Improving production management

Production (Economic theory) ; Manufactures ; Inventories

Drivers for innovation in production management

The aim of this paper is to examine the effectiveness of innovative programmes in construction. The term 'best practice' is commonly used in industry in to describe and disseminate cases where high levels of performance have been achieved. Several terminologies are used to describe this phenomenon, the best practice being the most widely used term. Best practices usually stimulate a desire in other companies to achieve similar levels of performance or gains that have been obtained by those best practice companies. This desire for better performance commonly triggers an innovation adoption programme by other companies. However, there are two kinds of drivers to innovation adoption: one is usually started by normative pressures applied by customers, suppliers, regulators or senior management. This type of adoption is called push-driven. On the other hand, there is a pull-driven innovation adoption decision, which is triggered strictly by an internal need associated with a performance gap. Based on this background this paper explores the generation, development and adoption of innovative programmes by industry

PRODUCTION MANAGEMENT AND MARKET CONSTRAINTS

The present paper deals with optimization of production depending on input resources under market constraints. Production efficiency refers to increasing the output with a minimum input. The objectives of management are: reducing costs of outputs simultaneously with reducing prices of market goods. This is a big challenge for each firm, in order to ensure quality with reducing costs per unit when the market “imposes” the price. Reducing the cost per unit depends on the optimal combination of resources: labour and capital. The paper presents a relation between market price evolution as a constraint and mixing of resources as a management priority.production, management, efficiency, variable inputs, costs, outputs, market price, optimal combination, resources.

ANALYZING THE EFFECT OF CHANGING FEED-BEEF PRICE RELATIONSHIPS ON BEEF PRODUCTION MANAGEMENT STRATEGIES IN HAWAII: A DYNAMIC PROGRAMMING APPROACH

A dynamic programming approach was used to evaluate the effect of changing the feed input to product price relationship on the beef production management decision process. The dynamic programming model consists of nine submodels describing and analyzing the time-dependent beef production management decision process. The model incorporates biological functions and economic principles. Results clearly showed the importance of the feed-beef price relationships in management decision making. Optimal beef production management strategies were generally consistent with beef production management practices followed in Hawaii under those feed-beef price relationships.Livestock Production/Industries,

The New Economics of Livestock Production Management

The importance of heterogeneity of animal attributes in livestock production is assessed. Preliminary results indicate that variance and skew measures of attributes may be becoming more important over time.livestock economics, herd management, livestock marketing, Livestock Production/Industries, Marketing,

Pilot studies in organic broiler production – management and cross-breeds

Two pilot studies were conducted in 1999 and 2000, dealing with management strategies (study A) and alternative cross breeds (study B) in organic broiler production. Study A: Pastured broilers 280 male chickens were raised in four groups in movable pens on pasture. The pens (3.30 (width) x 4.00 (length) x 0.60 (hight) m) were moved to fresh ground daily. Three groups were conventional broiler-strain chickens (“Ross208”) with 50, 70 and 90 birds per group, and one group was a Swedish heavy layer cross breed (“Derco”) with 70 birds. The birds had ad libitum (free) access to a proprietary concentrate (11.8 MJ ME/kg, 19 % crude protein) all the time and were offered whole wheat, free choice, from day 42 onwards. The production performance of the Ross chickens showed that high performance is possible in the movable pen system. With the feed given, the modern hybrid used in the experiment grew too fast to be recommended for a 12 weeks growth period: The birds became rather large and showed typical health problems related with rapid growth. Between 50 and 90 birds per pen (corresponding max. 16 to 26 kg liveweight per squaremetre), stocking rate did not seem to influence the birds'performance. The production performance of the Derco chickens did not reach the standards for slow growing table birds, as they are set by French hybrids today. The actual moving of the pens requires simple but adjusted mechanical aid and routine to keep the physical work input acceptable. Direct measurement of the broilers’ effect on the sward would require relatively more detailed investigation. Monitoring of long-term effects would require long term experiments. Study B: Screening crosses Derco hens were crossed with Faverolle, Orpington, Modern Game and Indian Game cocks, and four batches with a total of ca. 130 birds were raised to ages between 12 and 15 weeks. At slaughter day, live and carcass weight were recorded and for three batches, the carcasses were judged, giving scores for the ocular impression of the quantity of meat on breast and legs and feather residues after plucking. It is concluded that crosses between Derco hens and cocks from breeds like Modern Game, Faverolle and Orpington does not produce considerably more meat than pure Derco chickens. Crosses with Indian Game cocks gave the impression of higher meat yields and a preferable configuration of muscles, but the fertilization rate between Indian Game cocks and Derco hens was relatively low

Addressing information flow in lean production management and control in construction

Traditionally, production control on construction sites has been a challenging area, where the ad-hoc production control methods foster uncertainty - one of the biggest enemies of efficiency and smooth production flow. Lean construction methods such as the Last Planner System have partially tackled this problem by addressing the flow aspect through means such as constraints analysis and commitment planning. However, such systems have relatively long planning cycles to respond to the dynamic production requirements of construction, where almost daily if not hourly control is needed. New solutions have been designed by researchers to improve this aspect such as VisiLean, but again these types of software systems require the proximity and availability of computer devices to workers. Given this observation, there is a need for a communication system between the field and site office that is highly interoperable and provides real-time task status information. A High-level communication framework (using VisiLean) is presented in this paper, which aims to overcome the problems of system integration and improve the flow of information within the production system. The framework provides, among other things, generic and standardized interfaces to simplify the “push” and “pull” of the right (production) information, whenever needed, wherever needed, by whoever needs it. Overall, it is anticipated that the reliability of the production control will be improve