Achieving manufacturing excellence through the integration of enterprise systems and simulation

Abstract

This paper discusses the significance of the Enterprise Systems and simulation integration in improving the shop floor's short-term production planning capability. The ultimate objectives are to identify the integration protocols, optimization parameters and critical design artifacts, thereby identifying key 'ingredients' that help in setting out a future research agenda in pursuit of optimum decision making at the shop floor level. While the integration of Enterprise Systems and simulation gains a widespread agreement within the existing work, the optimality, scalability and flexibility of the schedules remained unanswered. Furthermore, there seems to be no commonality or pattern as to how many core modules are required to enable such a flexible and scalable integration. Nevertheless, the objective of such integration remains clear, i.e. to achieve an optimum total production time, lead time, cycle time, production release rates and cost. The issues presently faced by existing Enterprise Systems, if properly addressed, can contribute to the achievement of manufacturing excellence and can help identify the building blocks for the software architectural platform enabling the integration.

A critical investigation of Industry 4.0 in manufacturing: theoretical operationalisation framework

“…To address the aforementioned challenges and to meet changing customer demands in highly competitive environments, manufacturing strategies and processes need to, not only, be flexible (Anand and Ward 2004) and be able to significantly reduce their operational costs, but also, they need to be smart enough to act intelligently and autonomously (Leitao, Colombo, and Karnouskos 2016;Bechtold et al 2014; Genovese et al 2014). This requires high level of digitisation and automation, and extensive connectivity in manufacturing environments and throughout organisations, which in turn, calls for seamless integration of production systems/machinery, and enterprise systems (Rashid and Tjahjono 2016).…”

Enterprise systems’ life cycle in pursuit of resilient smart factory for emerging aircraft industry: a synthesis of Critical Success Factors’(CSFs), theory, knowledge gaps, and implications

“…The aircraft industry ES are implemented in pursuit of the vision for excellence in terms of imperatives such as: business (strategic), organizational cum behavioral (tactical, socio-technical), technological cum operational and purely financial (Gunasekaran, T. Martikirtanen et al 1994;Gunasekaran and Thevarajah 1997;Cantamessa, Montagna et al 2012;Romero and Vieira 2014;Rashid and Tjahjono 2016). A vision of future requires thorough understanding of global and transnational settings for business excellence (tactical-imperatives).…”

“…Interestingly, ES in a way dictates its own logic to execute organizational functions in order to reap the dream of information integration, which may conflict with the competitive advantage of that very industry . Living with the very logic of ERP comes at a very high cost-price , and may not render the desired functionality fit (X2) for real time information integration (Boza, Cuenca et al 2015) and for real time production (technological cum operational imperatives) (Rashid and Tjahjono 2016). The operations management and optimisation in midst of the global economic crisis has emphasised the needs for an adaptive and flexible network of intelligent machines, robots and sensors termed as the society of machines (social cum automation imperatives) (Rashid and Tjahjono 2016).…”

“…Living with the very logic of ERP comes at a very high cost-price , and may not render the desired functionality fit (X2) for real time information integration (Boza, Cuenca et al 2015) and for real time production (technological cum operational imperatives) (Rashid and Tjahjono 2016). The operations management and optimisation in midst of the global economic crisis has emphasised the needs for an adaptive and flexible network of intelligent machines, robots and sensors termed as the society of machines (social cum automation imperatives) (Rashid and Tjahjono 2016). Contextually, a smart factory which is a societal system of intelligent and networked machines with smart sensors, reiterates ES-vendors to deliver at least the much needed X7-real-time online planning (OnP) and online control (OnC) as core functionality of advance planning optimization (APO).…”

“…Similarly the studies were underway for defining new "standard for the exchange of product model data" (STEP) (Rashid and Uzma 2008). Both industries at Turkey and Pakistan had unpleasant experiences (X12) relevant to inaccurate careful selection strategy ES-CSF (X2) for optimum-functional fit and production excellence (Rashid and Tjahjono 2016). (Netland and Aspelund 2013), (Wu, Xu et al 2009…”