Practical E-Manufacturing and Supply Chain Management

Gerhard Greeff, Ranjan Ghoshal

• Publisher: Newnes
• Year: 2004
• ISBN:
  9780080473857
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Gestione della catena di fornitura
• Index: Business

New technologies are revolutionising the way manufacturing and supply chain management are implemented. These changes are delivering manufacturing firms the competitive advantage of a highly flexible and responsive supply chain and manufacturing system to ensure that they meet the high expectations of their customers, who, in today's economy, demand absolutely the best service, price, delivery time and product quality.To make e-manufacturing and supply chain technologies effective, integration is needed between various, often disparate systems. To understand why this is such an issue, one needs to understand what the different systems or system components do, their objectives, their specific focus areas and how they interact with other systems. It is also required to understand how these systems evolved to their current state, as the concepts used during the early development of systems and technology tend to remain in place throughout the life-cycle of the systems/technology. This book explores various standards, concepts and techniques used over the years to model systems and hierarchies in order to understand where they fit into the organization and supply chain. It looks at the specific system components and the ways in which they can be designed and graphically depicted for easy understanding by both information technology (IT) and non-IT personnel.Without a good implementation philosophy, very few systems add any real benefit to an organization, and for this reason the ways in which systems are implemented and installation projects managed are also explored and recommendations are made as to possible methods that have proven successful in the past. The human factor and how that impacts on system success are also addressed, as is the motivation for system investment and subsequent benefit measurement processes.Finally, the vendor/user supply/demand within the e-manufacturing domain is explored and a method is put forward that enables the reduction of vendor bias during the vendor selection process.The objective of this book is to provide the reader with a good understanding regarding the four critical factors (business/physical processes, systems supporting the processes, company personnel and company/personal performance measures) that influence the success of any e-manufacturing implementation, and the synchronization required between these factors.· Discover how to implement the flexible and responsive supply chain and manufacturing execution systems required for competitive and customer-focused manufacturing· Build a working knowledge of the latest plant automation, manufacturing execution systems (MES) and supply chain management (SCM) design techniques· Gain a fuller understanding of the four critical factors (business and physical processes, systems supporting the processes, company personnel, performance measurement) that influence the success of any e-manufacturing implementation, and how to evaluate and optimize all four factors

1

Introduction to e-manufacturing systems

Learning objectives

• To understand what e-manufacturing is all about.

• To understand where e-manufacturing is going and what is required to make this possible.

• To understand the implications of embarking on an e-manufacturing strategy.

• To understand how e-manufacturing integrates with supply-chain systems.

1.1 Preamble

To make e-manufacturing work, integration is needed between various disparate systems. To understand why this is such an issue, one needs to understand what the different systems or system components do, their objectives, their specific focus areas and how they interact with other systems. It is also required to understand how these systems evolved to their current state, as the concepts used during the early development of systems and technology tend to remain in place throughout the life cycle of the systems/technology. It is thus important to know how systems and technology evolved over time to understand their current operation, benefit and deficiencies.

The following chapters will take the reader through the evolution of systems and technology in order to establish a base-line understanding of the various kinds of systems and what lead to their development and evolution. It will then explore various standards, concepts and techniques used over the years to model systems and hierarchies in order to understand where they fit into the organization and supply chain. It will look at the specific system components and what they do, and at the ways in which they can be designed and graphically depicted for easy understanding by both information technology (IT) and non-IT personnel.

Without a good implementation philosophy, very few systems add any real benefit to an organization, and for this reason the ways in which systems are implemented and installation projects managed are also explored and recommendations are made as to possible methods that have proven successful in the past. The human factor and how that impacts on system success are also addressed, as is the motivation for system investment and subsequent benefit measurement processes.

Finally, the vendor/user supply/demand within the e-manufacturing domain is explored and a method is put forward that enables the reduction of vendor bias during vendor selection.

The objective of this book is to provide the reader with a good understanding regarding the four critical factors (business/physical processes, systems supporting the processes, company personnel and company/personal performance measures) that influence the success of any e-manufacturing implementation, and the synchronization required between these factors.

1.2 E-manufacturing definition

‘The core of an e-manufacturing strategy is the technology roadmap for information transparency between the customer, manufacturing operations and suppliers. An e-manufacturing strategy takes e-business processes, such as build-to-order or reliability-centered maintenance and generates guidelines for implementing plant systems. The e-manufacturing strategy takes the e-business and manufacturing strategies and creates a roadmap for system development and implementation in the plant.’ – AMR Research.

E-manufacturing can mean many things from e-procurement, B2B, B2C, industrial Ethernet, portals, TCP/IP, UDP, XML, collaborative manufacturing, wireless and embedded web servers, to supply chain management (SCM).

‘E-manufacturing is the vertical (business) and horizontal (supply-chain) integration of systems to ensure the correct dissemination of information throughout the value-chain of a business, making use of appropriate technology like the Internet to ensure that real-time accurate information is available at all decision points throughout an organization and supply chain.’

1.3 Background

Earlier days, the plant floor was isolated from the rest of the enterprise, operating autonomously and out of the sight from the rest of the company as well as from the eye of the shareholders. Today everybody is driven by bottom line performance, and the shop floor is one area that shareholders and the financial analysts are becoming more interested in. Meeting or exceeding earnings forecasts and the return on net assets (RONA) are important criteria used to judge the performance of an organization and as such directly influence the share price.

In the case of a manufacturing company not only growing sales, but also the efficient operation of the unit are important criterion for success. With the removal of all non-value-added activities and making effective use of technologies like Internet, a company can operate better, faster and cheaper compared to its competitors.

The manufacturing plant, in a manufacturing company, is the heart where all value creation takes place. In the supply-chain model, connection of the pl...