 167–71, 168, 173, 174 preliminary 160, 160, 162–4, 163 antenna pattern configurator 124, 124 approaches configurational 194, 204–6, 205 modelling 150–6, 151 new see under customization traditional see under configuration architecture configuration system 51–7, 56 product 23–28, 52, 61 modular 23–26, 148–149 product configurator 51–55, 54 assembly, customized 10, 10–12, 14–15, 44, 66, 66, 166 automation of a configuration system optimal degree of 63, 63 strong 59–61 total 61–2, 62 weak 57, 57–58 Baan Configurator 201 bills of materials (BOMs) 129–31, 143–4, 148, 152–3 product cost and 117, 119 mould-block 186, 187, 189, 190, 192 technical product modelling and 87, 88, 89, 89, 96–110 passim add-delete 90–2, 90, 94–8 modular 92–94, 93 processing 89, 89, 95, 95 see also generic bills of materials buyer-supplier coordination 203–4, 203 catalogue interface 158 characteristics commercial 17–9, 23–24, 52–3, 60–2, 76, 94, 100, 197 configurable product 23–9, 24–7, 29 tender 17, 128, 128, 130, 186–92 technical 26 truck 83–4, 83, 84 client-server models 148, 149–50 codes coding 146 model 111–16, 112, 113 generation of 115 types of 114 polycodes 112 cognitive complexity 67–70, 69 collection of specifications 35–8, 35 commercial configuration 18–19, 22 descriptions 18, 20, 20 engine 53 generation and retrieval 144 commercial product modelling 53–5, 67–85, 85, 99, 144–5 cognitive complexity 67–70, 69 communicating value 77–9, 78, 79 customer interaction 79–82, 81 description 71–4, 71, 72, 73 interaction and learning 82–4, 83, 84 limiting options 74–7, 75