We first develop techniques for identifying the configuration of a body assembly system. These techniques are essential because of the increasingly sophisticated hardware adopted in modern automotive assembly plants. Then we use these techniques to benchmark the system configurations of three...

Operations managers need to evaluate numerous alternative uses of production capacities in modern manufacturing systems. To perform such a task, an aggregate capacity analysis approach is introduced based on the concept of 'operation type'. In order to avoid excessive capacity over-and/or...

The operations strategy literature has identified four primary dimensions on which a firm competes with another. These are: price, quality, flexibility, and delivery dependability. Of these, quality is perhaps the most critical dimension in terms of the influence a competitive dimension...

Advance selling through pre-orders is a strategy to transfer inventory risk from a retailer to consumers. A newsvendor retailer can have three strategies to choose from: no advance selling allowed (NAS), moderate advance selling with a moderate discount for pre-orders (MAS), and deep advance...

This paper presents methods to determine the optimal transfer batch sizes of various part types between two machines so as to minimize the sum of the total relevant costs. Information required includes the expected production requirements, the operations' processing times, the travel times, the...

Retailers often face a newsvendor problem, i.e., they must order their inventory prior to a short selling period with uncertain demand. The uncertainty can be reduced by advance selling because not only are advance orders certain, but the remaining demand can be better forecasted. Consumers,...

The evidence is clear that a lack of attention to structured tool management has resulted in the poor performance of many manufacturing systems. Plant tooling systems affect product design options, machine loading, job batching, capacity scheduling, and real-time part routing decisions. With...