Sustainability challenges and how Industry 4.0 technologies can address them: a case study of a shipbuilding supply chain

The shipbuilding industry is under significant economic pressure and in need of more efficient solutions to secure economically sustainable operations. It is also challenged by social issues and the need for a greener maritime industry is critical. Accordingly, the shipbuilding industry is pressured across all three dimensions of sustainability. This paper aims to identify the sustainability challenges in shipbuilding supply chains and explore how Industry 4.0 technologies can impact the sustainability of shipbuilding. This is achieved through a case study of a shipbuilding supply chain, which results in the identification of its primary sustainability challenges. Further, this work proposes a set of nine digital solutions to support sustainable operations in shipbuilding as the paper’s primary contribution. This lays the foundation for further empirical research on sustainability and digitalization in shipbuilding, while for practice the paper provides enhanced insight into how Industry 4.0 technologies can be adopted in shipbuilding supply chains.acceptedVersio

Can Differentiated Production Planning and Control enable both Responsiveness and Efficiency in Food Production?

This paper addresses the complex production planning and control (PPC) challenges in food supply chains. The study illustrates how food producers' traditional make-to-stock (MTS) approach is not well suited to meet the trends of increasing product variety, higher demand uncertainty, increasing sales of fresh food products and more demanding customers. The paper proposes a framework for differentiated PPC that combines MTS with make-to-order (MTO). The framework matches products with the most appropriate PPC approaches and buffering techniques depending on market and product characteristics. The core idea is to achieve more volume flexibility in the production system by exploiting favourable product and market characteristics (high demand predictability, long customer order lead time allowances and low product perishability). A case study is used to demonstrate how the framework can enable food producers to achieve efficiency in production, inventory and PPC processes – and simultaneously be responsive to market requirements

Material Distribution and Transportation in a Norwegian Hospital:A Case Study

Automated Guided Vehicles have shown significant importance in material transportation and distribution in today’s hospitals. The increasing trends of shorter hospital stays and increase of treatments and surgeries in clinics, present new challenges for the supply of goods. The rise in patients in hospitals, and consequently the increase of treatments and surgeries, cause a growth of material usage and goods movement. This study used the Control Model methodology to analyze the material and information flow within the case hospital. Information sharing and integration is still a major issue in the case hospital. The study aims to stimulate further research in material handling and distribution in hospitals

Improving coordination in an engineer-to-order supply chain using a soft systems approach

An empirical study in the ship-building sector has been undertaken to understand the problems associated with the coordination of engineer-to-order (ETO) supply chains and to reveal insights into opportunities for improvements based on the application of soft systems methodology. A number of alternatives to improve coordination of supply chain have been proposed based on the comparison between a soft systems model and actual practice. These alternatives were summarised into seven general principles that help define the role of individual companies in coordinating ETO supply chains, highlighting the company’s structures and interdependencies that lead to project tardiness. Due to the specific nature of a project which changes according to the context, it is difficult to generalise the soft systems model. Nevertheless, future research can further explore some of the principles proposed to deal with coordination problems experienced in other types of ETO project operations, such as construction and oil and gas

Planning and control of autonomous mobile robots for intralogistics: Literature review and research agenda

Autonomous mobile robots (AMR) are currently being introduced in many intralogistics operations, like manufacturing, warehousing, cross-docks, terminals, and hospitals. Their advanced hardware and control software allow autonomous operations in dynamic environments. Compared to an automated guided vehicle (AGV) system in which a central unit takes control of scheduling, routing, and dispatching decisions for all AGVs, AMRs can communicate and negotiate independently with other resources like machines and systems and thus decentralize the decision-making process. Decentralized decision-making allows the system to react dynamically to changes in the system state and environment. These developments have influenced the traditional methods and decision-making processes for planning and control. This study identifies and classifies research related to the planning and control of AMRs in intralogistics. We provide an extended literature review that highlights how AMR technological advances affect planning and control decisions. We contribute to the literature by introducing an AMR planning and control framework t

Tactical and Operational Issues in a Hybrid MTO-MTS Production Environment: The Case of Food Production

Hybrid production environments that combine MTO and MTS strategies have emerged to enable production systems to better respond to changes in consumer and market demand. This paper discusses some of the tactical and operational production planning and control (PPC) issues involved in such hybrid production environments, using the food industry as an illustrative case. The discussion identifies MRP combined with WLC as a promising approach for incorporating MTO items into an MRP planning environment on the tactical and operational levels. Additional techniques are required to incorporate uncertainty and provide flexibility in this particular context and these should be further investigated taking different food supply chain characteristics into considerationacceptedVersio

Analysing the factors affecting engineering change implementation performance in the engineer-to-order production environment: case studies from a Norwegian shipbuilding group

Engineering changes (ECs) are unavoidable in the engineer-to-order (ETO) environment. ECs improve products and bring additional profit to ETO companies if effectively negotiated and implemented. Despite the abundant relevant literature on EC management, ETO companies still report cost overruns owing to ECs. Here, a multiple case study conducted in a Norwegian shipbuilding group was used to investigate the factors affecting EC implementation performance in complex ETO environments. The factors were examined by a cross-case analysis of six ECs occurring in the shipbuilding projects. Eleven factors were identified and analyzed; their impact on EC cost was assessed by experts. The factors were ranked; the ranking shows three factors having the highest impact: time of EC occurrence, competence and experience of engineering and production staff, and degree of vertical integration in a supply chain. Finally, the study recommends EC management practices and tools to reduce the negative impacts of the identified factorsacceptedVersio

The fit of Industry 4.0 applications in manufacturing logistics: a multiple case study

The fourth industrial revolution, Industry 4.0, is expected to cause disruptive changes in industrial production. It is driven by rapid technological developments and the need for manufacturing companies to make themselves independent of high labor costs. Industry 4.0 concerns several aspects of industrial production, including manufacturing logistics, business models and products and services. The applications of Industry 4.0 have been vastly outlined. However, the fit of Industry 4.0 applications in different production environments is not clear. The purpose of this paper is to identify and investigate the Industry 4.0 technologies that are applicable to manufacturing logistics, and how the production environment influences the applicability of these technologies. This is done through a multiple case study of four Norwegian manufacturing companies. The findings from the study indicate that the applicability of Industry 4.0 in manufacturing logistics is dependent on the production environment. Companies with a low degree of production repetitiveness see less potential in applying Industry 4.0 technologies in manufacturing logistics, while companies with a highly repetitive production see a higher potential

Operationalizing lean principles for lead time reduction in engineer-to-order (ETO) operations: A case study

The engineer-to-order (ETO) manufacturing approach is used in companies developing and producing highly customized products. ETO operations include some characteristic business processes such as the sales and tendering process, engineering and design and project management. The characteristics of the ETO environment creates high complexity in these processes, resulting in considerable amounts of waste. The potential for lead time reduction is therefore high also in these processes, not only in the production and assembly processes. Building on lean manufacturing this paper seeks to operationalize lean principles in ETO operations. Through an in-depth case study of an ETO company this paper investigates the challenges, problems and improvement opportunities in the business processes of an ETO company by applying an adapted value stream mapping (VSM) approach. The study served to identify main sources of waste which negatively affect lead time in ETO operations. The paper further presents specific guidelines that operationalizes lean principles in order to reduce waste and improve lead time in ETO operations

Decision support model for implementing assistive technologies in assembly activities: a case study

The use of assistive technologies, such as digital instructions (DIs) and collaborative robots (cobots), can improve the productivity of assembly system. However, their implementation remains arbitrary. In this study, a decision support system based on tactical-level variables (i.e. throughput, operator and equipment cost, operation time and type) was proposed with the aim of suggesting when the introduction of assistive technologies becomes profitable. Four different assembly system configurations (i.e. manual assembly, manual assembly with the implementation of DIs, manual assembly with the implementation of cobots and manual assembly with the implementation of both DIs and cobots) were modelled by means of four different cost models and analysed in depth with a parametric analysis carried out by varying the tactical-level variables. The results suggested that, when the throughput is low, the introduction of cobots should be considered only in cases of high operation times, while the introduction of DIs and/or cobots is the best alternative when the throughput is high. Finally, the validity of the approach is proved by comparing the results suggested by the decision support system with those obtained from a case study