- Email: [email protected]
Innovation in production research
Int. J. Production Economics 147 (2014) 1–2
Contents lists available at ScienceDirect
Int. J. Production Economics journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/ijpe
Editorial
Innovation in production research
This Special Issue entitled “Innovation in production research” includes a selection of papers which originally were presented at the 21st Conference on Production Research, held in Stuttgart, Germany, July 31–August 4, 2011 and subsequently extended and improved. This Special Issue is intended to encourage the communication among researchers in a broad spectrum of topics, ranging from product development, production management and technologies, logistics & supply chain and the environment. The conference itself had more than 400 contributions presented by scientists from over 35 countries, from which approximately a quarter were invited for consideration to this issue. We are very grateful for the contribution of the authors who submitted papers. In all, 51 manuscripts were submitted for consideration. After two rounds of review, this special issue contains 11 papers. The articles included in this special issue can be divided into the following five topics:
Logistics and supply chain management. Production planning and control. Purchasing. Sustainability and the environment. Maintenance and reliability.
Three articles are related to the first topic on logistics and supply chain management. The first contribution from Wang et al. (in this issue) studies the dynamics of an inventory system where excessive inventory cannot be returned to the supplier. Different from most of previous studies in supply chain's inventory control that consider a linear inventory system, the paper attempts to capture complex dynamic behaviors as a result of the removal of the linearity assumption. Using a time-domain analysis, the authors present the upper and lower bounds of the order and inventory oscillations. The second contribution from Larsen and Thorstenson (in this issue) explicitly addresses the difference between an order fill rate and a volume fill rate used as a service measure in inventory control systems. The paper specifically evaluates their performance for different inventory control systems. Several extensions to earlier models include the generalization of the demand process, customer-order size distribution, as well as an alternative service measure, i.e. the customer-order fill rate. The third contribution is from Feng et al. (in this issue), who investigate revenue-sharing contracts in which member reliability issues are taken into consideration. The proposed contract is applied to a multiple-stage supply chain. The paper presents interesting studies that look into how to generate incentives for the members of the supply chain in order to improve their reliability. Three articles are included in the topic of production planning and control. Morikawa et al. (in this issue) study the use of make-to-stock 0925-5273/$ - see front matter & 2013 Published by Elsevier B.V. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.ijpe.2013.11.011
policies at upstream stages to shorten lead times in a make-to-order manufacturing system. In other words, the system is allowed to hold semi-finished items without knowing confirmed orders, and later match orders to these items according to order specifications and quantities. Eight make-to-stock policies are proposed based on different buffer selection rules, matching acceptance rules, and make-tostock replenishment rules, and their performance is evaluated. The next article is by Tirkel and Rabinowitz (in this issue), who analyze costs and benefits of inspection in a production line. Motivated by the work in semiconductor wafer fabrication, the authors investigate the scenario of implementing in-line inspection performed on partially processed items throughout the production line. By using both analytical and simulation models, the authors study the influences of inspection capacity and inspection rate on the total expected inspection related costs, which comprise a yield-loss cost due to unsalable outputs and a delivery-delay cost caused by inspection flow time. Finally, effective production management cannot be achieved without a well-designed materials supply system. We are fortunate to have a third article in this group authored by Hanson and Finnsgård (in this issue), who study how the configuration of a materials supply system within an assembly plant can have a significant impact on the performance of both the materials supply and the receiving assembly stations. The focus of this article is on studying how the time-efficiency of in-plant materials supply is affected by the size of unit loads. For the topic on purchasing, there is only one contribution from Hallikas et al. (in this issue). This article addresses the emerging complexity in relation to the systematic nature of customer value and questions its influence on firms' procurement policies. The study attempts to identify factors that characterize value creation in service purchasing and to correlate procurement strategies with the creation of value for customers. This is accomplished by carrying out a case study followed by a customer survey. There are two papers that concern environment and sustainability related issues. The first paper, authored by Uhlemair et al. (in this issue), presents a new model to economically optimize local bioenergy production and distribution in bioenergy villages where local bioenergy plants are installed to supply electricity and to heat households through a local heat distribution network. A mixed integer linear program (MILP) based model is developed to determine the optimal capacity of the system, the objects that should be connected to the heating network and the course of the network. The second contribution from Schrettle et al. (in this issue) studies how manufacturing firms should adjust their strategy according to the sustainability challenge. The main contributions offered by the paper are represented by three steps used by the authors. The first contribution is in operationalizing the sustainability challenge by
2
Editorial / Int. J. Production Economics 147 (2014) 1–2
identifying relevant drivers. The second is represented by a framework for assessing the interdependence between factors and decisions concerning a sustainability move. And finally, the paper explains firms' decisions with past performance, firm size and current level of sustainability action. The remaining two articles fall in the final topic of maintenance and reliability. Faccio et al. (in this issue) introduce a new quantitative framework to develop optimal maintenance policies while taking into account costs related to spare parts, labor, missing production costs and other indirect costs. Focusing on the failure-based maintenance and condition-based maintenance, the authors propose a simple and user-friendly abacus to help maintenance managers choose their optimal maintenance policies and show its applicability in a real case study. The second contribution in this area is from Remenyi and Staudacher (in this issue), who study how to improve maintenance operations by finding suitable scheduling rules for the job-shop operations of maintenance. More specifically, the study assesses if the use of decentralized scheduling rules can improve the logistical performances of maintenance operations. A systematic simulation-based approach is applied by the authors and the approach is validated from a real case study taking place in an aircraft engine company. We certainly hope that the articles in this special issue will be well received and well referenced by the international scientific community. As Guest Editors we would like to thank Robert W. Grubbström, the Editor-in-Chief of the IJPE for providing the opportunity to put together this special issue, all the authors for their contributions and the reviewers for their valuable time and effort in the review process. References Faccio, M., Persona, A., Sgarbossa, F., Zanin, G. Industrial maintenance policy development: a quantitative framework. (in this issue).
Feng, X., Moon, I., Ryu, K. Revenue-sharing contracts in an N-stage supply chain with reliability considerations. (in this issue). Hallikas, J., Immonen, M., Pynnonen, M., Mikkonen, K. Service purchasing and value creation: towards systematic purchases. (in this issue). Hanson, R., Finnsgård, C. Impact of unit load size in-plant materials supply efficiency. (in this issue). Larsen, C., Thorstenson, A. The order and volume fill rates in inventory control systems. (in this issue). Morikawa, K., Takahashi, K., Hirotani, D. Make-to-stock policies for a multistage serial system under a make-to-order production environment. (in this issue). Remenyi, C., Staudacher, S. Systematic simulation based approach for the identification and implementation of a scheduling rule in the aircraft engine maintenance. (in this issue). Schrettle, S., Hinz, A., Scherrer-Rathje, M., Friedli, T. Turning sustainability into action: explaining firms sustainability efforts and their impact on firm performance. (in this issue). Tirkel, I., Rabinowitz, G. Modeling cost–benefit analysis of inspection in a production line. (in this issue). Uhlemair, H., Karchin, I., Geldermann, J. Optimizing the production and distribution system of bioenergy villages. (in this issue). Wang, X., Disney, S.M., Wang, J. Exploring the oscillatory dynamics of a forbidden returns inventory system. (in this issue).
Guest Editors Hartanto Wong Department of Economics and Business, Aarhus University, DK-8210 Aarhus, Denmark E-mail address: [email protected]
Chin-Yin Huang Department of Industrial Engineering and Enterprise Information, Tunghai University, P.O. Box 985, 407 Taichung, Taiwan E-mail address: [email protected]
Contents lists available at ScienceDirect
Int. J. Production Economics journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/ijpe
Editorial
Innovation in production research
This Special Issue entitled “Innovation in production research” includes a selection of papers which originally were presented at the 21st Conference on Production Research, held in Stuttgart, Germany, July 31–August 4, 2011 and subsequently extended and improved. This Special Issue is intended to encourage the communication among researchers in a broad spectrum of topics, ranging from product development, production management and technologies, logistics & supply chain and the environment. The conference itself had more than 400 contributions presented by scientists from over 35 countries, from which approximately a quarter were invited for consideration to this issue. We are very grateful for the contribution of the authors who submitted papers. In all, 51 manuscripts were submitted for consideration. After two rounds of review, this special issue contains 11 papers. The articles included in this special issue can be divided into the following five topics:
Logistics and supply chain management. Production planning and control. Purchasing. Sustainability and the environment. Maintenance and reliability.
Three articles are related to the first topic on logistics and supply chain management. The first contribution from Wang et al. (in this issue) studies the dynamics of an inventory system where excessive inventory cannot be returned to the supplier. Different from most of previous studies in supply chain's inventory control that consider a linear inventory system, the paper attempts to capture complex dynamic behaviors as a result of the removal of the linearity assumption. Using a time-domain analysis, the authors present the upper and lower bounds of the order and inventory oscillations. The second contribution from Larsen and Thorstenson (in this issue) explicitly addresses the difference between an order fill rate and a volume fill rate used as a service measure in inventory control systems. The paper specifically evaluates their performance for different inventory control systems. Several extensions to earlier models include the generalization of the demand process, customer-order size distribution, as well as an alternative service measure, i.e. the customer-order fill rate. The third contribution is from Feng et al. (in this issue), who investigate revenue-sharing contracts in which member reliability issues are taken into consideration. The proposed contract is applied to a multiple-stage supply chain. The paper presents interesting studies that look into how to generate incentives for the members of the supply chain in order to improve their reliability. Three articles are included in the topic of production planning and control. Morikawa et al. (in this issue) study the use of make-to-stock 0925-5273/$ - see front matter & 2013 Published by Elsevier B.V. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.ijpe.2013.11.011
policies at upstream stages to shorten lead times in a make-to-order manufacturing system. In other words, the system is allowed to hold semi-finished items without knowing confirmed orders, and later match orders to these items according to order specifications and quantities. Eight make-to-stock policies are proposed based on different buffer selection rules, matching acceptance rules, and make-tostock replenishment rules, and their performance is evaluated. The next article is by Tirkel and Rabinowitz (in this issue), who analyze costs and benefits of inspection in a production line. Motivated by the work in semiconductor wafer fabrication, the authors investigate the scenario of implementing in-line inspection performed on partially processed items throughout the production line. By using both analytical and simulation models, the authors study the influences of inspection capacity and inspection rate on the total expected inspection related costs, which comprise a yield-loss cost due to unsalable outputs and a delivery-delay cost caused by inspection flow time. Finally, effective production management cannot be achieved without a well-designed materials supply system. We are fortunate to have a third article in this group authored by Hanson and Finnsgård (in this issue), who study how the configuration of a materials supply system within an assembly plant can have a significant impact on the performance of both the materials supply and the receiving assembly stations. The focus of this article is on studying how the time-efficiency of in-plant materials supply is affected by the size of unit loads. For the topic on purchasing, there is only one contribution from Hallikas et al. (in this issue). This article addresses the emerging complexity in relation to the systematic nature of customer value and questions its influence on firms' procurement policies. The study attempts to identify factors that characterize value creation in service purchasing and to correlate procurement strategies with the creation of value for customers. This is accomplished by carrying out a case study followed by a customer survey. There are two papers that concern environment and sustainability related issues. The first paper, authored by Uhlemair et al. (in this issue), presents a new model to economically optimize local bioenergy production and distribution in bioenergy villages where local bioenergy plants are installed to supply electricity and to heat households through a local heat distribution network. A mixed integer linear program (MILP) based model is developed to determine the optimal capacity of the system, the objects that should be connected to the heating network and the course of the network. The second contribution from Schrettle et al. (in this issue) studies how manufacturing firms should adjust their strategy according to the sustainability challenge. The main contributions offered by the paper are represented by three steps used by the authors. The first contribution is in operationalizing the sustainability challenge by
2
Editorial / Int. J. Production Economics 147 (2014) 1–2
identifying relevant drivers. The second is represented by a framework for assessing the interdependence between factors and decisions concerning a sustainability move. And finally, the paper explains firms' decisions with past performance, firm size and current level of sustainability action. The remaining two articles fall in the final topic of maintenance and reliability. Faccio et al. (in this issue) introduce a new quantitative framework to develop optimal maintenance policies while taking into account costs related to spare parts, labor, missing production costs and other indirect costs. Focusing on the failure-based maintenance and condition-based maintenance, the authors propose a simple and user-friendly abacus to help maintenance managers choose their optimal maintenance policies and show its applicability in a real case study. The second contribution in this area is from Remenyi and Staudacher (in this issue), who study how to improve maintenance operations by finding suitable scheduling rules for the job-shop operations of maintenance. More specifically, the study assesses if the use of decentralized scheduling rules can improve the logistical performances of maintenance operations. A systematic simulation-based approach is applied by the authors and the approach is validated from a real case study taking place in an aircraft engine company. We certainly hope that the articles in this special issue will be well received and well referenced by the international scientific community. As Guest Editors we would like to thank Robert W. Grubbström, the Editor-in-Chief of the IJPE for providing the opportunity to put together this special issue, all the authors for their contributions and the reviewers for their valuable time and effort in the review process. References Faccio, M., Persona, A., Sgarbossa, F., Zanin, G. Industrial maintenance policy development: a quantitative framework. (in this issue).
Feng, X., Moon, I., Ryu, K. Revenue-sharing contracts in an N-stage supply chain with reliability considerations. (in this issue). Hallikas, J., Immonen, M., Pynnonen, M., Mikkonen, K. Service purchasing and value creation: towards systematic purchases. (in this issue). Hanson, R., Finnsgård, C. Impact of unit load size in-plant materials supply efficiency. (in this issue). Larsen, C., Thorstenson, A. The order and volume fill rates in inventory control systems. (in this issue). Morikawa, K., Takahashi, K., Hirotani, D. Make-to-stock policies for a multistage serial system under a make-to-order production environment. (in this issue). Remenyi, C., Staudacher, S. Systematic simulation based approach for the identification and implementation of a scheduling rule in the aircraft engine maintenance. (in this issue). Schrettle, S., Hinz, A., Scherrer-Rathje, M., Friedli, T. Turning sustainability into action: explaining firms sustainability efforts and their impact on firm performance. (in this issue). Tirkel, I., Rabinowitz, G. Modeling cost–benefit analysis of inspection in a production line. (in this issue). Uhlemair, H., Karchin, I., Geldermann, J. Optimizing the production and distribution system of bioenergy villages. (in this issue). Wang, X., Disney, S.M., Wang, J. Exploring the oscillatory dynamics of a forbidden returns inventory system. (in this issue).
Guest Editors Hartanto Wong Department of Economics and Business, Aarhus University, DK-8210 Aarhus, Denmark E-mail address: [email protected]
Chin-Yin Huang Department of Industrial Engineering and Enterprise Information, Tunghai University, P.O. Box 985, 407 Taichung, Taiwan E-mail address: [email protected]