The interest on lean production is mostly based on the empirical evidence that it improves the company’s competitiveness. However, the implementation of lean manufacturing harbours enormous difficulties due to a broad-spectrum of variables, compounded by lack of standardised mechanisms within organisations of analysis and measure of value-adding capabilities. The purpose of this study was to understand from both a management and employees’ perspective, the relative importance of key success factors, specifically training, for successful implementation of the lean principles and to understand the impact of training on employees perceptions of the lean programme. A quantitative research methodology was conducted in a packaging manufacturing company and data, collected using a questionnaire from a sample size of 54 employees, was analysed using SPSS software. Employees were found to have developed good perceptions about the impact that training had in their own jobs and also perceived that the lean program overall added value in their organisation. Employees considered training and management commitment as the most critical factors for a successful lean implementation. For lean implementation to be successful employees must be given training that is relevant to their work and senior management of the organisation must show (display) commitment towards the lean program being implemented by making necessary resources (time, funds ) available for lean activities. / Thesis (MBA)-University of KwaZulu-Natal, Durban, 2012.

The intention of this work was to examine the infra-structure of a medium-sized Greek textile manufacturing enterprise. The Organisation became a leading acrylic blanket producer at national level, as a result of the management's receptivity to transfer of the highest standards of technology and expertise. The business was geared to the quality end of the market and offered its customers a high added value range of products. At the initiation of the systems study, the problem was conceived as one of inadequate production planning and stock control procedures. The high customer service level policy was accomplished through substantial stockholding on the part Of the firm and resulted in inventories being the company's highest current assets component. A systems approach to the operations of the Organisation indicated problems of information discontinuity, while barriers of communication were caused by lack of clear objectives. Analysis of the existed procedures led to the creation of three new sub-systems: the production scheduling, the quality control and the marketing departments. Material and information closed-loop controls were established and job description systems were introduced. An internal management reporting system was designed to facilitate improved decision making - In the implementation stage the author concentrated on training the systems/users while operational difficulties were resolved during actual running. The project's objective was the development of an open system which would maintain dynamic equilibrium with its surrounding environment. Planning and control procedures made the internal sub-systems interactions controllable, but the external changes created difficulty. Growing recession and government austerity policies exercised considerable influence on the operations of the system/organisation. company viability was safeguarded, a make-to-order policy was Pursued and a new business structure was created. This work is considered to exemplify the Greek industrial sector and the difficulties which will be experienced in deploying modern management methods in Greek manufacturing industry.

This thesis is concerned with the improvement of construction practices by studying the application in the sector of some core principles underlying current production management theories. The research is motivated by the recognition in recent literature that the best production practices world-wide have a common core. The core principles investigated in this research are the "reduction of cycle time", "reduction of variability", "increase of transparency" and "build of continuous improvement into the process". The fundamental rationale underlying these principles is the concept of flow where production is seen as composed of waiting, transporting, inspecting and transformation (processing) activities. According to this concept, transformation activities are the only ones that actually add value. Hence, all other activities should be reduced or eliminated from the flow whilst increasing the efficiency of transformation activities. The assessment of construction practices against the theory was carried out through six case studies, based in England and Brazil, and a complementary meta-case. Cross-case study analysis showed that construction already applies all heuristic approaches relating to the flow principles under study. However, the intra-case study analysis revealed a serious lack of integration among the literal replications identified in each of the case studies. Integration of practices matching the theory is critical since the evidence suggests that there is a correlation between production performance and the level of integration among literal replications. An additional case study investigated the issue of how to implement these principles in the practice of construction. The interaction with the host company happened through an Action Learning set supported by the Revans Centre for Action Learning and Research. The experiment showed that a combination of both "push" and "pull" learning seems to be an appropriate approach for introducing the principles in study in the construction sector. Top management positive support during "gestation" period was the most important factor for motivating people to "pull" the learning after the initial 'push' learning exercise.

This research is concerned with understanding a quality management system and its interaction with maintenance management activities within the organisation. The interaction between maintenance and quality, can lead to their integration with production. The second output of production is maintenance, whose output is increased production capacity. Both the production process and the quality of the maintenance work, which, in turn, affects equipment condition, affect the quality of final product. The thesis aims to identify the barriers and difficulties affecting quality in maintenance, within Libyan (public sector) manufacturing organisations. The specific objectives are derived to provide focus for the research activities, in order to fulfil the specific aim of the research in a structured and scientific manner. In order to achieve the thesis objectives, an empirically-based systems analysis of two case study organisations in the Libyan public manufacturing sector was carried out. Substantial field work was carried out using predominantly a qualitative approach. Qualitative data was collected by semi structured interview (from different levels of management and supervisors) to explore the quality management phenomena, and to provide a more holistic understanding through triangulation techniques of required and suitable data. This study has contributed to existing knowledge through getting an in-depth understanding of quality and maintenance issues. A specific definition of "quality in maintenance" was developed, common barriers of quality systems and the key factors of improving maintenance were summarised. Furthermore, by using the framework in figure 2.8 the enablers and inhibitors of quality in maintenance were demonstrated. This study is the first one that identified the unique barriers affecting quality in maintenance within the Libyan manufacturing organisations. These barriers are divided into three main kinds: the technical, economic barriers, managerial, organisational barriers, and cultural environmental barriers. The key findings of the research indicate that the case study organisations do not actively promote quality in the maintenance area that takes into consideration the influence of organisational, social, economic and political factors (change culture) on the quality of operations and performance inside the organisations.

In this study, we consider a capacity allocation problem in flexible manufacturing systems. We assume time and tool magazine capacities on the Numerical Controlled (NC) machines and limited number of available tools. Our problem is to allocate the available capacity of the NC machines to the required demand of the operations, so as to maximize the total weight of operation assignments. We formulate the problem as a Mixed Integer Linear Program and show that it is NP-hard in the strong sense. We solve the moderate-sized problems optimally by the available Integer Programming software. We also develop Lagrangean relaxation based upper bounds and several heuristic procedures. Our computational results have revealed that the Lagrangean upper bounds are very close to optimal solutions and the heuristic procedures produce near optimal solutions in very small solution times even when the problem sizes are large.

In this study, a single machine batch-scheduling problem with incompatible jobs and dynamic arrivals is examined. The objective function is the minimization of the total flow time of the jobs. For solving problems a case specific branch and bound algorithm with a heuristic upper bound scheme and two alternative lower bound procedures is used. An extensive computational experiment is conducted to investigate the effects of certain parameters on the computation time. For the most difficult parameter combination branch and bound algorithm can solve the problems about 25 jobs with 4 different job types in a 10 minutes time on average. For the problem types with higher number of jobs and the most difficult parameter combination proposed upper bound heuristic can be used to obtain near optimal solutions.

In this study we address a periodic review capacitated inventory system with supply uncertainty where advance demand information is available. A stochastic dynamic programming formulation is applied with the objective of minimizing the expected inventory related costs over a finite horizon. Three different supply processes are assumed. Under the all-or-nothing type supply process and partially available supply process, the structure of optimal policy is proved to be a base stock policy and numerical examples are given to demonstrate the effects of system parameters. Under Binomially distributed supply process it is shown that a simple base stock policy is not optimal.

In today&rsquo / s conditions, systems that surround individuals have evolved in structure such that, nature of variable interactions are much more complex and changing continuously. Logistics systems, which constitute an example for such systems, have also necessitated fast management and decision-making in a fast paced environment, under limited sources with the additional effect of increasing customer requirements and competition. These conditions require a dynamic analysis. In this study, system dynamics approach was shown to be a competent alternative to analyze complex and dynamic systems like logistics systems and its cost structure studied. A theoretical logistics model with a user interface is presented. Then the developed model implemented in an organization operating in aluminum industry by making the required modifications. A scenario analysis regarding a new investment decision studied. All analysis and modeling studies were carried out in Stella 6.0.1.

Diss. (sammanfattning) Umeå : Sveriges lantbruksuniv., 2007. / Härtill 11 uppsatser.

Thesis (Ph.D.) -- McMaster University, 1997. / Includes bibliographical references. Also available via World Wide Web.