Integration of product, process and functional orientations: principles and a case study

Abstract

Companies are traditionally divided in specialised areas in a hierarchical organisation, usually referred to as functions. On the other hand, during the last decale companies have realised the importance of their processes. When they change towards a “process orientation” they must overcome some organisational problems to integrate the new process orientation into the already existing functional organisation. Besides, more and more importance is given to the specific characteristics of products, leading to product-driven manufacturing eg. focussing on the product life cycles. Thus, one may find companies dealing with three different ways of working at the same time: product orientation, function orientation and process orientation.This paper addresses how product, process and functional orientations can be integrated, with the purpose of improving collaborative production management. In supply chains and networks it is of vital importance that concepts and terminology are shared among the collaborative partners. Even though this paper focuses on these issues for internal operations, the results can easily be transferred to multi-plant collaborative production environments. The proposed framework aims at providing a bridge between the Enterprise Integration and Operation Management fields. We identify important issues and factors to be considered, as well as point to approaches for analysing production systems based on an integrative view. Specifically we discuss the application of “model views” in analysing product, process and functional orientations in an empirical study of a large telecommunications company. The analysis is based on process modelling from the perspective that a process is performed by resources from the functions to produce products along their life cycles. The process analysis forms the basis for integration of these three perspectives. We also compare this approach to the GERAM enterprise integration approach, which uses four views: resource, information, organisation and function as the means for studying different parts of the enterprise. As a result the term orientation is defined and explained, and its inclusion in GERAM is analysed.KeywordsEnterpriseEnterprise IntegrationFunctionProcessProcess modellingProductProduct life cycle.