Jianxin Jiao

Process Platform Planning for Variety Coordination From Design to Production in Mass Customization Manufacturing

The key challenge of implementing mass customization manufacturing lies in the variety dilemma exhibited by frequent design changes and recurrent process variations. A holistic view of variety handling gives rise to the importance of variety coordination from design to production. This paper proposes a concept of process platform for coordinating product and process variety. Fundamental issues of process platforms are studied regarding generic product and process structures, generic planning, and generic variety representation. Variety handlers and associated states are introduced to model the meta-structure inherent in variety coordination. A set of modeling formalisms are developed to provide a powerful syntactic model to support rigorous analysis and manipulation of process platforms, while facilitating the application of semantics to support process platform enactment and detailed observations from a number of perspectives involving customers, design and production. Also reported is a case study of mass customization manufacturing of vibration motors for mobile phone products. The managerial implications of process platform planning are further discussed

Adaptive fuzzy vendor managed inventory control for mitigating the Bullwhip effect in supply chains

This paper proposes an adaptive fuzzy control application to support a vendor managed inventory (VMI). The methodology applies fuzzy control to generate an adaptive smoothing constant in the forecast method, production and delivery plan to eliminate, for example, the rationing and gaming or the Houlihan effect and the order batching effect or the Burbidge effects and finally the Bullwhip effect. The results show that the adaptive fuzzy VMI control surpasses fuzzy VMI control and traditional VMI in terms of mitigating the Bullwhip effect and lower delivery overshoots and backorders. This paper also guides management in allocating inventory by coordinating suppliers and buyers to ensure minimum inventory levels across a supply chain. Adaptive fuzzy VMI control is the main contribution of this paper.

Joint optimization for coordinated configuration of product families and supply chains by a leader-follower Stackelberg game

Product family design by module configuration is conducive to accommodating product variety while maintaining mass production efficiency. Effective fulfillment of product families necessitates joint decision making of product family configuration (PFC) and downstream supply chain configuration (SCC), due to nowadays manufacturers’ moving towards assembly-to-order production throughout a distributed supply chain network. Existing decision models for joint optimization of product family and supply chain configuration are originated from an “all-in-one” approach that assumes both PFC and SCC decisions can be integrated into one optimization problem by aggregating two different types of objectives into a single objective function. Such an assumption neglects the complex tradeoffs underlying two different decision making problems and fails to reveal the inherent coupling of PFC and SCC.

Association rule mining for product and process variety mapping

Todays manufacturers strive to design and produce a large number of customized products at low cost and quick turnround in order to survive market competition. The consequence of high product variety manifests itself through an exponentially increased number of process variants, which introduces significant constraints to production planning and control. Leveraging upon product and process families has been well recognized as an important area in which manufacturers can exploit mass production efficiency, wherein the linchpin of managing variety propagation from design to production lies in the mapping relationships between product differentiation and process variation. Taking advantage of knowledge discovery from historical data, this paper applies an association rule mining technique to deal with product and process variety mapping. The mapping relationships are embodied in association rules, which can be deployed to support production planning of product families within existing production processes. A case study of mass customization of vibration motors is presented to demonstrate how the association rule mining mechanism helps maintain the coherence between product and process variety. The performance of the association rule mining approach is further evaluated through sensitivity analysis.

Process platform representation based on Unified Modelling Language

Todays manufacturing companies have strived to develop a large variety of customer-specified products in an effort to survive and stay competitive. Process platforms have been well recognized as a means for companies to obtain a stable production and thus the economy of scale. A process platform assists companies in configuring similar production processes for producing families of customized products at low costs through managing product and process variety coherently. Within a process platform, all data related to the product and process families are unified as a common generic structure. To shed light on the various constituent elements and complex relationships inherent in a process platform, this paper emphasizes the structural representation of a process platform. A formalism of process platform representation is developed based on the Unified Modelling Language. It consists of a generic product structure, a generic process structure and an integrated generic routing structure. Also reported is a case study of vibration motors for hand phones.

Coordinating product and process variety for mass customized order fulfilment

Traditional mass production offers a limited variety of products, in which order processing mostly concentrates on the acquisition of customer needs, and support for the sales configuration at most. With mass customization, the fulfilment of customized orders involves frequent design changes and recurrent process variations due to product differentiation. It is imperative to manage the complexity and large variety associated with customer orders, product design and production planning. This paper adopts a holistic view of order fulfilment encompassing sales, design and production. The principle of collaborative product and process variety management is presented. The paper develops a coordination mechanism of variant handling based on the specification of variety handlers and their states. A product-process variety grid is introduced to unify product data and routing information. Also proposed is a coding-based system for effective variety management. A Web-based collaborative platform is outlined to support distributed order fulfilment among multiple functional departments.

Turn‐around maintenance management in a processing industry

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to provide a case study for professionals who are in research and practice in maintenance engineering. Design/methodology/approach – This is a case study. Therefore, on‐site involvement in the development of steps for maintenance projects has been included. Findings – The case study shows that, if project management practice and involvement of external experts and parties are allowed in the maintenance projects, then issues in maintenance projects can be addressed more clearly and the cost and schedule for such a maintenance project can also be optimized. The use of information technology in the whole process can be facilitated not only during the planning phase, but also during the execution and review process. Research limitations/implications – Implication of this study can be seen in TAM projects where time and energy have to be spent to get the best practice. The case study will show a real life example of TAM. Practical implications – The paper should help one to understand the implications of starting a turn‐around maintenance project and the issues built therein. The case study highlights that collaborative planning and execution of TAM are useful. Collaboration could be in terms of internal parties, such as decision makers and managers, or of external parties, such as external experts and contractors. Originality/value – There are only a few studies in the turn‐around management process. As oil refining is an important economic process, learning of cases in one of the major oil‐refining plants can help others to emulate the process so that overall efficiency of turn‐around maintenance can be increased across the industry.

Logical reconfiguration of reconfigurable manufacturing systems with stream of variations modelling: a stochastic two-stage programming and shortest path model

This article studies logical reconfiguration of reconfigurable manufacturing systems (RMS) to minimise production lead times and buffer inventory level when the process variations and worker utilisation are considered. Since the RMS must be flexible for different job orders, the design of RMS requires diagnostic methodology and stream of variations (SoV) theory for rapid ramp-up in order to control the process variations that might occur as time goes on. The flexibility of the manufacturing systems is represented by logical elements of RMS in terms of changeable production batch size. The three phases solution is proposed by (1) utilising SoV modelling to find the allowable production lead times, (2) finding the optimum buffer stock level and production capacity at changeable production batch size and (3) finding worker routings at optimum worker utilisation. Monte carlo simulation is employed at Phase 1 to get the optimum production lead times, Phase 2 decision is formulated as a stochastic two-stages programming where buffer inventory level (first stage decison) has to be established prior to changeable production batching at future period and shortest path problems (SPP) algorithm is used to find an optimum worker routing at Phase 3. A serial inventory production (SIP) is used as an example to answer the following research questions: (1) What is the impact of SoV on both buffer inventory allocation and worker routings? (2) When is logical reconfiguration most beneficial in improving SIP profitability? (3) What is the impact of logical reconfiguration on both cost and lead time reduction? Three instances are used to investigate the effect of logical reconfiguration on the different structure of SIP systems. The results and analysis indicate that consideration of SoV is capable of increasing the profit, reducing operation lead times and maximising worker utilisation. Finally, management decision-making is discussed among other concluding remarks.

Process platform planning for mass customisation production

Current practice in developing product platforms only encompasses the design domain. It seldom, if at all, considers the impact of product platforms on production and, in turn, the implication of process data for product platform development. Hence, it is imperative for platform development to synchronise product and process variety from both design and production perspectives. In this paper, the concept of process platform planning is proposed to support variety synchronisation from design to production. A process platform involves three main aspects: 1) a common process structure shared by all process variants; 2) the derivation of specific process variants from the common structure; 3) the correspondence between product and process variety. The study suggests that planning a process platform is conducive to the synchronisation of product and process variety.

Internet-Enabled Information Management for Configure-to-Order Product Fulfillment

Configure-to-order (CTO) strategy has been implemented by many industries that adopt mass customization. Its major concern lies in a series of product fulfillment activities, e.g. configuring the individual product and corresponding production process. The successful implementation of CTO production calls for the correctness and promptness of the execution of these activities. Therefore, a Web-based integrated information management system is important and necessary. Facilitated by such a system, not only the required product and process information can be shared and exchanged by multiple partners dispersed geographically, but also the enabled functional integration contributes to an effective communication and coordination among departments across a supply chain network. In the paper the issues relating to the integrated information management and a Web-based system are discussed in detail. Also provided is the role of the system in supply chain management in todays e-commerce environment.