Ian Hipkin

TQM and BPR: lessons for maintenance management

Competitive pressures on manufacturing organisations have obliged them to look at all improvement possibilities. Among the most popular and well-documented change interventions have been total quality management (TQM) and business process reengineering (BPR). As the management of physical assets now accounts for a rapidly increasing share of operational costs, greater attention is being directed to maintenance thinking. Two maintenance interventions -- reliability-centred maintenance (RCM) and total productive maintenance (TPM) -- have seen significant industrial application over the last decade. It is the purpose of this paper to apply the general approach of Meredith in an earlier paper to analyse the implementation of these with reference to the TQM, BPR and other change intervention literature and to assess the extent to which the maintenance implementation follows the path of other interventions. Four postulates relating to the implementation of new maintenance systems are analysed: the significance of a prescriptive methodology, quantification of objectives, managerial attitudes, and the importance of not appending maintenance initiatives to existing operations practices. This will facilitate a critical assessment of the potential for and implications of RCM and TPM intervention and thus contribute to the development of the maintenance management field.

TQM and BPR: Beyond the beyond myth

It is generally assumed in the popular management literature that the TQM (total quality management) and BPR (business process re-engineering) movements are the two latest expressions of an increasing sophistication in management techniques and principles. Following this logic it only is a matter of time before they will be superseded by yet another management innovation. This paper aims to explode this ‘beyond’ myth by exposing the underlying logic of TQM and BPR implementation patterns in two case companies. Empirical findings will be related back to critical approaches to the study of TQM and BPR. Concrete suggestions as to how to move beyond the quick fix managerial mode will be proposed. Our approach is intended to provide a counterweight to the unreflective discourse surrounding TQM and BPR by breaking open the naturalness of this discourse. It supplies a few landmarks for managers and researchers to take a step back, hesitate, and reflect on the phenomenon of planned organizational change.

Knowledge and IS implementation: case studies in physical asset management

Information systems (IS) may be seen as a repository for knowledge. The challenge to practitioners is to use such technological developments as the basis for new working practices that lead to competitive success and growth. Knowledge, as a factor of production, is increasingly recognised for its relatively untapped contribution to more effective performance. IS developments and implementation are evaluated with great difficulty. The study looks to a new method of evaluating the effects of knowledge acquisition in physical asset management: through the benefits achieved from a maintenance management information system (MMIS). The experiences of four case organizations that had recently introduced an MMIS are studied. The knowledge acquired was categorised according to a structure by Bohn, and the benefits which accrued from the MMIS were classified using a benefits ladder developed by Farbey et al. The study suggests that where greater levels of knowledge resulted from the MMIS, higher level benefits were achieved.

Managerial perceptions of factors influencing technology management in South Africa

A challenge for developing countries is to become part of the global economy. Their economic well being is dependent on their ability to attain the levels of technological development which could make them globally competitive. Infrastructural and educational problems pose immediate barriers which should be addressed as these countries embark on projects to enhance their technological base. The technology selected should be appropriate for the countrys level of development and expertise. The implementation of that technology will place a new set of demands on managers and workers. This paper describes an investigation of perceptions of technology management in South Africa, a country which is developed in certain areas, but which remains desperately poor in other respects. South Africas politics and history have always confronted managers with unique demands. The paper examines the perceptions of 132 South African managers regarding technology management by studying the relationship between the importance of different factors in managing new technology, and the extent to which a manager can control them. An importance-control grid framework is used to isolate individual parameters and to assess these in relation to the complexity of a managers environment. The research highlights imbalances between importance and control, and suggests reasons therefor. Some broader implications for managers are also discussed.

An improved facility layout construction method

This study presents a new distance-based facility layout construction technique. Given a two-dimensional (i.e. single-floor) facility layout construction problem in which the order of placement of individual departments is known (a challenging problem in itself), the technique presented herein proposes the use of sub-departments and expected distance functions instead of centroid-to-centroid distances for the placement of departments. In this paper an expected distance function is defined as the probabilistic expectation of the particular distance metric of interest (rectilinear, Euclidean, etc.) in which the parameters involved are defined by random vectors in 2-dimensional Euclidean space. This study presents an enhanced facility layout construction technique that incorporates several enhancements over the well-known systematic layout procedure (SLP). The goal herein is to minimise the error induced by the use of the centroid-to-centroid distances between the departments inherent to the SLP.

The implementation of information systems for maintenance management

The general research problem relates to the improvement of maintenance management through the implementation of maintenance management information systems. Changing perspectives of and demands from the maintenance function are discussed. Five postulates for managing the implementation of a maintenance management information system are proposed and their significance in contributing to successful implementation is analysed against the experience of five case organizations. Managers, supervisors and operators were interviewed before and after implementation, and provided detailed case data which were used to assess the importance of the postulates. The postulates are compared to other studies in the literature. A number of key success factors for new systems implementations are identified.

An Application of Judgemental Modelling for Strategic Decision Making in an International Environment

There is little doubt as to the pervasive influence that Information Technology (IT) is having in driving global business. Many studies have been undertaken that attest to this influence in both strategic and operational decision making in multinational settings. In this paper we show how this influence includes the use of Decision Support Systems (DSS). Personal interviews were held with 112 managers across 9 European countries, all using a PC-based judgemental modelling package. We show how a detailed knowledge of the particular industry was generated using such a decision support system, a level of detail that could not as readily have been generated in any other way.

Managerial and Educational Perceptions of the Future in Changing Societies The Commonwealth of Independent States

This study presents the findings of a survey of managers, educators and professionals from five countries of the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS). These respondents rated the current importance of some 40 factors which affected business operations in the CIS, and indicated how much control could be exercised over these factors. Respondents were also asked to rate the importance of the same factors 5 years hence and to assess the control which could be exercised over them in 5 years time. Political, economic and financial issues facing managers in the CIS as well as the domestic and international environment were currently deemed the most important factors, although relatively little control could be exercised over these. The situation envisaged for 5 years hence revealed a marked increase in the importance of educational and management factors, and the extent to which these could be controlled. The article suggests possible causes for this variation in opinion, and discusses the implications of the findings for management education.

A methodology for estimating expected distances between nodes on a network

Transportation, distribution, and logistics professionals often need to estimate the distances that are used for the arc lengths between nodes on a network model. For example, a network model might be representative of roads and cities in which the actual distance from one city to the next may vary depending upon the actual source and destination within each of the respective cities. Hence, estimates for the arc lengths within the network model will contain error. This research presents two new models to estimate these inter-nodal distances for cases in which complete nodal representation of every source and destination is computationally prohibitive.

The Amplification-Reduction Structure of Technology: The Example of the Intranet

Information technology has long been recognised as a cause of social change. Recent developments in information technologies (IT), such as internet, intranet, and extranet, have stimulated considerable interest in how they will impact business organizations. Studies have largely examined the role that IT plays in improving information efficiency and synergies, in promoting collaboration and information sharing both inside and across organizations and in facilitating the transition to new forms of organizing. Most such studies take a technology-centric or human-centric approach. Whereas the former view reifies technology, assuming that its effects are predictable, stable, and performing as intended and designed across time, the latter minimizes IT to the point it becomes infinitely and flexibly interpreted. However, IT media are only significant to the extent that they do not only involve changes in and novel ways of communicating, but most importantly they change the meaning of what it is to communicate and the social and cultural frame that situates communication in unpredictable ways. Taking a communicational approach to organization, the present paper uses Jakobson’s 1960 semiotic model and ideas from Ihde (1990) to show how the implementation of intranets and email systems has amplifying and reducing effects on the interactions among members of a community. Finally, some implications for the theory of implementation of new technologies are drawn out.