Romeo Bandinelli

A benchmarking service for the manufacturing control research community

This paper presents the development—by the IMS Network of Excellence (cf. http://www. ims-noe.org)—of a web-based benchmarking service for manufacturing control systems. The paper first discusses the rationale behind this development. Next, the architecture and usage of the benchmarking service is presented and illustrated. Finally, the paper addresses the current status of the benchmarking service.

Servitization in oil and gas sector: outcomes of a case study research

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to respond to a call for research focusing on how and by how much new Product‐Service System (PSS) development methodologies and tools can help companies moving towards product‐oriented PSS, in the oil and gas equipment manufacturers industry.Design/methodology/approach – This study has been conducted using a single case study method. The single case study enabled the authors to analyze the implementation of PSS in a complex project environment, where the unit of analysis is an organization that designs, builds and delivers integrated product‐service offers. The selected case study is Nuovo Pignone S.p.a., a brand of the “GE Oil & Gas” company, that produce products and services for the oil and gas industry.Findings – The case study research confirms most of the statement reported in the state of the art, i.e. the oil and gas industries do not use a methodology to develop new PSS. Moreover, a new methodology for this specific sector seems not to be necessary, while a...

Using simulation for supply chain analysis: reviewing and proposing distributed simulation frameworks

Simulation modelling and analysis can be an extremely effective tool for supply chain performance analysis. Many development proposals apply distributed simulation to this context. The aim of this paper is to present an overview of such standards, models and/or architectures, describing the technological choices related to each of them, and to propose how and when a distributed supply chain simulation framework is to be used. Our proposal includes brief examples and experiences from experimental researches. Though detailed implementation of the framework is not in the scope of this paper, references for further information are given. In order to provide a coherent presentation of the proposal, this paper will be organised as follows: Section 1 introduces the context of supply chain management. Section 2 shows how distributed supply chain simulation (DSCS) can be an extremely effective tool for performance analysis in supply chain planning and optimisation. Section 3 points out the available technologies and the technological aspects of a distributed simulation framework, such as inter-process communication (IPC) standards and real-time infrastructures. Section 4 describes how the DSCS framework can be utilised. Section 5 reports on framework validation and gives an outlook on the experimental researches. Finally, section 6 concludes the paper summarising the proposal and discussing its benefits and drawbacks.

New Product Development in the Fashion Industry: An Empirical Investigation of Italian Firms

This paper investigates how companies in the fashion industry organize, plan and perform their New Product Development process (NPD). The results have been achieved through an empirical study carried out by the authors with the support of the GeCo Observatory, an Italian research initiative launched in 2012. This paper shows the details of eight selected case studies from the Italian fashion industry.

Exploring replenishment in the luxury fashion Italian firms: evidence from case studies

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to investigate how luxury Italian fashion companies manage the replenishment process, and how they leverage supply chain (SC) to be able to match supply and demand of fashion products. Design/methodology/approach – Literature review was the first step performed; then, a case study research has been conducted in order to have a comprehensive view of the real context of luxury Italian fashion companies concerning merchandise planning and replenishment processes. After the sample was individuated, a questionnaire has guided the interviews and then data have been collected. Analysing data has concerned a primary case analysis and then cross-case patterns have been searched. Finally, several variables coherent to the aim of the study have been pinpointed and a framework has been designed. Findings – The paper provides a characterization of the luxury Italian fashion industry concerning merchandise planning constraints and the replenishment processes. To guarantee the flex...

Improving new product development in the fashion industry through product lifecycle management: a descriptive analysis

New product development represents a core process within the fashion industry: it is a knowledge-intensive set of tasks that needs to be improved in order to enhance a companys competitive advantage. In this context, through product lifecycle management (PLM) product data are shared amongst the various actors and processes in the different phases of the product lifecycle. A descriptive exploratory research allows the authors to recognise the importance of PLM in the fashion industry, after an in-depth analysis of the existing literature. PLM includes modules supporting many industry-specific processes, reducing time-to-market, lead times and inventory. It is not just a product centric lifecycle-oriented business model, but it also represents a strategic approach that is spreading in the recent years also in a complex industry, as that of fashion.

How Product Development Can Be Improved in Fast Fashion Industry: An Italian Case

The fast fashion industry is characterized by a complex supply chain configuration, lots of players and an important critical success factor: time to market. In order to ensure the compliance to the fashion collection timing, the entire Product Development process has to be optimized through the analysis of both the flows of material and information. The authors have personally been involved in an in-depth case study, aiming to investigate the earlier phase of a PLM implementation and trying to merge business processes with proper enabling information technologies. The present study strives for analyzing the underexplored topic of improving Product Development in the fashion industry as well as identifying best practices for business process re-engineering in the industrial environment.

Building a Reference Model for the PLM Processes in Engineering and Contracting Sector

The management of the processes related to proposal, design, construction, start-up, operation and decommissioning of industrial plants, in few words the whole Plant Lifecycle, are usually performed each by means of a specialised information tool, because of the peculiarities of the Engineering and Contracting (EC b) an agreement of different players on some standard for the representation of such information, in order to develop IT tools which are able to access and exchange meaningful information. Whichever approach will emerge as a winner, the authors think that it would be useful to define a Reference Model for the Plant Lifecycle processes, proposing an ontology for their business and technical objects, their relationships and management. Such reference model, developed in a standard modelling language, could be of great help both in developing new integrated PLM solutions, and to enable stand-alone packages to establish an effective integrations based on the data and information.

Improving the remote scheduling of distributed production with process statistics and AI techniques

Abstract Stochastic events, such as rush orders, stock-out events, and local failures have an important impact on the performance of distributed production, but they are difficult to anticipate and account for when scheduling production activities. Process statistics and artificial intelligence techniques can provide this knowledge to effectively time synchronization events among the simulation and scheduling federates of a same distributed architecture. Measurable benefits include reduced communication delays and, thus, improved responsiveness of the system to changes in production and new scheduling needs, as they arise. Comparative results on the productivity of actual industrial systems are proposed and discussed in the paper.

Proposal of a framework for the evaluation and comparison of production schedules

Abstract Production Planning and Control (PP&C) has been increasingly becoming a critical activity, since competition in the markets is leveraging on a multitude of factors ranging from product quality, to delivery times and pre-sales and after-sales services. Among PP&C activities, scheduling decisions are the final temporal decision-making phase where plant and supply chain managers have to act for fixing any short noticed variations and maintaining satisfying overall production system performances, “assigning scarce resources to competing activities over a given time horizon to obtain the best possible system performance”. In particular, lot of work has been done in the past (and is currently on-going) on Performance Measurement for manufacturing systems at a strategic level. However, at a more operative scheduling level, a comprehensive approach seems to be still missing. In order to provide an answer to this main issue, the paper illustrates the main distinctive features of the PMS-ESS, a performance measurement system for the evaluation of production scheduling systems, and its application in a test case.