Collector Managed Inventory, A Proactive Planning Approach to the Collection of Liquids coming from End-of-life Vehicles

In this article we introduce Collector Managed Inventory (CMI) as the reverse logistics counter part of Vendor Managed Inventory (VMI).The collection company takes responsibility for the inventories of cores or materials to be recycled.Experience in forward supply chain management has shown the potential of VMI by bringing the coordination of transportation and inventory decisions to the same supply chain entity.Using information technology called telemetry, we are able to monitor inventory levels at distance.We introduce a proactive planning methodology based on two types of collection orders: must- and can-orders.Every collection period all must-orders have to be collected, while canorders are only collected if they can be combined beneficially with the must-orders.The routing problem is solved by a combination of route generation and set partitioning.The system is illustrated in a real-life case study for Auto Recycling Nederland on the collection of liquids coming from end-oflife vehicles, such as coolant and oil.In several scenarios the old reactive approach is compared to the proactive approach resulting in cost savings up to about 19%.

Sales & operations planning in complex business-to-business planning environments

Abstract. Sales & operations planning (S&OP) is a tactical planning process to balance company’s demand and supply. Increasing demand volatility has made S&OP very topical. Business-to-business (B2B) manufacturing with high product variation sets high requirements for S&OP processes and tools. Digitalization has created lots of hype around integrated business planning, which might have raised unjustified benefit expectations for S&OP deployment. In order to deploy S&OP process, it is important to recognize its core purpose and its plausible benefits, to avoid deployment failures caused by the lack of knowledge. This thesis aims to provide S&OP knowledge for complex business to business manufacturing. The qualitative research conducts literature review, and investigates tactical planning processes of three case companies, and current S&OP tool offering of five vendors through semi-structured interviews. From the aim of this thesis, three research questions were conducted: RQ1: What are the desired outcomes of S&OP? RQ2: What aspects of business are expected to be improved by S&OP process and tool deployment according to case companies? RQ3: How do the identified S&OP process models and tools compare with the case companies’ expectations? Following answers to research questions were found: RQ1:S&OP can be defined as a systematic tactical planning process to enhance collaborative target setting, vertical and horizontal integration, visibility creation, and performance management. By combining the different outcomes in different situations, the ultimate desired outcome seems to be the ability to consider all necessary factors in tactical planning. Answer to this research question is derived from the literature review, and it reflects to other research questions. RQ2: Visibility creation, demand forecasting, supply planning, financial planning, scenario planning, internal collaboration, external collaboration, product portfolio management and after sales services were high level requirements derived from the case companies’ specific expectations in the empirical study. RQ3: Identified S&OP process and tools support the major parts of case company expectations, although when having a closer look of some of the case companies’ specific external collaboration, and supply planning aspects, case companies have some unplausible expectations for S&OP tools. Managerial implications: In the early phases of S&OP deployment, companies should mainly focus on designing the process, rather than tool consideration. Only after the suitable process is established, companies should utilize advanced planning tools. The tactical planning tool vendors might emphasize high customizability or high optimization capabilities. These aspects might be trade-offs which companies should be aware. Platform flexibility allows non-standard process designs, and industry specific S&OP practices enables optimization to maximize results by S&OP specific tools. Scientific implications: This study investigates companies operating in B2B business that are utilizing make-to-order production strategy’s variants. Study provides insights of companies planning environments requirements and their desired outcomes of S&OP deployments. Study pointed out the conflicts between S&OP methods and quick response make-to-order strategies in high product variety environments, which indicates that besides evaluating S&OP’s design for planning environments at deployment, evaluation of S&OP methods’ suitability to company specific strategies should be highly considered.Sales & operations planning vaativissa yritykseltä-yritykselle-markkinan valmistusympäristöissä. Tiivistelmä. Sales & operations planning (S&OP) on taktisen suunnittelun prosessi yrityksen kysynnän ja tarjonnan tasapainottamiseksi. Kasvanut kysynnän vaihtelu on tehnyt S&OP:sta erittäin ajankohtaisen. Vaatimukset S&OP prosesseille ja työkaluille ovat korkeat, kun yritys valmistaa useita erilaisia tuotteita yritysmyyntiin. Digitalisaatio on kasvattanut kiinnostusta integroitua liiketoimintasuunnittelua kohtaan, minkä vuoksi S&OP:ta kohtaan on voinut syntyä katteettomia hyötyodotuksia. S&OP-prosessin käyttöönotossa on tärkeää tunnistaa sen päätarkoitus ja mahdolliset hyödyt, jottei implementointi epäonnistuisi tiedonpuutteen vuoksi. Tämän työn tarkoitus on tuoda tietoa S&OP:sta vaativissa yritykseltä-yritykselle-markkinan valmistusympäristöissä. Tässä kvalitatiivisessa tutkimuksessa koostetaan kirjallisuuskatsaus, tutkitaan kolmen case-yrityksen taktista suunnittelutoimintaa, sekä tutkitaan nykyistä S&OP-työkalutarjoamaa viiden järjestelmätoimittajan avulla. Case-yritykset ja järjestelmätoimittajat haastatellaan puolistrukturoiduilla haastatteluilla. Tutkimuksen tueksi on koostettu kolme tutkimuskysymystä: TK1: Mitä ovat S&OP-prosessin odotetut hyödyt? TK2: Mitä osa-alueita case-yritykset odottavat S&OP-prosessin ja työkalujen parantavan? TK3: Kuinka tunnistetut S&OP-mallit ja työkalut tukevat case-yritysten parannusodotuksia? Tutkimuskysymyksiin löydettiin seuraavat vastaukset: TK1: S&OP voidaan määritellä systemaattiseksi taktisen suunnittelun prosessiksi, joka vahvistaa yhteistä tavoitteiden asettamista, vertikaalista ja horisontaalista integraatiota, näkyvyyden luomista ja suorituskyvynjohtamista. Yhdistämällä erilaisia mahdollisia hyötyjä erilaisissa tilanteissa, suurin tavoiteltava hyöty olisi kyky ottaa huomioon kaikki tärkeimmät lopputulokseen vaikuttavat osatekijät taktisessa suunnittelussa. TK2: Näkyvyyden luominen, kysynnän ennustaminen, tuotannon- ja hankinnansuunnittelu, finanssisuunnittelu, skenaariosuunnittelu, sisäinen yhteistyö, ulkoinen yhteistyö, tuoteportfolion hallinta ja jälkimarkkinointi — palvelut ovat tunnistettuja ylätason osa-alueita, joita yritykset odottavat S&OP-prosessin ja työkalujen parantavan. TK3: S&OP prosessit ja työkalut tukevat pääosin yritysten odotuksia, mutta yrityksillä on eräitä spesifisiä ulkoisen yhteistyön ja toimitusketjun suunnittelutoiminnan odotuksia, joita ne eivät tue. Käytännön implikaatiot: S&OP-prosessien käyttöönottovaiheessa yritysten kannattaa ennemmin keskittyä prosessin suunnittelun, kuin työkalujen hankkimiseen. Vasta kun yrityksellä on vakiintunut S&OP-prosessi, yrityksen kannattaa pohtia kehittyneempien suunnittelujärjestelmien hankkimista. Suunnittelutyökalujen järjestelmäntoimittajat saattavat korostaa tuotteidensa räätälöityvyyttä tai optimointikyvykkyyttä. Välttämättä näiden molempien ominaisuuksien tuomia hyötyjä ei voida saavuttaa samassa järjestelmässä. Järjestelmän joustavuus sallii joustavamman rakenteen taktiseen suunnitteluprosessiin, kun taas optimointikyvykkäät järjestelmät nojautuvat toimialan suositeltuihin S&OP-prosessimalleihin. Tieteelliset implikaatiot: Tutkimus esittelee kompleksisissa ympäristöissä toimivien yritysten tarpeita S&OP-prosessille. Tutkimuksessa todettiin ristiriita nopean asiakasvasteen strategian, ja S&OP-metodien välillä, kun yrityksen tuotetarjoama on erittäin suuri, ja kaikki valmistettavat tuotteet ovat asiakasspesifisiä. Tämä viittaisi siihen, että toimivaan S&OP-prosessin rakenteeseen ei vaikuta voimakkaasti vain suunnitteluympäristö, vaan myös yrityksen strategia

Maintenance Knowledge Management with Fusion of CMMS and CM

Abstract- Maintenance can be considered as an information, knowledge processing and management system. The management of knowledge resources in maintenance is a relatively new issue compared to Computerized Maintenance Management Systems (CMMS) and Condition Monitoring (CM) approaches and systems. Information Communication technologies (ICT) systems including CMMS, CM and enterprise administrative systems amongst others are effective in supplying data and in some cases information. In order to be effective the availability of high-quality knowledge, skills and expertise are needed for effective analysis and decision-making based on the supplied information and data. Information and data are not by themselves enough, knowledge, experience and skills are the key factors when maximizing the usability of the collected data and information. Thus, effective knowledge management (KM) is growing in importance, especially in advanced processes and management of advanced and expensive assets. Therefore efforts to successfully integrate maintenance knowledge management processes with accurate information from CMMSs and CM systems will be vital due to the increasing complexities of the overall systems. Low maintenance effectiveness costs money and resources since normal and stable production cannot be upheld and maintained over time, lowered maintenance effectiveness can have a substantial impact on the organizations ability to obtain stable flows of income and control costs in the overall process. Ineffective maintenance is often dependent on faulty decisions, mistakes due to lack of experience and lack of functional systems for effective information exchange [10]. Thus, access to knowledge, experience and skills resources in combination with functional collaboration structures can be regarded as vital components for a high maintenance effectiveness solution. Maintenance effectiveness depends in part on the quality, timeliness, accuracy and completeness of information related to machine degradation state, based on which decisions are made. Maintenance effectiveness, to a large extent, also depends on the quality of the knowledge of the managers and maintenance operators and the effectiveness of the internal & external collaborative environments. With emergence of intelligent sensors to measure and monitor the health state of the component and gradual implementation of ICT) in organizations, the conceptualization and implementation of E-Maintenance is turning into a reality. Unfortunately, even though knowledge management aspects are important in maintenance, the integration of KM aspects has still to find its place in E-Maintenance and in the overall information flows of larger-scale maintenance solutions. Nowadays, two main systems are implemented in most maintenance departments: Firstly, Computer Maintenance Management Systems (CMMS), the core of traditional maintenance record-keeping practices that often facilitate the usage of textual descriptions of faults and actions performed on an asset. Secondly, condition monitoring systems (CMS). Recently developed (CMS) are capable of directly monitoring asset components parameters; however, attempts to link observed CMMS events to CM sensor measurements have been limited in their approach and scalability. In this article we present one approach for addressing this challenge. We argue that understanding the requirements and constraints in conjunction - from maintenance, knowledge management and ICT perspectives - is necessary. We identify the issues that need be addressed for achieving successful integration of such disparate data types and processes (also integrating knowledge management into the “data types” and processes)