Jun Du

Operational implications of early supplier involvement in semiconductor manufacturing firms: A case study

Purpose – Existing earlier supplier involvement (ESI) models mostly emphasize the product development perspective with limited attention to the process development dimension. Towards this end, this paper aims at a tailored framework for semiconductor manufacturing firms by taking into account the implementation of ESI in process development as well as product development.Design/methodology/approach – A number of well‐recognized propositions are examined through a case study of MIC Semiconductors Asia. Based on observations from the case study, the problems of existing frameworks are analyzed and accordingly possible solutions are explored.Findings – The case study reveals the importance of process development in ESI implementation. It is imperative to build up on some fundamentals of the company before ESI can be carried out successfully. Also observed is that the effectiveness of a supplier selection criterion should be gauged from the performance of the suppliers. It is also found out what type of relat...

A financial model of flexible manufacturing systems planning under uncertainty: identification, valuation and applications of real options

Flexible manufacturing systems (FMS) have been considered to be essential for manufacturers to succeed in the uncertain market place. Flexibility typically comes at a price and is only valuable as a hedge against environmental uncertainty. It is important to determine an appropriate level of flexibility in the production system while considering the tradeoffs between its costs and benefits. This paper proposes to apply a real option theoretic approach to the modeling and analysis of various types of uncertainty involved in an FMSs operational environment. In comparison with financial options, real options in the context of an FMS, namely, production options, are identified and accordingly a pricing model for production options is proposed based on the option theory. Based on the valuation of production options, a general framework of flexibility planning is formulated. The real option approach surmounts traditional discounted cash flow analysis based valuation methods that tend to ignore the upside potentials to an investment from management flexibility. The proposed model is tested in a refrigerator company that deals with high product variety and uncertain demand.

Integrated BOM and routing generator for variety synchronization in assembly‐to‐order production

Purpose – Traditional production management systems are often designed to support manufacturing based on a limited number of product variants. With the emerging trend of producing customized products to meet diverse customer needs, the number of product variants increases exponentially in mass customization. In a situation of assembly‐to‐order production, production planning and control involve not only product variety, but also process variety. It is imperative to synchronize product and process variety in a coherent manner.Design/methodology/approach – This paper discusses integrated product and production data management for assembly‐to‐order production. An integrated BOM and routing generator is proposed for the purpose of unifying BOM and assembly‐planning data in order to accommodate a wide range of product variability and production variations.Findings – An integrated BOM and routing generator excels in variety synchronization for assembly‐to‐order production planning.Research limitations/implicati...

A Fundamental Framework of Business Process Reengineering Methodology Based on IT

Abstract-BPR requires a fundamental theoretical framework and a proven, reliable methodology, which is generally applicable and repeatable. BPR requires a fundamental theoretical framework and a proven, reliable methodology, which is generally applicable and repeatable. Towards this end, this paper proposes a business process re-engineering framework based on IT. And then a hospital logistics process is used as a case study to analyze and implement the framework.

Customer Knowledge Management of Mass Customization Enterprises Based Value Chain

Mass customization has become the main mode of production and management in the 21st century. Customer knowledge becomes important strategic resources of enterprises, it is an urgent problem for academia and business community that deeply studying of customer knowledge of mass customization enterprises and effective manage. Revealing the characteristics of customer knowledge of MC enterprise through analyzing customer knowledge of MC enterprise, studying the management process and forms of customer knowledge in main links of mass customization value chain, and establishing customer knowledge management process model of MC enterprise based on value chain.

A Customized Training Model Evaluation System of Higher Vocational Education

Customized training model of higher education must be vigorously promoted. A customized training model evaluation system of higher vocational education should be built to help us improve the training model. Therefore, this paper first analyzes the strategic continuum of the customized training model of higher vocational education, and then builds the evaluation index, finally, adopts ANP approach to establish a multi-dimensional evaluation system.

An improved adaptive CUSUM control chart for monitoring process mean

Adaptive CUSUM (namely ACUSUM) charts have received much attention recently. It is found that, by adjusting the reference parameter k dynamically, an ACUSUM chart can achieve better performance over a range of mean shifts than the conventional CUSUM chart that is designed to have maximal detection effectiveness at a particular level of shift. This article studies a new feature of the ACUSUM chart regarding an additional charting parameter, w (the exponential of the sample mean shift in (xt - mu0)w), which is also adapted according to the on-line estimated value of the mean shift. The testing cases reveal that this new adaptive CUSUM chart outperforms the earlier ACUSUM chart to a substantial degree.

Key issues of incorporating social network effects in product portfolio planning

Recent advances in social media have profound technical and economic implications for innovative product design. With focus on the interface of marketing and engineering design, this paper reviews the emerging trends and key technical issues of incorporating social network effects in product design. Key issues are examined in order to understand how peer influence of ones social networks affects ones preference and choice behavior towards product adoption.

Early Supplier Involvement in Online Product Configuration for Mass Customization

The rationality of Early Supplier Involvement (ESI) in product development has been well recognized in terms of transforming supply chains into integrated value systems. Despite past advancements in ESI, some of the unique issues have not been addressed for ESI in e-product configuration for mass customization. As far as variety management and online configuration are concerned, the difficulties of ESI in online mass customization manifest themselves through two main aspects: (1) mass customization is facing a variety dilemma resulting from the continuous generation of product variants to meet diverse customer needs. (2) Online configuration is another crucial factor to the success of electronic product configuration. Towards this end, this paper discusses critical issues of ESI for online production customization and accordingly outlines a technical framework.

A Practice of Total Cost Management for Integrated Product and Production Data Management

One of the challenges of integrated product and production data management lies in the synchronization of product cost data across the product lifecycle. Towards this end, this paper discusses total cost management. A feature-based product costing approach is proposed by associating cost-related design features to standard time estimation. To integrate legacy product and production data management systems, various perspectives on costing data are unified, encompassing target costing, product costing, cost control, and cost accounting. A case study of refrigerator manufacturing is reported to illustrate the feasibility and potential of the proposed approach