An Integrated Framework to Assess ‘Leanness’ Performance in Distribution Centres

The theory behind lean philosophy is to create more value with less. Effective lean management enables organisations to exceed customer expectations while reducing costs. Despite the fact that numerous practices and approaches are used in the process of implementing lean philosophy and reducing waste within supply chain systems, little effort has been directed into assessing the leanness level of distribution and its impact on overall performance. Given the vital role of distribution units within supply chains, this research aims to develop a comprehensive lean assessment framework that integrates a selected set of statistical, analytical, and mathematical techniques in order to assess the ‘leanness’ level in the distribution business. Due to the limited number of published articles in the area of lean distribution, there are no clear definitions of the underlying factors and practices. Therefore, the primary phase of the proposed framework addresses the identification of lean distribution dimensional structure and practices. The other two phases of the framework discuss the development of a structured model for lean distribution and address the process to find a quantitative lean index for benchmarking lean implementation in distribution centres. Integrating the three phases provides the decision makers with an indicator of performance, subject to applying various lean practices. Incorporating the findings of a survey that sent to 700 distribution businesses in Ireland along with value stream mapping, modelling, simulation, and data envelopment analysis, has given the framework strength in the assessment of leanness. Research outcomes show that lean distribution consists of five key dimensions; workforce management, item replenishment, customers, transportation, and process quality. Lean practices associated with these dimensions are mainly focused on enhancing the communication channels with customers, simplifying the distribution networks structure, people participating in problem solving and a continuous improvement process, and increasing the reliability and efficiency of the distribution operations. The final output of the framework is two key leanness indices; one is set to measure the tactical leanness level, while the second index represents the leanness at the operational level. Both indices can effectively be used in evaluating the lean implementation process and conducting a benchmarking process based on the leanness level

Extending evolutionary multi-objective optimization of business process designs

Διπλωματική εργασία--Πανεπιστήμιο Μακεδονίας, Θεσσαλονίκη, 2019.Optimizing a problem to produce a set of improved solutions is not a new concept. Many scientific areas have been benefited by the application of optimizations techniques and so have business processes. The competitive business environments have led organizations into examining and re-designing their core business processes, aiming for improving their performance and market responsiveness. The optimization and the continuous improvement of business processes within a company, can give the advantage to the company to be more competitive by reducing its costs, improving the delivery quality and efficiency, and enabling adaptation to changing environments. This thesis focuses on business process multi-objective optimization with evolutionary algorithms. There have already been optimization approaches with evolutionary algorithms for business process optimization problems that demonstrated rather satisfactory results. This thesis aims to improve and extent those approaches by providing a revised and refined version of an existing business process optimization framework by Vergidis (2008), that incorporates a pre-processing technique for enhancing the efficiency of the employed Evolutionary Multi-objective Optimization Algorithms (EMOAs), a new process composition algorithm that make the new framework capable of fulfilling more real-life constraints and handling more complex problems and many other features such as ease of use, more efficient I/O, better interactivity and easy maintenance. The proposed pre-processing technique was tested as a standalone procedure and demonstrated satisfactory results, managing to reduce drastically the problem dataset of all scenarios examined. The results of the whole optimization framework for the real-life scenarios examined, were very promising and indicated that the framework work as expected. It can automate the process composition and identify alternative business process designs with optimized attribute values

Kurumsal bir imalat bilişim modeli önerisi

06.03.2018 tarihli ve 30352 sayılı Resmi Gazetede yayımlanan “Yükseköğretim Kanunu İle Bazı Kanun Ve Kanun Hükmünde Kararnamelerde Değişiklik Yapılması Hakkında Kanun” ile 18.06.2018 tarihli “Lisansüstü Tezlerin Elektronik Ortamda Toplanması, Düzenlenmesi ve Erişime Açılmasına İlişkin Yönerge” gereğince tam metin erişime açılmıştır.Bilişim teknolojileri ve imalat alanındaki çalışmalar incelendiğinde; imalat işletmelerinin bilişim teknolojilerinden etkin bir biçimde faydalanmaları ve kendi işletmelerine ait sağlam bir bilişim altyapısı ve modeli oluşturmaları gerekliliği dikkat çekmektedir.Yapılmış olan çalışmalar ışığında bu tez çalışmasında imalat işletmelerine yönelik olarak bütünleşik bir imalat bilişim sistemi kurmak amacıyla ?Kurumsal İmalat Bilişim Modeli? önerisinde bulunulmuştur. Bu model ile imalat işletmesi kurumsal, stratejik, fonksiyonel, teknik, değerlendirme ve uygulama alanlarında ele alınarak bütünleşik bir bilişim modeli geliştirilmiştir.Literatür çalışmalarında imalat işletmesini bir bütün olarak ele alıp, teknik altyapısı üzerinde bilişim sistemi planından yatırım değerlendirme sürecine kadar olan tüm aşamalara yer veren bir modelin eksikliğinin görülmesi üzerine bu çalışma gerçekleştirilmiştir.Bütünleşik olarak tasarlanmış olan bu model önerisi ile imalat yapan işletmelere kendi sistemleri ile uyumlu ve etkin bir bilişim sistemi altyapısı kurmaları için yol gösterilmesi amaçlanmıştır. Ayrıca modelin gerçek bir sistemle örtüşmesinin ve benzerliğinin analiz edilmesi için iki farklı işletmede uygulama çalışması gerçekleştirilmiştir.When the literature on information technologies in manufacturing systems is studied, it is clear that manufacturing enterprises have to use information technologies effectively and these enterprises have to build a robust information infrastructure and information model for their organization.For this reason in this study an information model called ?Enterprise Manufacturing Information Model: EMIM? is proposed and developed to integrate manufacturing information system for the manufacturing firms. The manufacturing enterprise is analyzed on firm?s organizational, strategic, functional, technical, appraisal and integration-implementation areas by this model.There are a lot of information models for the manufacturing enterprises. These models focus on firms from local or processes point of view. They do not focus on the technical infrastructure in detail. This indicates the need for a more detailed analysis on the technical structure of firms from making the decision for the investment on information system stage to appraising the investment stage. That?s why, this study is conducted to cover this gap.With all of the stages of this integrated model, assisting an effective and compatible information infrastructure and guiding how to build an effective and robust information system is aimed. Also, similarity and overlapping analyses of the model and real enterprises are implemented in two different enterprises

A manufacturing model to support data-driven applications for design and manufacture

This thesis is primarily concerned with conceptual work on the Manufacturing Model. The Manufacturing Model is an information model which describes the manufacturing capability of an enterprise. To achieve general applicability, the model consists of the entities that are relevant and important for any type of manufacturing firm, namely: manufacturing resources (e.g. machines, tools, fixtures, machining cells, operators, etc.), manufacturing processes (e.g. injection moulding, machining processes, etc.) and manufacturing strategies (e.g. how these resources and processes are used and organized). The Manufacturing Model is a four level model based on a de—facto standard (i.e. Factory, Shop, Cell, Station) which represents the functionality of the manufacturing facility of any firm. In the course of the research, the concept of data—driven applications has emerged in response to the need of integrated and flexible computer environments for the support of design and manufacturing activities. These data—driven applications require the use of different information models to capture and represent the company's information and knowledge. One of these information models is the Manufacturing Model. The value of this research work is highlighted by the use of two case studies, one related with the representation of a single machining station, and the other, the representation of a multi-cellular manufacturing facility of a high performance company

Semi-automatic conceptual data modeling using entity and relationship instance repositories

Conceptual modeling is the foundation of analysis and design methodologies for the development of information systems. It is challenging because it requires a clear understanding of an application domain and an ability to translate the requirement specifications into a data model. However, novice designers frequently lack experience and have incomplete knowledge about the application being designed. We propose new types of reusable artifacts called Entity Instance Repository (EIR) and Relationship Instance Repository (RIR), which contain ER (Entity-Relationship) modeling patterns from prior designs and serve as knowledge-based repositories for conceptual modeling. We also select six data modeling rules to check whether they are comprehensive enough in creating quality conceptual models. This research aims to develop effective knowledge-based systems (KBSs) with EIR and RIR. Our proposed artifacts are likely to be useful for conceptual designs in the following aspects: (1) they contain knowledge about a domain; (2) automatic generation of EIR and RIR overcomes a major problem ofinefficient manual approaches that depend on experienced modeling designers and domain experts; and (3) they are domain-specific and therefore easier to understand and reuse. Two KBSs were developed in this study: Heuristic-Based Technique (HBT) and Entity Instance Pattern WordNet (EIPW). The goals of this study are (1) to find effective approaches that can improve the novice designers’ performance in developing conceptual models by integrating pattern-based technique and various modeling techniques, (2) to evaluate whether those selected six modeling rules are effective in HBT, and (3) to validate whether the proposed KBSs are effective in creating quality conceptual models. To assess the potential of the KBSs to benefit practice, empirical testing was conductedon tasks of different sizes. The empirical results indicate that novice designers’ overall performance increased by 30.9~46.0 % when using EIPW, and increased by 33.5~34.9% when using HBT, compared with the cases of no tools.Ph.D., Information Studies -- Drexel University, 201