Modularity as a Strategy for Supply Chain Coordination: The Case of U.S. Auto

Companies across industries have admired the success of Dell Computersin using modularity as part of a mass customization strategy to achieve build-to-order and a streamlined supply chain. Many companies are attempting to emulate this successful model, including the American automotive industry. This paper focuses on how the auto industry has been attempting to move to modularity, in part, motivated by a desire to build cars to order. This movement has led to major changes in supply chain practices based partly on imitation of successful keiretsu models in Japan and a move toward modules. This study finds significant impact of modularity on outsourcing, product development, and supply chain coordination based on interviews conducted with automakers and suppliers from 2000-2003. Based on our interviews, we observe that modularity has accompanied a major reorganization of the automotive supplier industry. We identify two major issues that appear to block U.S. automakers from gaining most of the advantages possible through modularity. First, most modularity activities appear to be primarily strategically cost reduction driven, leaving the potential of modularity for mass customization largely untapped. Second, the shift in industry reorganization has not been accompanied by changes in the supply chain infrastructure to encourage long-term partnerships. We contrast this to the more gradual approach used by Toyota as it incorporates modularity on a selective basis and moves to a build-to-order model     

Involving suppliers in product development in the United States andJapan: evidence for set-based concurrent engineering

Concurrent engineering (CE) involves a widely recognized revolution in the social organization of product development and a corresponding revolution in the underlying paradigm of design. We distinguish between two paradigms-point-based design and set-based design-and argue that effective, truly concurrent design requires shifting to a paradigm where design team members reason and communicate about sets of designs which we call “set-based concurrent engineering”. A survey of 92 Japanese and 119 US automotive parts suppliers who design their own products sought to quantify the pervasiveness and correlates of “set-based approaches”. The survey evidence indicates that set-based design communication is more prevalent among Japanese than among US parts suppliers, and is correlated with certain product development characteristics including years of experience with early involvement of suppliers in design, the degree of product-process design overlap, the degree to which subsystems are interdependent, and the use of quality function deployment (QFD)     

Stalking the IQ€xpertise relation: When the critics go fishing.

[Correction Notice: An erratum for this article was reported in Vol 117(4) of Journal of Experimental Psychology: General (see record 2008-10698-001). In this commentary, subjects #24 and #25 were incorrectly listed as failing race 5 (0s). The corrections appear in the erratum. The erratum also includes a line missing from Footnote 2.] Detterman and Spry (1988) criticize several conclusions we made in our study of racetrack handicapping and cognitive complexity (Ceci & Liker, 1986). Specifically, they claim that our use of an unreliable measure of expertise was responsible for our failure to obtain a relation between expertise and IQ. Consequently, we were accused of accepting the null hypothesis too readily. In this reply, we demonstrate, contrary to their claim, that the reliability of the measure in question is very high (.88) and that its reliability is manifested in its high correlation with another variable, interactive reasoning, overlooked by Detterman and Spry. We conclude by pointing out a number of factually inaccurate claims made by Detterman and Spry along with what appears to have been selective reporting of correlations to bolster their arguments; and we suggest that their failure to consider one entire aspect of our analyses rendered their criticisms baseless. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Application of multiattribute decision analysis to quality functiondeployment for target setting

In the product design and development process, quality function deployment (QFD) provides a comprehensive, systematic approach to support the design of new products intended to meet or exceed customer expectations. The authors use multiattribute value theory to support new product design and hence to augment a design team's experience and judgment. We introduce the concept of a target set, the set of all value score vectors that are at least as preferred as the value score vectors of any of the given design alternatives. Assuming mutually preferential independence, we characterize the target set and indicate how it can be used to support selecting targets: 1) for the level of customer satisfaction to be attained by the new product, for each customer requirement and 2) for design requirements, presumably based in part on information from engineering competitive assessments. We then use the target set concept to augment the product planning phase of QFD. The concepts are illustrated and evaluated through the retrospective application of the methodology to an actual surgical product (universal converter). Although the analysis was performed retrospectively, without knowledge of the market success of the product and its competitors, the results were consistent with product acceptance and provided valuable insights to the lead engineer     

Deep Brain Stimulation: An Evolving Technology

Deep brain stimulation (DBS) is widely used as a safe and effective medical treatment for certain neurological disorders. It continues to evolve with improving techniques in functional neurosurgery and biomedical device engineering. This paper provides an overview of the enabling science and technology that have allowed DBS to successfully treat certain neurological disorders. It also points toward some of the engineering advances that will enable DBS to yield a more predictable outcome for current indications and to be systematically developed as a treatment for new indications.     

Implementing computer-aided design: the transition of nonusers

Prior research on the social impacts of computer-aided design (CAD) has treated nonusers, those still using manual methods, as control groups to which users are compared. The assumption is that nonusers' worklives are essentially unchanged by the implementation of CAD. It is argued that nonusers can also be affected by their organization's transition to CAD. It is hypothesized that CAD has primarily job-enhancing effects for the work lives of designers selected to use CAD and primarily negative effects for the work lives of nonusers, who might fear their manual skills would soon be obsolete. Data were collected in two large manufacturing firms through a survey of 74 CAD users and 30 nonusers and through a smaller number of interviews at each site. The results indicate that, compared with CAD users, nonusers were significantly older and spent more time on support and maintenance of old designs and relatively little time on conceptual design work and new design projects     

A day at the races: A study of IQ, expertise, and cognitive complexity.

30 middle-aged and older men who were avid racetrack patrons were studied and tested over a 3-yr period. 14 were classified as experts and the remaining as nonexperts based on their ability to predict posttime odds on the basis of factual information about horses. The important background characteristics of experts and nonexperts were equivalent. IQ was measured by the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale (WAIS). Cognitive complexity was measured by the extent to which Ss used a sophisticated multiplicative model to handicap races, as opposed to a simpler additive model. Ss were asked to handicap 10 actual races and 50 experimenter-contrived races. Analyses revealed that expert handicapping was a cognitively sophisticated enterprise, with experts using a mental model that contained multiple interaction effects and nonlinearity. The findings suggest that (a) IQ is unrelated to skilled performance at the racetrack and (b) IQ is unrelated to real-world forms of cognitive complexity that would appear to conform to some of those that scientists regard as the hallmarks of intelligent behavior. (33 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

"Stalking the IQ-expertise relation: When the critics go fishing": Correction to Ceci and Liker.

Reports an error in "Stalking the IQ-expertise relation: When the critics go fishing" by Stephen J. Ceci and Jeffrey K. Liker (Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 1988[Mar], Vol 117[1], 96-100). In this commentary, subjects #24 and #25 were incorrectly listed as failing race 5 (0s). The corrections appear in the erratum. The erratum also includes a line missing from Footnote 2. (The following abstract of the original article appeared in record 1988-31616-001.) Detterman and Spry (1988) criticize several conclusions we made in our study of racetrack handicapping and cognitive complexity (Ceci & Liker, 1986). Specifically, they claim that our use of an unreliable measure of expertise was responsible for our failure to obtain a relation between expertise and IQ. Consequently, we were accused of accepting the null hypothesis too readily. In this reply, we demonstrate, contrary to their claim, that the reliability of the measure in question is very high (.88) and that its reliability is manifested in its high correlation with another variable, interactive reasoning, overlooked by Detterman and Spry. We conclude by pointing out a number of factually inaccurate claims made by Detterman and Spry along with what appears to have been selective reporting of correlations to bolster their arguments; and we suggest that their failure to consider one entire aspect of our analyses rendered their criticisms baseless. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

IQ and reasoning complexity: The roles of experience.

In his commentary Reagan (1987) raises several methodological and interpretive concerns about conclusions of our study on handicapping expertise and IQ (Ceci & Liker, 1986b). In this article, we address these concerns and argue that our original conclusion that IQ is uncorrelated to the complexity and accuracy of racetrack handicapping continues to be a valid interpretation of our data. We discuss the implications of the negative correlation between IQ and years of horse-race experience and explain why the sampling procedures would not produce the type of selectional biases suggested by Reagan. Nonetheless, Reagan's commentary suggests an interesting hypothesis for future research. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)