Improving reuse of semiconductor equipment through benchmarking, standardization, and automation

Thesis (M.B.A.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Sloan School of Management; and, (S.M.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Civil and Environmental Engineering; in conjunction with the Leaders for Manufacturing Program at MIT, 2006.Includes bibliographical references (p. 91-92).The 6D program at Intel® Corporation was set up to improve operations around capital equipment reuse, primarily in their semiconductor manufacturing facilities. The company was faced with a number of challenges, including differing work flows across multiple locations, lack of centralized work flow management, discontinuous inventory information, and other opportunities for cost reduction. The internship was set up to benchmark and explore potential for integration of best known methods, accumulated both inside and outside the company. Based on interviews, research and quantitative analysis, opportunities were identified for reuse of equipment shipping crates, improvement in warehouse inventory management, and changes in labor models to facilitate better knowledge capture and dissemination. As a result of this study Intel® Corporation may realize significant improvement in the areas mentioned in terms of cost reduction, process improvement and knowledge management. By using a flexible approach to problem identification and generating organizational interest in the improvements, recommendations were well received and should lead to eventual adoption.by Jacob Silber.S.M.M.B.A

The Research and Implementation of Maintenance Excellence on Clean Utility Systems in the Pharmaceutical Indusry

Maintenance Excellence is the implementation of best maintenance practices within industry; it is the balance of performance, risk, and cost to achieve an optimal solution. This thesis has been structured around the 5 main areas of maintenance excellence; it has documented all the important functions of the maintenance department that contributes towards maintenance excellence. Demonstrating maintenance excellence is a big achievement however demonstrating it on pharmaceutical clean utility systems with strict regulatory controls is a major challenge. Pharmaceutical production is one of the most heavily regulated industries. With such an emphasis on product quality in the pharmaceutical industry, and with such economical and health consequences of machine failure, the maintenance team plays a critical role in the success of the product. It is the maintenance department‟s responsibility to ensure the equipment is kept to a maximum operating condition. It must predict and prevent failures and repair any problems, which may already have led to a failure, while adhering to the rules and procedures set out by their respective regulatory bodies This thesis has explored the regulatory aspects of the business in-dept and presented a number of practical approaches to building in a world-class maintenance program whilst still ensuring the utmost of safety and quality to the patient

Organizing an Online Community for Open Strategizing in a Large Organization

The creation of an online strategy community is increasingly attractive for companies as a mean to make the strategy process more inclusive and open. However, the fundamental difference between the flexible approach of open strategizing afforded by an online community and more controlled approaches of the traditional strategy formulation and implementation posits fundamental challenges for co-existence of these two processes. I argue that for these two processes to effectively co-exist, complex bridging process needs to take place in organizations. Furthermore, effective co-existence implies that open strategizing within an online community influences the formal strategy-making process. This thesis explores an online community as a distinct form of open strategizing in a large organization, to address two interdependent research questions related to organizing an online community for strategic influence: (1) ‘How do managers bridge open strategizing within an online community and formal strategy-making, characterized by closed and hierarchical decision-making?’ and (2) ‘How do managers organize an online strategy community to influence strategic decision-making in large organizations?’. This in-depth inductive single case study investigates strategy professionals at a large telecommunications firm Telco that instigated a unique online strategy platform to increase the openness of participation and to influence the formal strategy process. This empirical study utilizes multiple sources of data including interviews, online community logs, observations, and document analysis, the findings of which are summarized in two theoretical models. I identify three mechanisms that enable bridging between different strategizing processes, namely: 1) bidirectional framing with strategic concepts; 2) bidirectional structuring of communication; 3) building legitimacy of openness. The simultaneous enactment of three bridging mechanisms provides the greater influence of the formal decision-making process. Furthermore, I identify three main decision areas that managers have to consider carefully when organizing and online strategy community: 1) design of an online community structure; 2) cooperation of internal and external actors; 3) formulation of adequate strategic content. These decision areas are characterized by interdependencies and trigger contradictory demands that make open strategy processes a paramount organizational challenge

BPR initiatives: The impacts of IT and organisational customs and practices

This thesis was submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy and awarded by Brunel University, 28/02/2002.This research is designed to investigate the relationship between IT and Organisational customs and practices in Business Process Reengineering (BPR) projects based on a research framework, which consists of organisational culture, IT and the outcome of BPR initiatives together with the inextricable interdependence between them. The focus is on developing a process oriented, context-based description and explanation of the BPR phenomenon in Arab Gulf Cooperation Council (AGCC) countries. The study strives to describe and explain the process of adopting and implementing BPR initiatives in petrochemical and utilities industries in AGCC countries in terms of interaction of contextual conditions, actions and consequences. The research methodology of this thesis focuses on the pragmatics of conducting case studies as a rigorous and effective method of research. The study emphasises on conducting positivist inquiry of three case studies' data to deductively test the researcher's understanding on BPR and her assumptions of 'Blueprints' for successful BPR in AGCC countries. Two of the case studies organisations are sister companies operating in the oil and gas industry, whereas the third case study organisation is a utility company operating in the field of water and electricity generation and supply. This study resulted in a framework that could serve as a prescription to achieve a successful BPR initiative. It has identified a number of organisational elements that emphasised the necessity to pay attention to cultural and IT issues prior to undertaking BPR projects. These include the development of strategy and sound stimuli for the project, the availability of leadership, top management vision, availability of required skills and expertise and the maturity of the IT infrastructure. In addition, the study has empirically emphasised a number of BPR project implementation elements that should be in place to ensure successful implementation and management of the project including: the availability of an appropriately composed project team, continuous communication, users' involvement and usage of communication technologies

Implementing Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) Systems through Knowledge Transfer Partnerships: Two Case Studies

Information systems strategy is becoming an increasingly important component of overall business strategy in both large corporations and small to medium sized enterprises (SMEs). The need for readily available and consistent management information, drawn from integrated systems based on sound and upgradeable technologies, has led many senior company managers to review the business case for root and branch systems replacement. Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) software packages offer companies the opportunity to achieve these benefits, and also act as a catalyst for wide ranging process improvement across an organisation, as new software systems and associated procedures are introduced. The track record to date, however, has been mixed, with many ERP projects exceeding original cost and time estimates, with delayed or diluted benefits delivery. This is not altogether surprising when one considers the complexity of such projects – they introduce new software and new ways of working that require training in both the technology and related procedures, and this affects nearly all computer users across the company in different ways. As a result, considerable interest has focussed on the critical issues that need to be addressed to ensure success in ERP projects. This article examines two ERP projects that have taken place in recent years at Brecon Pharmaceuticals and at Dowty Propellers. Both projects can be viewed as successful, having completed within specified timescales and project budgets. The article examines the key dimensions of project delivery and then highlights some of the critical management issues that underpinned project success

ERP implementation methodologies and frameworks: a literature review

Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) implementation is a complex and vibrant process, one that involves a combination of technological and organizational interactions. Often an ERP implementation project is the single largest IT project that an organization has ever launched and requires a mutual fit of system and organization. Also the concept of an ERP implementation supporting business processes across many different departments is not a generic, rigid and uniform concept and depends on variety of factors. As a result, the issues addressing the ERP implementation process have been one of the major concerns in industry. Therefore ERP implementation receives attention from practitioners and scholars and both, business as well as academic literature is abundant and not always very conclusive or coherent. However, research on ERP systems so far has been mainly focused on diffusion, use and impact issues. Less attention has been given to the methods used during the configuration and the implementation of ERP systems, even though they are commonly used in practice, they still remain largely unexplored and undocumented in Information Systems research. So, the academic relevance of this research is the contribution to the existing body of scientific knowledge. An annotated brief literature review is done in order to evaluate the current state of the existing academic literature. The purpose is to present a systematic overview of relevant ERP implementation methodologies and frameworks as a desire for achieving a better taxonomy of ERP implementation methodologies. This paper is useful to researchers who are interested in ERP implementation methodologies and frameworks. Results will serve as an input for a classification of the existing ERP implementation methodologies and frameworks. Also, this paper aims also at the professional ERP community involved in the process of ERP implementation by promoting a better understanding of ERP implementation methodologies and frameworks, its variety and history

Semantic discovery and reuse of business process patterns

Patterns currently play an important role in modern information systems (IS) development and their use has mainly been restricted to the design and implementation phases of the development lifecycle. Given the increasing significance of business modelling in IS development, patterns have the potential of providing a viable solution for promoting reusability of recurrent generalized models in the very early stages of development. As a statement of research-in-progress this paper focuses on business process patterns and proposes an initial methodological framework for the discovery and reuse of business process patterns within the IS development lifecycle. The framework borrows ideas from the domain engineering literature and proposes the use of semantics to drive both the discovery of patterns as well as their reuse