Short-term manpower management in manufacturing systems: new requirements and DSS prototyping

The short-term planning and scheduling of discrete manufacturing systems has mostly focused in the past on the management of machines, implicitly considered as the critical resources of the workshops. Some of the present schedulers claim to also manage human resources, but perform most of the time a local allocation of operators to machines, these operators having regular working hours. However, it seems clear that the workforce has a specificity that should be better taken into account by short-term planning facilities. Moreover, the variability of the weekly working hours through the year will shortly become a rule and not anymore an exception. On the base of a questionnaire answered by 19 French companies of different sizes and industrial sectors, we have tried to identify more precisely some industrial requirements concerning the short-term management of human resources. The growing interest in annualised hours together with the lack of software tools that allow to implement it practically is one of the results of this questionnaire. We suggest in this article the specification of a decision support system for short-term manpower management under annualised hours, taking into account the competence of the operators. A software prototype has been developed according to these specifications; the results of a simple but representative example are described

Scheduling uncertain orders in the customer–subcontractor context

Within the customer–subcontractor negotiation process, the first problem of the subcontractor is to provide the customer with a reliable order lead-time although his workload is partially uncertain. Actually, a part of the subcontractor workload is composed of orders under negotiation which can be either confirmed or cancelled. Fuzzy logic and possibility theory have widely been used in scheduling in order to represent the uncertainty or imprecision of processing times, but the existence of the manufacturing orders is not usually set into question. We suggest a method allowing to take into account the uncertainty of subcontracted orders. This method is consistent with list scheduling: as a consequence, it can be used in many classical schedulers. Its implementation in a scheduler prototype called TAPAS is described. In this article, we focus on the performance of validation tests which show the interest of the method

Towards a collaborative MRP for supply chain coordination

The necessity to increase collaboration in nowadays supply chains is emphasized both by academics and practitioners, but most of the supply chains are still managed through cascades of classical MRP/MRP2 systems. Interviews in the aeronautical sector have shown us the existence of many hidden practices aiming at satisfying local constraints which would be better addressed through collaborative processes. We suggest in this communication to define a "collaborative MRP" which would not only provide a better global performance than purely local planning, but take into account the autonomy of the involved partners which is not always respected by centralized pproaches using APS (Advanced Planning Systems)

MRP-based negotiation in customer-supplier relationship

In the present uncertain context, increasing the performance of the supply chains requires to define cooperative processes between partners aiming at providing a better answer to the final customer, with a risk shared between partners. Based on an analysis of real practices, we suggest in this communication to take the MRP process as a basis for defining what could be such a cooperative process

Models for supply chain negotiation in collaborative relationships

Nowadays, firms are increasingly building collaborative relationships with their partners in order to improve the global performance of the supply chain in which they are involved. Such collaborative relationships require information exchange or share and negotiation. In this paper, we first formalize some practices of collaboration from case studies of the aeronautical area then suggest some models for negotiation, allowing a supply chain member to publish hidden constraints and share risks/costs in order to achieve a win-win situation

Introducing "2.0" functionalities in an ERP

Companies and ERP editors show an increasing interest for the Web 2.0 technologies, aiming at involving the user of a web site in the creation of content. We summarize in this communication what these tools are and give an overview of recent examples of their use in companies. We show on the example of the most recent ERP of SAP, Business By Design, that if "2.0 tools" are now available in some ERPs, their integration in the business processes is not yet fully done. We suggest in that purpose the first draft of a methodology aiming at developing "2.0 business processes" using an ERP 2.0

SME and Planning in Supply Chains:a Socio-technical View

The co-existence of large and small companies in nowadays supply chains may led to misunderstandings which are prejudicial to the supply chain performance. Based on several studies in aeronautical supply chains, we list some of typical problems linked to the relationship between large and small companies, and show how the solutions promoted by large companies may in some cases be inadequate. We suggest to use different frameworks suggested in social sciences for better understanding the origins of these problems and provide some guidelines for defining a framework of cooperation between large and small companies, oriented on a better mutual understanding

Secured and efficient information exchanges in collaborative networks: the singular information system

Information exchange is the object of intensive research from quite separated communities, dealing for instance with connected objects, interoperability of industrial information systems, personal information systems or data security. A unified framework, defining the conditions of interrelations of elementary information systems, could allow to address these problems with a holistic view. In that purpose, we suggest the concept of Singular Information System (SIS) and give the basic principles allowing the connection of two SIS. We show then how exchanges of information between objects, persons and organizations may benefit from such a unified paradigm

Assessing the compliance of a product with an eco-label: from standards to constraints

The new awareness of the consumers regarding environmental issues should allow companies to gain a competitive advantage by obtaining eco-labels which certify the low impact of a product on the environment. Getting such label requires to analyse a product according to rules expressed in natural language which may be difficult to interpret but also to apply when the product is complex. In order to address this problem, we suggest a method aiming at providing support to the user when checking the compliance of a product with an eco-label. The method is applied on an illustrative example of the literature

Intelligent products: a spinal column to handle information exchanges in supply chains

This paper outlines some practical problems linked to information exchange occurring in nowadays supply chains, with a special emphasis on the aeronautical sector. The Intelligent Product paradigm is presented as an adequate solution to address some of these problems and to provide rapid gains along the whole product life-cycle. The paper intends to illustrate how the IP paradigm could bring natural solutions to historical problems in supply chains, in rupture with the way they are usually addressed. A short case study describes how the suggested concepts could help to address real problems in nowadays supply chains