Shop Floor Control — A Systems Perspective: From Deterministic Models towards Agile Operations Management

385 Pages·1998·16.46 MB·English

by  Eric Scherer (auth.)

Shop Floor Control
A Systems Perspective
From Deterministic Models
towards Agile Operations Management
Springer
Berlin
Heidelberg
New York
Barcelona
Budapest
Hong Kong
London
Milan
Paris
Santa Clara
Singapore
Tokyo
Eric Scherer (Ed.)
Shop Floor Control -
A Systetns Perspective
From Deterministic Models
towards Agile Operations Management
With a Preface by
Kenneth Preiss
With 115 Figures
and 6 Tables
Springer
Dr. Eric Scherer
Institute for Industrial Management
and Engineering BWI
Swiss Federal Institute of Technolgy ETH
Zurichbergstra6e 18
CH-8028 Zurich, Switzerland
ISBN-13: 978-3-642-64349-1
Cataloging-in-Publication Data applied for
Die Deutsche Bibliothek -CIP-Einheitsaufnahme
Shop floor control-a systems perspective :from deterministic
models towards agile operations management; with 6 tables / Eric
Scherer (ed.). With a preface by Kenneth Preiss. -Berlin; Heidelberg;
New York; Barcelona; Budapest; Hong Kong; London; Milan;
Paris; Santa Clara; Singapore; Tokyo: Springer, 1998
ISBN-13:978-3-642-64349-I e-ISBN-13:978-3-642-60313-6
DOl: 10.1007/978-3-642-60313-6
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© Springer-Verlag Berlin· Heidelberg 1998
Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 1998
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"The more exact one plans, the more
exact he fails."
Maxim of the week, Zurich Daily Press (Tagesanzeiger), July 6, 1996
Planning
We change things tomorrow, we change things today,
We change things, enraged, and we change things, gay.
We change things without a streak of meek,
We change things all seven days of the week.
We change things sometimes just for fun,
Or plan, or don't know what we've done!
We change things for good or just as a trial,
'Cause changing always means work for a while.
We change things, resigned, and without a fuss,
Because that is what is expected of us.
The old change things and so do the young,
We even change the things we've undone.
We change anything that we can alter,
Just to show that we will not falter.
And if our change was a piece of cake,
Then surely it can stand a slight remake.
And so we change things, all our days,
Anywhere we can start a new phase.
We change things now and without blinking,
This leaves no time at all for THINKING!
(The author reserves the right to revise).
As seen in a planner's office.
Foreword
The tools we use shape the thoughts we think. Our currently dominant concepts of
organization derive from our mental pictures of machines. People talk about 'put
on the brakes', 'put your foot on the gas', 'we will crash' and so on. The metaphor
of machine penetrates thinking about society, organizations and relationships
between people - as witness 'I am the big wheel but he is a cog in the machine'.
This is more than just a turn of phrase. Our understanding of organizations,
factories and manufacturing systems derives from that metaphor. This has many
implications. For one, in a machine a movement of a controlling lever generates
only one possible result, reliably, again and again. Whenever you turn the steering
wheel of your car to the right, it turns right, and if it does not do so there can only
be one reason, that the car is broken. Manufacturing or other business executives
have the same instinct, that when they give an instruction the organization will go
where they instruct it, always, and if it does not it needs repair or the replacement
of some people. Furthermore, a machine should have a single operator or crew
because two decision points can lead to conflicting actions which cause disaster.
This is how we usually think of controlling the shop floor.
Industrial competition is now moving from being based upon muscle power
and mechanical machinery to being based upon knowledge and networks. The
most significant tool we wield today is the communication network. The machine
has certainly not disappeared, but has become part of an interconnected system,
not standing alone but in a network, integrated by communication. Networking is
now becoming pervasive within systems of machines. For example, airplanes and
cars are now connected to satellite navigation systems for lost pilots and drivers;
machine tools and sewing machines are connected via computerized controls to
networks which send design and scheduling information.
In a mechanical machine, a force applied at one point generates definite forces
which we can calculate at any other point. There will only be one correct answer for
that computed speed or force. This is not so in the Internet. There, when a
message is sent from one point to another, we cannot know ahead of time the path
it will take nor the time it will arrive. The best we can do is compute a probability
of it going by one particular route and within a given time. In a network there is no
certainty. Any single action has many possible results which can be predicted only
on the basis of probabilities.
The shift we are living through, from industrial competition between
companies at arms' length, to competition between coupled companies which
exchange real time information in a dynamic world of constant change, is the
change from Mass Production to Agility. It is a direct result of the development
and spread of communication technology. This has changed the industrial agenda
forever. And it is penetrating quickly. In a recent survey in the USA, three-fourths
of over 500 manufacturers said that their major challenge was to become more
agile. It took 35 years for 10 million people to be connected to telephones; it took
1 Y4 years for 10 million people to become connected to the world wide web. The
networked agile world is hurtling toward us. This important book provides
excellent guidance to those of us who need to manage and control within it.
As our defining tools change from the machine to the communication network,
so do our concepts. Management of manufacturing in the age of the machine was
by giving an order intended to push on elements in the organization to lead to one
specific result in a given time. The development of communication networks has
not only made available a new tool for management, but has created a new
metaphor for the organization. The management problem has moved from being
one of deterministic control, to being one of managing in an uncertain network. In
the age of the network we manage by seeing the whole picture, integrating people,
business processes and technology into one coordinated system. This cannot be
achieved by managing the pieces separately, and is quite a new state for
management of manufacturing and control of the shop floor.
This thoughtfully conceived book on shop floor control and scheduling
illuminates these issues very well. It is a significant contribution to our
understanding of how to manage manufacturing in the era in which agility and
management of complexity have become the dominant competitive requirements.
Dr. Scherer and his collaborators are to be congratulated for their contribution to
this important subject.
Professor Kenneth Preiss
Ben Gurion University, Israel and
Agility Forum, Lehigh University, USA
VII'I
Foreword
From Deterministic Models towards
Agile Operations Management
A look at research in the field of shop floor control shows that, on the one hand,
shop floor control was and continues to be one of the most extensive domains of
research in industrial management. Mainly under the banner of 'scheduling'
hundreds, even thousands, of papers, books and theses have been published. A
browse through renown scientific journals reveals the attention still given to shop
floor control by researchers around the globe. On the other hand, however, current
buzzwords and attractions in the literature on management, applied research and
industrial innovation show that shop floor control seems to have become a topic of
the past. The new focus is on strategic issues such as core competencies,
leadership, process organization, enterprise networking, and general concepts like
agility, virtuality, and fractalism.
So why publish a new book on shop floor control? A look ahead assures us
that, in contrast to prevalent opinions, the manufacturing function maintains its
importance with the increasing flexibilization, globalization and dynamization of
the value-adding chain. Moreover, with the growing of networks and the ongoing
diminishing of hierarchies, management functions at the operational level are
gaining in importance. The 'wall' which hindered market dynamics from directly
confronting the operational levels of enterprises has crumbled. Shop floor control
is no more the front end of a hierarchical planning process, but has become a core
function of any operational process chain. With requirements for shop floor control
steadily rising, the solutions of the past have become more inadequate than ever.
Researchers have to admit, that even though they expended tremendous energy on
the problems of shop floor control, the past four decades since THOMPSON &
MUTH1 introduced the problem to the scientific community at large did not have
much impact upon industrial reality. While some are still solving the '10 jobs x10
machines' problem and waiting for their thoroughly reviewed papers to be
published, in industry such measures as group technology, KANBAN, teamwork
and KAlZEN have proved to be feasible means of improving industrial
performance at the shop floor level and, in many crses, have reduced the control
problem somewhat.
To master the challenges of the future, there must be a change in our thinking
paradigm. Manufacturing is not deterministic! What is more, manufacturing
processes are beyond - traditional- control. As MELNIK, CARTER, DILTS & LYTH2
have already noted, "the shop floor is not under control, it is out of control." The
assumption held for the future is that the problem of systems design for shop floor
control is no longer the problem of 'optimization'. The reductionistic paradigm of
the optimization focus needs to be replaced by a holistic paradigm of agile activity,
dynamic behavior and evolutionary development. This means that we can not
continue to rely solely on mathematical modeling techniques but have to achieve a
systems perspective that takes into account all aspects of shop floor control. The
present volume provides a re-assessment of the problem of effective and efficient
shop floor control. In doing so, the shop floor is considered to be that which in
reality it is: a sociotechnical system where man, machines and computers interact
according to formal rules and informal conventions. The objective of systems
design for shop floor control is to achieve a system that is capable of managing the
highly complex, dynamic processes of everyday manufacturing while simulta
neously able to adapt evolutionary to changing requirements by itself.
The book does not aim to replace the many well-suited textbooks3 on the
problem. Rather, it provides the reader with additional views that allow a new and
better understanding and should ultimately lead to organizational innovation and
sustainable improvement of the situation in industry. For this purpose, the book is
rooted in the study and experience of the 'real world' of everyday manufacturing
and gathers together papers by authors from a vast background and many fields:
industrial engineering, management science, work psychology, industrial sociology
and business computing. All of the authors share their understanding of the shop
floor as a socio-technical as well as cybernetic system. They also have industrial
experience in research and consulting in common, and they share an appreciation
of the human being as the most flexible and valuable resource in modern
manufacturing.
Eric Scherer
Zurich, January 1998
Mum, ].F., THOMPSON, G.L. (Eds.) (1963): Industrial scheduling. Prentice-Hall, Englewood Cliffs.
MELNIK, S.A., CARTER, P.L., DILTS, D.M., LYTH, D.M. (1985): Shop Floor Control. Dow Jones-Irwin,
Homewood. p. vii.
for reading besides those mentioned above, the editor suggests:
BUZEWICZ, J. ET AL. (1996): Scheduling computer and manufacturing processes. Springer, Berlin.
BURBIDGE, J. L. (1978): The principles of production control. 4'h Ed. MacDonald & Evans, Plymouth.
PINENDO, M. (1995): Scheduling: Theory, Algorithms and Systems. Prenctice Hall, Englewood Cliffs.
WIENDAHL, H.P. (1995): Load-oriented manufacturing control. Springer, Berlin.
x I
From Deterministic Models towards Agile Operations Management