An evolutionary complex systems decision-support tool for the management of operations

Purpose - The purpose of this is to add both to the development of complex systems thinking in the subject area of operations and production management and to the limited number of applications of computational models and simulations from the science of complex systems. The latter potentially offer helpful decision-support tools for operations and production managers. Design/methodology/approach - A mechanical engineering firm was used as a case study where a combined qualitative and quantitative methodological approach was employed to extract the required data from four senior managers. Company performance measures as well as firm technologies, practices and policies, and their relation and interaction with one another, were elicited. The data were subjected to an evolutionary complex systems (ECS) model resulting in a series of simulations. Findings - The findings highlighted the effects of the diversity in management decision making on the firm's evolutionary trajectory. The CEO appeared to have the most balanced view of the firm, closely followed by the marketing and research and development managers. The manufacturing manager's responses led to the most extreme evolutionary trajectory where the integrity of the entire firm came into question particularly when considering how employees were utilised. Research limitations/implications - By drawing directly from the opinions and views of managers, rather than from logical "if-then" rules and averaged mathematical representations of agents that characterise agent-based and other self-organisational models, this work builds on previous applications by capturing a micro-level description of diversity that has been problematical both in theory and application. Practical implications - This approach can be used as a decision-support tool for operations and other managers providing a forum with which to explore: the strengths, weaknesses and consequences of different decision-making capacities within the firm; the introduction of new manufacturing technologies, practices and policies; and the different evolutionary trajectories that a firm can take. Originality/value - With the inclusion of "micro-diversity", ECS modelling moves beyond the self-organisational models that populate the literature but has not as yet produced a great many practical simulation results. This work is a step in that direction

Outsourcing and Information Management.

This paper compares outsourcing processes in France, Italy and Japan in two types of firms, large firms and also small firms. It is shown that outsourcing has increased over the last two decades in both small and large firms in all three countries and that mainly in the last decade the tendency has been to increasingly involve some of the suppliers in product development. We interpret this evidence by means of a cognitive framework related to the activity of information management. Specifically, we show that the more the relationships among suppliers and users are characterised by two-way communication, decentralised information processing, and accordingly balanced contractual power, the more the incentives to create knowledge and to innovate autonomously are guaranteed.Firm size; Information; Network; Outsourcing

Complementarities between Workplace Organisation and Human Resource Management:

Owing to changes in the business environment, there has been a tremendous adoption of innovative workplace organisation (WO) and human resource (HR) practices during the last few decades. Assuming a holistic perspective on human resource management (HRM), the present study establishes the hypothesis of mutually reinforcing WO and HR practices that, thus, constitute a so-called high-performance work system. Precisely, it is argued that there may be a complementary relationship between a more decentralised way of allocating tasks and decision rights on the one hand and continuing training (or skilled labour), incentive pay or a more intensive use of long-term, as opposed to temporary, employment on the other. This hypothesis is examined empirically using latest nationally representative panel data of about 2,500 firms in Switzerland and applying econometric estimation techniques on the basis of an augmented Cobb-Douglas production function. The estimation results show statistically significant complementarities between the WO and HR practices mentioned above. In addition, socalled innovative HRM systems of mutually reinforcing WO and HR practices increase firm performance significantly. These results are robust to unobserved firm heterogeneity and to the problem of reversed causality.

Epoch, Epistemology and the Virtual Organization

This paper engages with contemporary discussions of ?the virtual organization?. Starting with some influential accounts that were published in the 1990s, the paper highlights the continued significance of control ration alities in the increasingly dispersed and disaggregated organizations of the advanced industrial societies. The paper also takes issue with the ?epochalist? tendency to equate virtuality with the ?end of organization?, and it puts the case for a more historically situated view of technology in ?post bureaucratic? or ?virtualised? organizational settings

ADACOR: a holonic architecture for agile and adaptive manufacturing control

In the last decades significant changes in the manufacturing environment have been noticed: moving from a local economy towards a global economy, with markets asking for products with higher quality at lower costs, highly customised and with short life cycle. In these circumstances, the challenge is to develop manufacturing control systems with intelligence capabilities, fast adaptation to the environment changes and more robustness against the occurrence of disturbances. This paper presents an agile and adaptive manufacturing control architecture that addresses the need for the fast reaction to disturbances at the shop floor level, increasing the agility and flexibility of the enterprise, when it works in volatile environments. The proposed architecture introduces an adaptive control that balances dynamically between a more centralised structure and a more decentralised one, allowing combining the global production optimisation with agile reaction to unexpected disturbances

A framework for distributed manufacturing applications

The new organisational structures used in world wide manufacturing systems require the development of distributed applications, which present solutions to their requirements. The work research in the distributed manufacturing control leads to emergent paradigms, such as Holonic Manufacturing Systems (HMS) and Bionic Manufacturing Systems (BMS), which translates the concepts from social organisations and biological systems to the manufacturing world. This paper present a Framework for the development of distributed manufacturing applications, based in an agent-based architecture, which implements some Holonic and Bionic Manufacturing Systems concepts

The Performance of Different Organisations under Different Marked Conditions An Empirical Analysis of the Organisational Structure and Performance of 1900 Danish Firms [Revised Feb. 12th. 1999]

Among some scholars of management, organisation and also economists as well as policy makers it is argued that certain new forms of firm organisation such as flexible and learning organisations increasingly are becoming “best practice”, in an increasingly learning and global economy. On a policy level, in eg. Denmark and OECD, questions are already asked as to how policies should be set up to stimulate such organisational forms. A crucial aspect that is recognised by some scholars, is that it is in certain competitive structures where flexible and learning organisations are well suited, though tends to be overlooked within the debate. The analysis in this paper applies performance data from Statistics Denmark merged with survey data of organisational forms, management, work practices and employee skills collected through a questionnaire in 1900 Danish firms in manufacturing as well as services. Applying regression analyses we show that the flexible or learning organisational forms in some parts of the economy, characterised by innovation turbulence and cumulativeness, are best performers though not in general. We argue that a quantitative analysis as ours is vital to both avoid idiosyncratic generalisations among scholars as well as policy makers, and to give rigid and more detailed implications for policy regarding firm organisation, both at present and in a dynamic setting.Organisation of the firm, performance, learning, innovation.

Decentralised vs partially centralised self-organisation model for mobile robots in large structure assembly

Currently, manufacturing companies are heavily investing into the automation of manufacturing processes. The push to improve productivity and efficiency is increasing the demand for more flexible and adaptable solutions than the currently common dedicated automation systems. In this paper, the planning problem for mobile robots in large structure assembly was addressed. Despite near-optimal results, the previously developed hybrid agent behaviour model was found to lack responsiveness and scalability. For that reason, an alternative, fully decentralised agent behaviour model was developed and compared to the hybrid one. Through simulated experiments, it was found that the decentralised agent behaviour model achieved much higher responsiveness; however, it required additional spare capacity to compensate for its decision-making imperfections

Work Organisation and Innovation

[Excerpt] Innovations in work organisation have the potential to optimise production processes in companies and improve employees’ overall experience of work. This report explores the links between innovations in work organisation – under the broader label of high performance work practices (HPWPs) – and the potential benefits for both employees and organisations. It draws on empirical evidence from case studies carried out in 13 Member States of the European Union where workplace innovations have resulted in positive outcomes

Self-organisation of mobile robots in large structure assembly using multi-agent systems

Competition between manufacturers in large structure assembly (LSA) is driven by the need to improve the adaptability and versatility of their manufacturing systems. The lack of these qualities in the currently used systems is caused by the dedicated nature of their fixtures and jigs. This has led to their underutilisation and costly changeover procedures. In addition to that, modern automation systems tend to be dedicated to very specific tasks. This means that such systems are highly specialised and can reach obsolescence once there is a substantial change in production requirements. In this doctoral thesis, a dynamic system consisting of mobile robots is proposed to overcome those limitations. As a first knowledge contribution in this doctoral thesis, it is investigated under which conditions using mobile robots instead of the traditional, fixed automation systems in LSA can be advantageous. In this context, dynamic systems are expected to be more versatile and adaptive than fixed systems. Unlike traditional, dedicated automation systems, they are not constrained to gantry rails or fixed to the floor. This results in an expanded working envelope and consequently the ability to reach more workstations. Furthermore, if a product is large enough, the manufacturer can choose how many mobile robots to deploy around it. Accordingly, it was shown that the ability to balance work rates on products and consequently meet their due times is improved. For the second knowledge contribution, two fundamentally different decision-making models for controlling mobile agents in the complex scheduling problem are investigated. This is done to investigate ways of taking full advantage from the potential benefits of applying mobile robots. It is found that existing models from related academic literature are not suited for the given problem. Therefore, two new models had to be proposed for this purpose. It was plausible to use an agent-based approach for self-organisation. This is because similarly to agents, mobile robots can perform independently of one-another; and have limited perception and communication abilities. Finally, through a comparison study, scenarios are identified where either model is better to use. In agreement with much of the established literature in the field, the models are shown to exhibit the common advantages and disadvantages of their respective architecture types. Considering that the enabling technologies are nearing sufficient maturity for deploying mobile robots in LSA, it is concluded that this approach can have several advantages. Firstly, the granularity and freedom of movement enables much more control over product completion times. Secondly, the increased working envelope enables higher utilisation of manufacturing resources. In the context of LSA, this is a considerable challenge because products take a very long time to get loaded and unloaded from workstations. However, if the product flow is steady, there are rare disruptions and rare production changes, fixed automation systems have an advantage due to requiring much less time (if any) for moving and localising. Therefore, mobile systems become more preferred to fixed systems in environments where there is an increasing frequency of disruptions and changes in production requirements. The validation of agent-based self-organisation models for mobile robots in LSA confirms the expectations based on existing literature. Also, it reveals that with relatively low amounts of spare capacity (5%) in the manufacturing systems, there is little need for sophisticated models. The value of optimised models becomes apparent when spare capacity approaches 0% (or even negative values) and there is less room for inefficiencies in scheduling