From value stream mapping toward a lean/sigma continuous improvement process: an industrial case study

Though lean manufacturing has been widely recognised for its effectiveness in continuously improving productivity, product quality, and on-time delivery to customers, the cost for hiring a full-time lean manufacturing engineer has kept many small businesses from implementing lean in their facilities. This paper presents a case study of lean implementation at a small manufacturer in the United States. Starting with collecting process information, a current value-stream map was created that reflected the current operation status. A future value stream map was then proposed to serve as a guide for future lean activities. Next, hurdles that kept the company from moving towards future state were identified. The ‘5 whys’ method was employed to reveal the root cause for each hurdle, followed by kaizen events proposed as solutions. In this case study, two kaizen events were proposed. For the first kaizen event, Taguchi experiment design was used to find the optimal machining parameters that reduced variation in a plasma cutting process. It consequently eliminated rework time and improved productivity. In the second kaizen event, implementation of rabbit chasing increased the system flexibility and consequently reduced inventory levels between work stations.     

Performance measurement of cross-culture supply chain partnership: a case study in the Chinese automotive industry

This study explores a performance measurement system for a dynamic supply chain partnership in a cross-cultural context. An initial framework is constructed by reviewing the existing literature, followed by an in-depth case study in the Chinese automotive industry, where the framework is refined to address the multi-cultural setting. A performance measurement, system which includes the relationship strategy and operational measurement criteria for a supply chain partnership, has been developed. The relationship strategy contains elements of strategy orientation, management style, interdependence, mutual organisational characteristics and common goals. The operational measurement criteria consist of commitment, trust, communication behaviour, information sharing, participation decision, quality, production performance, delivery, cost, supplier strength, attitude, compromise and loyalty. The last three operational measurement criteria are found to be particularly relevant to the cross-cultural feature. While existing studies tend to focus on either specific measures or individual organisations, this paper for the first time proposes a comprehensive framework to measure the performance of supply chain partnerships. The cross-cultural perspective provides a further unique view on how a performance measurement system can be responsive to the dynamics in practice.     

Product-Service Systems for servitization of the automotive industry: a literature review

Nowadays companies are facing several transformations of their activities, empowered and pulled by technological and social evolutions over the few past decades. As competitiveness is a leitmotiv in the market economy paradigm, it is necessary to improve activities through excellence and new offers. In a focus on the consumers’ needs, the limits between tangible and intangible offer are challenged through new kind of offers merging products and service under one common offer. Manufacturing companies, and more precisely the automotive industry, endeavour to integrate new constraints of sustainability, economic globalisation and new ways of consumption made possible with this new kind of offerings. This supports the opportunity to change consumption offers, historically driven by production and consumption of tangible assets. The paper explores a key concept to operate this shift towards a new type of offer gathering products and service into an integrated bundle entitled product-service system (PSS). This paper proposes a review of PSS definitions, methodologies and its applications to clarify the contribution of the literature in enabling its adoption. Requirements to adopt PSS are extracted from case studies and methodologies for servitization are evaluated as means to overcome barriers of PSS adoption. A specific focus is given on the automotive industry.     

Value chain management for commodities: a case study from the chemical industry

We present a planning model for chemical commodities related to an industry case. Commodities are standard chemicals characterized by sales and supply volatility in volume and value. Increasing and volatile prices of crude oil-dependent raw materials require coordination of sales and supply decisions by volume and value throughout the value chain to ensure profitability. Contract and spot demand differentiation with volatile and uncertain spot prices, spot sales quantity flexibility, spot sales price–quantity functions and variable raw material consumption rates in production are problem specifics to be considered. Existing chemical industry planning models are limited to production and distribution decisions to minimize costs or makespan. Demand-oriented models focus on uncertainty in demand quantities not in prices. We develop an integrated model to optimize profit by coordinating sales quantity, price and supply decisions throughout the value chain. A two-phase optimization approach supports robust planning ensuring minimum profitability even in case of worst-case spot sales price scenarios. Model evaluations with industry case data demonstrate the impact of elasticities, variable raw material consumption rates and price uncertainties on planned profit and volumes.     

Outsourcing practices in automotive supply networks: an exploratory study of full service vehicle suppliers

Most automotive companies outsource the design, manufacturing and assembly of some complete cars to independent suppliers or full service vehicle companies (FSVs). FSVs represent a relatively unexplored form of outsourcing which combines joint efforts in developing a modular product with the externalisation of specific niche manufacturing processes. On the basis of comparative cases and of qualitative information collected within three FSVs and three OEMs, this study aims to investigate the associated advantages and risks for FSVs, commonalities/differences from the practices of outsourcing to component/module specialists that can be found in other industries and why and for what kind of products FSVs can be appropriate in automotive supply networks. The study contributes to the debate on outsourcing in the automotive industry by providing an original interpretation on why FSVs have recently seen a shakeout with some growing whilst others have faltered.     

An integrated decision support system for strategic supply chain optimisation in process industries: the case of a zinc company

We introduce a menu-driven user-friendly decision support system (DSS) for supply chain planning based on optimisation. The DSS is based on a multi-source (supplier), multi-destination (warehouse) network having multiple manufacturing facilities, with multiple materials and multiple storage areas. This integrated supply chain model performs multiple period planning. The use of this DSS requires little knowledge of management sciences tools. We discuss the need for an integrated approach towards supply chain modelling for the process industry. We present the integrated model in the form of a database structure. We validate the model with the real data of a zinc company and demonstrate the impact of optimisation in terms of percentage improvement. The result shows that it is possible to improve unit contribution to profit from 1.89 to 4.66%.