Towards a change process planning tool

The relationship between a product and its design process is generally complex and not fully understood. When modifying a product, industry still rarely considers the implementation process and its consequences for other design activities in the company, which is hard to assess with conventional planning methods. Although change processes are highly constrained, product and process constraints are not usually considered together or traded off against each other when planning the change. Inadequate assessment and planning of the change implementation process can lead to costly knock-on effects across the product and the design process. This paper argues for a combination of change and process research and discusses requirements for a change process planning tool. It proposes a system for the analysis of the impact of change on the product as well as other company activities. Then, a more informed selection between change alternatives is possible

Inventory drivers in a pharmaceutical supply chain

In recent years, inventory reduction has been a key objective of pharmaceutical companies, especially within cost optimization initiatives. Pharmaceutical supply chains are characterized by volatile and unpredictable demands –especially in emergent markets-, high service levels, and complex, perishable finished-good portfolios, which makes keeping reasonable amounts of stock a true challenge. However, a one-way strategy towards zero-inventory is in reality inapplicable, due to the strategic nature and importance of the products being commercialised. Therefore, pharmaceutical supply chains are in need of new inventory strategies in order to remain competitive. Finished-goods inventory management in the pharmaceutical industry is closely related to the manufacturing systems and supply chain configurations that companies adopt. The factors considered in inventory management policies, however, do not always cover the full supply chain spectrum in which companies operate. This paper works under the pre-assumption that, in fact, there is a complex relationship between the inventory configurations that companies adopt and the factors behind them. The intention of this paper is to understand the factors driving high finished-goods inventory levels in pharmaceutical supply chains and assist supply chain managers in determining which of them can be influenced in order to reduce inventories to an optimal degree. Reasons for reducing inventory levels are found in high inventory holding and scrap related costs; in addition to lost sales for not being able to serve the customers with the adequate shelf life requirements. The thesis conducts a single case study research in a multi-national pharmaceutical company, which is used to examine typical inventory configurations and the factors affecting these configurations. This paper presents a framework that can assist supply chain managers in determining the most important inventory drivers in pharmaceutical supply chains. The findings in this study suggest that while external and downstream supply chain factors are recognized as being critical to pursue inventory optimization initiatives, pharmaceutical companies are oriented towards optimizing production processes and meeting regulatory requirements while still complying with high service levels, being internal factors the ones prevailing when making inventory management decisions. Furthermore, this paper investigates, through predictive modelling techniques, how various intrinsic and extrinsic factors influence the inventory configurations of the case study company. The study shows that inventory configurations are relatively unstable over time, especially in configurations that present high safety stock levels; and that production features and product characteristics are important explanatory factors behind high inventory levels. Regulatory requirements also play an important role in explaining the high strategic inventory levels that pharmaceutical companies hold

Financial stability issues arising from current risk premia configurations and dynamics.

One of the major financial stability issues, we currently need to focus upon, relates to risk premia dynamics. Recent market turbulences have indeed, once more, shown that such dynamics can change quickly. True, the well known long term interest rates conundrum, highlighted by M. Greenspan, might appear less crucial an issue in 2006 than in 2004/2005. But several other market configurations appear puzzling. First, long term interest rates remain relatively low at this stage of the cycle. However, the jury is still out regarding the question, whether low term premia will be permanent. Second, credit markets remain buoyant, with very aggressive pricing. Low credit spreads often only match average historical rates of default without providing additional risk premium. A benign scenario can obviously account for such a configuration, but this is only one scenario among many other more risky ones. Third, the contrast with high equity risk premia is puzzling. In the past, at the specific time when excesses from previous bubbles had to be wiped out without too much damage to economic growth, the decrease in credit spreads in the face of high equity risk premia might have served financial stability. But, currently and for the longer term, these advantages seem less clear. Higher credit risk premia premia might indeed bode better for future financial stability. Fourth, recent market tensions have highlighted some vulnerabilities. This should lead us i) to remain cautious in our assessment of potential future short term market dynamics and ii) put on top of our agenda an enhancement of the resilience in face of longer term vulnerabilities. Risk premia move constantly because of changes in fundamental factors as well as in risk appetite. This often smoothly contributes to financial stability. However some characteristics of the present environment could make such adjustments challenging in the future. First, less accommodative global liquidity makes financial market dynamics more complex to predict. Second, bank lending standards might be looser than in a steady state. If credit standards are finally tightened more strongly, this would benefit financial stability in the medium term. But the transition includes challenges for borrowers which have relied on cheap credit in recent years. Third, cyclical lows on financial market volatility might be behind us. Fourth, financial institutions risk management often relies on fragile diversification related assumptions. This makes sense in a stable environment, when correlations do not change quickly. However, diversification might not protect as expected in time of stress. And a quick unwinding of positions is not always possible. Fifth, model risk remains a field where improvements are needed in order to strengthen financial stability over a full financial cycle. The main market related risks, in a context of less ample global liquidity, include changes in risk aversion and risk premia, with the potential for a breakdown in traditional correlations. If significant portfolio reallocation flows take place, market liquidity issues have the potential to transform vulnerabilities into financial instability. These risks might not be perfectly captured by some risk models currently used by financial institutions (including stress-tests). The main financial system related risks include the scenario in which financial institutions would not decrease sufficiently their search for yield in the future, in an environment where higher expected returns could be subject to increased risks. We can certainly envisage an ideal exit scenario in term of financial stability. However, risk premia are not controlled by any single institution and are subject to complex and uncertain dynamics. In fact, financial market dynamics might be more challenging in the future than in recent years. Financial institutions should therefore continuously enhance their resiliency in face of the variety of potential scenarii. The various conditions which can prevail during a full economic and financial cycle need to be seriously taken into account. This means that financial institutions should continue to ensure to avail of sharp risk management practices, emphasising the cases when risks (unfortunately) materialise over the short term, even for those risks which are often relegated to long term scenarii. They should also increase their sensitivity to the potential difficulty of a quick unwinding of some positions in difficult market conditions. The risks, that we highlighted, certainly warrant i), at the micro level, a monitoring of financial institutions risk management and ii), at the macro level, of the dynamics behind potential crowded trades. It is the role of central banks and all public authorities, individually and in co-operation, to foster a risk cycle management oriented attitude, which allows combining the advantages of real and financial innovation with financial stability and sustainable growth.

Managing design variety, process variety and engineering change: a case study of two capital good firms

Many capital good firms deliver products that are not strictly one-off, but instead share a certain degree of similarity with other deliveries. In the delivery of the product, they aim to balance stability and variety in their product design and processes. The issue of engineering change plays an important in how they manage to do so. Our aim is to gain more understanding into how capital good firms manage engineering change, design variety and process variety, and into the role of the product delivery strategies they thereby use. Product delivery strategies are defined as the type of engineering work that is done independent of an order and the specification freedom the customer has in the remaining part of the design. Based on the within-case and cross-case analysis of two capital good firms several mechanisms for managing engineering change, design variety and process variety are distilled. It was found that there exist different ways of (1) managing generic design information, (2) isolating large engineering changes, (3) managing process variety, (4) designing and executing engineering change processes. Together with different product delivery strategies these mechanisms can be placed within an archetypes framework of engineering change management. On one side of the spectrum capital good firms operate according to open product delivery strategies, have some practices in place to investigate design reuse potential, isolate discontinuous engineering changes into the first deliveries of the product, employ ‘probe and learn’ process management principles in order to allow evolving insights to be accurately executed and have informal engineering change processes. On the other side of the spectrum capital good firms operate according to a closed product delivery strategy, focus on prevention of engineering changes based on design standards, need no isolation mechanisms for discontinuous engineering changes, have formal process management practices in place and make use of closed and formal engineering change procedures. The framework should help managers to (1) analyze existing configurations of product delivery strategies, product and process designs and engineering change management and (2) reconfigure any of these elements according to a ‘misfit’ derived from the framework. Since this is one of the few in-depth empirical studies into engineering change management in the capital good sector, our work adds to the understanding on the various ways in which engineering change can be dealt with

Bridges Structural Health Monitoring and Deterioration Detection Synthesis of Knowledge and Technology

INE/AUTC 10.0

Potential Errors and Test Assessment in Software Product Line Engineering

Software product lines (SPL) are a method for the development of variant-rich software systems. Compared to non-variable systems, testing SPLs is extensive due to an increasingly amount of possible products. Different approaches exist for testing SPLs, but there is less research for assessing the quality of these tests by means of error detection capability. Such test assessment is based on error injection into correct version of the system under test. However to our knowledge, potential errors in SPL engineering have never been systematically identified before. This article presents an overview over existing paradigms for specifying software product lines and the errors that can occur during the respective specification processes. For assessment of test quality, we leverage mutation testing techniques to SPL engineering and implement the identified errors as mutation operators. This allows us to run existing tests against defective products for the purpose of test assessment. From the results, we draw conclusions about the error-proneness of the surveyed SPL design paradigms and how quality of SPL tests can be improved.Comment: In Proceedings MBT 2015, arXiv:1504.0192

Designing a consulting services architecture model

textDuring my years of experience in the technology industry, it has become obvious that standard processes and methodologies within the engineering discipline are at a mature state. The realization though is that software engineering specifically lags behind. Most software engineering methodologies that I have studied focus on the mission of software development. It is this realization and the need for structure that led me to review existing methodologies used within my company's software services organization. The definition of what a successful software services methodology entails is rather limited. This report will provide a history of existing software engineering methodologies that I have studied, describe an initial services method that was being developed within my organization, develop a new model that addresses previous shortcomings and identify additional components required to further define a strong software services-oriented delivery methodology.Electrical and Computer Engineerin