Operations strategy processes: how significant are they?

Ongoing challenges associated with the implementation of formally developed strategies call for studying the functional level strategy processes from fresh perspectives. This paper presents evidence drawn from the Canadian oil and gas industry towards establishing the statistical significance of alternative operations strategy processes and organisational contextual factors. The analysis discerned four strategy process configurations representing singular and multiple combinations of three strategy process modes identified in previous qualitative studies. The findings will help advance the understanding of operations strategy processes and may contribute to theory building, as the evidence was drawn from a relatively large sample of data representing an industry sector that has not been previously reported

A simulation model to access the impact of underground coal mine logistics strain on an operation

A novel approach has been developed to strategically identify logistical bottlenecks and the impacts that mine planning parameters might have on these at any point in time throughout life of a mine plan. An XPAC-based model is employed at a macroscopic level to understand trends and shifts in logistical strain for a timeframe up to the entire life of mine. However, on a day-to-day basis the XPAC-based model cannot, at a very detailed level, provide information to analyse if logistical strain can be alleviated through finer adjustments. The finer adjustments that can be identified and rectified, can be determined using a discrete simulation FlexSim model. The paper presents details of the FlexSim discrete simulation model and its applications

An approach to solve underground coal mine logistics strain

There is currently no mechanism for mine management and strategic planners to identify potential future logistical supply chain bottlenecks within a mine plan and address them proactively. By identifying any logistics constraints as early as possible, the best opportunity to rectify the problem at the least expense is realised. The paper discusses a novel approach which has been developed to strategically identify logistics bottlenecks and the impacts that mine planning parameters might have on these at any point in time throughout a life of mine plan. The developed system was applied to a real-world Australian mine with actual logistics tracking data input for both calibration and prediction testing. It confirmed that the system was indeed “bolt on” and could predict the number of delivery machines operating at any point in time within the mine’s life

Simulation-based evaluation of an integrated planning and scheduling algorithm for maintenance projects

The field of maintenance project planning and scheduling is attracting increasing attention due to ever growing competition among manufacturing organisations. There is a lack of studies that has tackled all the aspects of maintenance project implementation such as costs, resources, down times, uncertainties, operational constraints, among others. Therefore, an approach which uses a unitary structuring method and discrete event simulation to integrate relevant data about the maintenance projects is proposed. The results of the evaluation, on a case from paper-pulp industry, have shown that the proposed approach is able to overcome most of the issues of maintenance planning and scheduling

A novel model to measure supplier performance in the supplier selection process

Supplier evaluation has become a significant topic over the past decades, as companies have started to become more outsourced oriented. However, previous research on this topic has not paid adequate attention to the limitations associated with availability of accurate and reliable data relating to the performance of potential suppliers. In an attempt to address this issue, this paper proposes a novel supplier evaluation model that can handle imprecise quantitative and qualitative data. Additionally, Decision Maker’s opinions regarding both qualitative and quantitative criteria are incorporated into this model so that a more comprehensive and realistic assessment of supplier performance can be achieved. The model combines five separate methods that have specific capabilities to handle multiple limitations in the existing methods: Fuzzy Analytical Hierarchy Process and Fuzzy TOPSIS method are used to analyse qualitative criteria/data; Analytical Hierarchy Process and Axiomatic Design are used to analyse quantitative criteria/data, with a particular focus on handling variability in performance data; and Data Envelopment Analysis is used to integrate the results of the two approaches above so as to comparative assessment of supplier performance. This model is verified using a numerical example

Development and Implementation of a Flipped-Classroom Delivery in Engineering Computing and Analysis for First Year Engineering Students

University of Wollongong recently undertook a major restructure of its academic and professional units, after the appointment of a new Vice Chancellor in 2012. As a result, the previous 11 faculties have been merged and rationalised into five new faculties. The Faculty of Engineering and the Faculty of Informatics merged to become the Faculty of Engineering and Information Sciences (EIS), consisting of six schools representing a total of 13 disciplines. Following the restructuring, EIS made the decision to develop a new common first year curriculum for all engineering undergraduate programs, spanning nine disciplines, they being; civil, mining, environmental, electrical, computer, telecommunications, mechanical, materials and mechatronic engineering. The process of developing the new first year subjects was undertaken in 2014 by a Task and Finish (T&F) group aiming for full implementation at the commencement of 2015. Through consultation with key stakeholders from each discipline area, as well as teaching teams from existing first year programs, five new engineering subjects were to be created, to coexist with the unaltered physics and mathematics subjects. The T&F group met regularly over the course of 2014, where they initially tasked with identifying the key mastery skills that all engineering students should have developed by the end of their first year of full time study. These skills were then grouped into themes, leading to the creation of the five new subjects. The final role of the T&F group was to report back to the Heads of School who would then assign key personnel to develop the curriculum content for each new subject. This paper will focus on the development of one of those newly created subjects, ENGG105 Engineering Computing and Analysis, which adopted the flipped-classroom approach to deliver the subject content

Movements of personnel and materials in Australian underground coal mines

With the desire to optimise the development of roadways in underground coal mines as operations expand, it logically followed that any increase in the development rate will require more efficient logistics management, especially the timely supply of roof support materials (bolts, chemicals and mesh) to each active face area. Logistics management in general was not considered as a key issue when initial or long-term planning of an underground coal mine is undertaken. It is traditionally assumed that whatever production targets are set that logistics can keep up or that it is retrospectively managed after an identifiable bottleneck

A fuzzy rough sets-based multi-agent analytics framework for dynamic supply chain configuration

Considering the need for more effective decision support in the context of distributed manufacturing, this paper develops an advanced analytics framework for configuring supply chain networks. The proposed framework utilizes a distributed multi-agent system architecture to deploy fuzzy rough sets-based algorithms for knowledge elicitation and representation. A set of historical sales data, including network node-related information, is used together with the relevant details of product families to predict supply chain configurations capable of fulfilling desired customer orders. Multiple agents such as data retrieval agent, knowledge acquisition agent, knowledge representation agent, configuration predictor agent, evaluator agent and dispatching agent are used to help execute a broad spectrum of supply chain configuration decisions. The proposed framework considers multiple product variants and sourcing options at each network node, as well as multiple performance objectives. It also captures decisions that span the entire supply chain simultaneously and, by implication, represents multiple network links. Using an industry test case, the paper demonstrates the effectiveness of the proposed framework in terms of fulfilling customer orders with lower production and emissions costs, compared to the results generated using existing tools