Changes In Product Mix Research Articles

An agent-based approach for integrating manufacturing operations

To remain competitive in today's global market, manufacturing organisations must be able to respond to unpredictable changes that occur in the market rapidly and cost-effectively. To facilitate such responsiveness, this paper presents an agent-based approach that would enable manufacturers to achieve optimised utilisation of resources within their existing manufacturing systems’ structures and constraints while simultaneously considering systems’ reconfiguration and restructure options to accommodate changing demand distributions and product mix. The approach is based on an integrated decision platform on which planning and control decisions can be considered concurrently with system reconfiguration/restructure decisions.

Factors shaping aggregate energy intensity trend for industry: Energy intensity versus product mix

Understanding the mechanisms of change of energy consumption in industry has attracted much attention since the 1973 world oil crisis. A popular line of research has been to decompose changes in the aggregate energy intensity of industry to give the relative impacts arising from energy intensity change and product-mix change using a decomposition technique. Many empirical studies covering a large number of countries have been reported. The main objective of this paper is to put together the empirical results reported in these studies in a coherent framework and identify possible systematic features. Of particular interest are the basic trends in this line of research, the relative importance of energy intensity change and product-mix change, possible variations over time and between country groups in the energy impacts of these changes, and inconsistencies in findings among studies. An overview of the decomposition technique, including its strengths, weaknesses, and role in industrial energy consumption studies, is also presented.

Government-Sponsored Enterprises and Resource Allocation: Some Implications for Urban Economies

ing from refinancing, originations can be thought of as the marginal addition to the share in the stock, and the share of the stock can be thought of as the average. Clearly, the secular trend in the stock is mostly the average catching up with the marginal after a break in the marginal in1982. However, originations are not quite the marginal because they do not include payoffs. The more volatile line in the figure depicts the GSE share of growth in the stock, which does correspond to the marginal change in share. While it is more volatile than the origination percentage, it tells a similar story: a break in the early 80s and a recent decline. The difference between marginal and average is important. There is very little trading in used mortgages; mortgages are typically purchased by the GSEs shortly after origination and go into securities. So GSE activity and effect on the market is best viewed in terms of purchases of newly originated loans. Table 1 shows recent changes in product mix in the mortgage market. The key trend since 2001 has been a sharp decline in share of conventional conforming loans (those which are eligible for GSE purchase) and a sharp increase in the share of riskier subprime, AltA (loans between “prime” and subprime) and home equity loans. This has been 7 It is straightforward to show that GSE share of the outstanding stock will rise or fall depending on whether or not the GSE share of the increase in mortgage stock bigger or smaller than the GSE share of the stock. If GSEs have the same principle pay down rate (akin to depreciation rate) as the market as a whole, then share growth will depend on whether or not the GSE share of new originations is bigger or smaller than the GSE share of the stock. Otherwise there needs to be an adjustment for pay down rate differences. In the short run this adjustment can be important, especially in heavy refinancing booms, in part because the GSEs have relatively more fixed rate mortgages, which have more interest sensitive pay down rates than adjustable rate mortgages. 8 The changes in MDO or GSE stock are the difference between two numbers, purchases (or originations) and pay downs, which are both subject to measurement error. The ratio of these numbers can be expected to be quite volatile, especially in years when growth is low. Hence, the year to year volatility is artificially large.

Economic Policy and State Owned Enterprises: Evolution Towards Privatisation in India

The paper endeavours to look into the evolution of the role of the state and move towards privatisation in India. It starts with a discussion on the role of State intervention in the economic development within the contours of socio-economic and political circumstances. It recognises the fact that different scholars have advocated various ways through which state can intervene in an advanced capitalist economy and a developing economy or a colony. The nature of intervention is different in each case. The paper argues that State owned enterprises (SOEs) are one such manifestation of state Intervention. In many developing countries, state enterprises are assigned the responsibility of fulfilling specific social goals, which have their origin in colonial period. Whatever may be the idea behind the creation of such enterprises, they come into existence either by direct state investment or through nationalisation of private enterprises. The state intervenes through state owned enterprises in the countries where investment needs for different projects are large and the expected returns at least in the short run are too low to motivate private capital to invest. Since 1980, however, the intervention by the state through state owned enterprises has been undergoing a close scrutiny in many developing countries including India. The argument is that excessive political interference and lack of managerial interests (autonomy) hamper the performance of state enterprises. It has resulted in the reflection of various theories on assessing the performance of state enterprises which includes property rights theory, public choice theory, non-market failure and competition theory. Since economic policy making by the state requires balance of accumulation and legitimisation, then generally, the adopted economic policy serves the interests of a few major social groups. These dominant social groups react to the adopted policy and their reactions are normally taken into account while amending the existing policy or making the new economic policy. Hence, the proper understanding of the economic policy of an economy like India necessitates its historical evaluation. Therefore, in this chapter, the whole period of interaction of economic policy and state owned sector in the post-independence India has been divided into following four phases: (i) 1950-1965, (ii) 1966-1984, (iii) 1984-91 and (iv) post-1991 policy regime. During the first phase, i.e. 1950-65, the growth rates of the economy were generally high and state owned sector was occupying the position of 'commanding heights'. Despite the economy passing through crisis during this phase, the state owned sector enjoyed by and large a significant position. The policy adopted in 1982 was a step forward towards the process of liberalisation. In state owned enterprises, a visible change in the attitude took place. The economy was made predominantly dependent upon market forces rather than on the state. The industrial policy that was initiated in 1985 was the culmination of the process of drifting away, which started during the second phase of the economic policy in India. In the Post 1991, Policy Regime, the Eighth, Ninth and Tenth Plan documents suggested many policy initiatives towards restructuring, modernisation, rationalisation of capacity, product-mix changes, privatisation, autonomy, performance accountability and disinvestments policy. However many studies emerged in favour of and against the policy of privatisation and disinvestment of SOEs and also on the performance of those enterprises that were privatised. While referring to those studies, the chapter looks into the trends of the privatisation of State Owned Enterprises from 1991 to 2000 and points out that during this period, the government offloaded shares in as many as 39 state owned enterprises. However, since March 2000 emphasis has increasingly been on strategic sales of identified state owned enterprises (SOEs). The chapter ends with a critical analysis of the performance of disinvestment process in india and observes that the policy of disinvestment has been looked upon with scepticism. JEL Classifications: O11, P41, P47, P52

An approach of capability representation for improving capacity planning

With the growing interest in dealing with the volatile demand fluctuations, there is a renewed interest to enhance responsiveness in capacity planning and, in particular, to address the dynamic changes in product mix. However, with traditional MRP-II and ERP systems, capacity planning assumes that all machines in the work system are either the same or completely different. Similarities among products and resources (such as production equipment) are not a part of the consideration. As a result, inherent flexibility of the system is lost in the planning process. In this paper, we propose a new representation for the capability by characterizing critical capability drivers and their range. With a more refined representation, overlapping and non-overlapping capability regions can be identified, and their inter-relationships with respect to capacity can then be applied for improving the match between the capacity and production orders. Thus, better planning and capacity utilization can be achieved. An example is presented to demonstrate the proposed approach and to compare it with traditional MRP-II planning.

Simulation-based benchmarking of production control schemes for complex manufacturing systems

In this paper, benchmarking efforts for production control approaches applied to complex manufacturing systems are described. Complex manufacturing systems are characterized by a large number of products, an over time changing product mix, sequence-dependent set-up times, unrelated parallel machines, a mix of different process types, and internal and external disturbances. In order to ensure comparison possibilities among different production control approaches, the usage of a simulation test-bed and a software architecture that allows for plug in of different production control software are suggested. Different application areas, the advantages, and also the limitations of the suggested approach are discussed.

Managing product introductions across the supply chain: findings from a development project

PurposeThe purpose of this article is to propose a planning process that takes into account that manufacturers of original equipment have products at different stages of the product‐life cycle, and utilizes sales and inventory information collected from distributors and retailers.Design/methodology/approachThe research paper describes the construction and testing of a planning process.FindingsTrials in a case company indicate that supply chain responsiveness can be improved in product launches using the proposed process. Supply chain efficiency in the maturity phase can also be improved.Research limitations/implicationsThe usefulness and effectiveness of the proposed process depend on the assumption that product mix changes can be modeled and point‐of‐sales and channel sell‐through data are available regularly and reliably.Practical implicationsModeling and monitoring the variant mix on the total market level can be used to improve supply chain responsiveness to mix changes in product launches. The introduction of this planning process reduces the need for planning in the sales units.Originality/valueThe paper shows how the quality of variant forecasting for an original equipment manufacturer can be improved with access to channel visibility in the market introduction phase.

Job releasing and throughput planning for wafer fabrication under demand fluctuating make-to-stock environment

In the semiconductor industry, dynamic changes in demand force companies changing the product mix makes the production planning challenging. This paper aims at an environment where product mix changes periodically and presents a production scheduling system to plan the wafer lot release and throughput. The proposed system is designed on the make-to-stock basis with the objective of meeting demand forecast while maintaining production smoothness. Two modules are included in the system. Preliminary analysis module analyzes throughput and cycle time distributions for different product mixes so as to determine relative parameters to be used as the inputs to the job releasing plan. In the production scheduling module, with the considerations of the attainment of demand forecast, production smoothness, and commitment of the due dates of the released job orders, the job release schedule and completion time table are prepared. A simulation model of a semiconductor fab is used as the base case to demonstrate the effectiveness and efficiency of the proposed system.

PROCESS DESIGN FOR EFFICIENT SCHEDULING

For manufacturing, management needs to make rapid, informed strategic decisions to react to changes in the market place. In many of these cases the decisions will give rise to a redesign of the manufacturing processes (layout, changes in product mix and volumes), which in turn changes the nature of the scheduling problems associated with the production facilities. However, the necessary skills and time in bridging the gap between design and scheduling are not available to allow managers to evaluate the many different high level decisions. In this paper, we propose an architecture which brings some scheduling capabilities to managers and planners. This approach is evaluated on two real-life design scenarios considered by a manufacturing company.

A GENERALIZED CELL FORMATION PROBLEM IN DYNAMIC ENVIRONMENT WITH DIFFERENT INTER and INTRA-CELL BATCH SIZES

This paper presents a mixed-integer linear programming approach for cell formation problem (CFP) by assuming that the product mix and part demand change under a multi-period planning horizon. As a result, the best cell design for one period may not be efficient for subsequent periods and then reconfiguration of cells is required. The advantages of the proposed model are as follows: considering different inter and intra-cell movements, batch sizes, alternative process plan for part types, sequencing part-operation, machine relocation, cell size, and flexibility of cell number. The objective is to minimize the sum of the depreciation and relocation machine cost as well as inter and intra-cell movements cost.

From fluid milk to milk powder: Energy use and energy efficiency in the European dairy industry

In this paper, we conduct a cross-country analysis of energy consumption and energy efficiency for the dairy industry in four European countries. Changes in energy efficiency were monitored in two different ways. One way is to look at the energy use by tonne of milk processed by dairies ( EE I p 1 ). Another way is by comparing the actual energy use with the energy that would have been used if no changes in energy efficiency would have taken place ( EE I p 2 ). A characteristic of EE I p 2 is that it corrects for differences in product mix among countries and in time. We found that changes in production mix are important in three of the four countries studied and that EE I p 2 should be preferred when comparing levels of energy efficiency among countries or when there are significant changes in product mix. Once changes in product mix have been taken into account, our results show that France, Germany, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom have reduced their values in EE I p 2 , respectively by −0.4%, −2.1%, −1.2% and −3.8% per annum. The results also show that the British, German and Dutch dairy industries have converged towards similar (lower) values in their energy efficiency indicators and that the French dairy industry would save 30% if were to converge to similar values of EE I p as the ones obtained for Germany or the United Kingdom.

Simulated annealing heuristics for the dynamic facility layout problem

In today's economy, manufacturing plants must be able to operate efficiently and respond quickly to changes in product mix and demand. Therefore, this paper considers the problem of arranging and rearranging (when there are changes between the flows of materials between departments) manufacturing facilities such that the sum of the material handling and rearrangement costs is minimized. This problem is known as the dynamic facility layout problem (DFLP). In this paper, two simulated annealing (SA) heuristics are developed for the DFLP. The first SA heuristic (SA I) is a direct adaptation of SA to the DFLP. The second SA heuristic (SA II) is the same as SA I with a look-ahead/look-back strategy added. To test the performance of the heuristics, a data set taken from the literature is used in the analysis. The results obtained show that the proposed heuristics are very effective for the dynamic facility layout problem.

Investment Opportunity Set, Product Mix, and the Relationship between Bank CEO Compensation and Risk-Taking

The product mix changes that have occurred in banking organizations during the 1990s provide a natural experiment for investigating how firms adjust their executive compensation contracts as their mix of businesses changes. Deregulation and new technology have eroded banking organizations' comparative advantages and have made it easier for nonbank competitors to enter banking organizations' lending and deposit-taking businesses. In response, banking organizations have shifted their sale mix toward noninterest income by engaging in municipal revenue bond underwriting, commercial paper underwriting, discount brokering, managing and advising open- and close-ended mutual funds, underwriting mortgage-backed securities, selling and underwriting various forms of insurance products, selling annuities, and other investment banking activities via Section 20 subsidiaries. These mix changes could affect firms' risk and the structure of CEO compensation. The authors find that as the average banking organization tilts its product mix toward fee-based activities and away from traditional activities, equity-based compensation increases. They also find that more risky banks have significantly higher levels of equity-based compensation, as do banks with more investment opportunities. But, more levered banks do not have higher levels of equity-based CEO compensation. Finally, the authors observe that equity-based compensation is more important after the Riegle-Neal Act of 1994.

Scheduling-Framework für Jobs auf parallelen Maschinen in komplexen Produktionssystemen

The paper describes a framework for parallel machine scheduling in complex manufacturing systems. Complex manufacturing systems are characterized by groups of parallel machines, machine dedications, sequence dependent setup times, batch processes, prescribed due dates of the jobs, and a diverse and over time changing product mix. In the present paper, a four-phase algorithm is suggested that covers a broad range of process conditions. The frameworks contains a first phase that deals with the formation of scheduling entities. The second phase is used to assign the scheduling entities to the parallel machines. The sequence of the scheduling entities is determined in the third phase on each single machine. The schedules are improved by the final, optional fourth phase. The paper describes software development issues, the integration of the framework into other information systems on the shopfloor, and the performance assessment of a case study.

Reconfiguration of a job shop to respond to product mix changes based on a virtual production system concept

Driven by intense global competition, governments, industry and academia in recent years have invested a considerable amount of resources to make production systems more efficient. However, in most cases, once a production system type is adopted for a shop, the operation mode of the shop remains the same over time. In today's environment where changes in product mix, production batch sizes and technology are common, what is required is a procedure that allows a shop to adapt or reconfigure its mode of operation based on the production instance at hand to achieve maximum efficiency. In the present paper, the application of a virtual production system is proposed to provide such flexibility and adaptability in production. A virtual production system has the capability of switching from one operation mode to another without actual physical reconfiguration of the shop and does this to maximize its operational efficiency. Such a virtual production system is examined. Experimental results for a set of example problems show that virtual production systems are superior to traditional production systems.

Hybrid ant systems for the dynamic facility layout problem

Today's consumer market demands that manufacturers must be competitive. This requires the efficient operation of manufacturing plants and their ability to quickly respond to changes in product mix and demand. In addition, studies show that material-handling cost make up between 20 and 50 percent of the total operating cost. Therefore, this paper considers the problem of arranging and rearranging, when there are changes in product mix and demand, manufacturing facilities such that the sum of material handling and rearrangement costs is minimized. This problem is called the dynamic facility layout problem (DFLP). In this paper, hybrid ant systems (HASs) are developed to solve the DFLP. To test the performance of the meta-heuristics, two data sets taken from the literature are used in the analysis. The results show that the HASs are efficient techniques for solving the DFLP. More importantly, HASs found new best solutions for more than one-half of all the test problems.

The Determinants of Financial Health of Asian Insurance Companies

AbstractPrevious studies of financial health of insurance companies are mainly focused on insurers operating in the United States and developed economies. This article focuses on the solvency of general (property‐liability) and life insurance companies in Asia using firm data and macro data separately. It uses different classification methods to classify the financial status of both general and life insurance companies. With the exception of Japan, failures of insurers in Singapore, Malaysia, and Taiwan are nonexistent. We find that, first, the factors that significantly affect general insurers' financial health in Asian economies are firm size, investment performance, liquidity ratio, surplus growth, combined ratio, and operating margin. Second, the factors that significantly affect life insurers' financial health are firm size, change in asset mix, investment performance, and change in product mix, but the last three factors are more applicable to Japan. Third, the financial health of insurance companies in Singapore seems to be significantly weakened by the Asian Financial Crisis. As the insurance industry in different Asian economies is at different stages of development, they require different regulatory guidelines.

Market basket analysis in a multiple store environment

Market basket analysis (also known as association-rule mining) is a useful method of discovering customer purchasing patterns by extracting associations or co-occurrences from stores' transactional databases. Because the information obtained from the analysis can be used in forming marketing, sales, service, and operation strategies, it has drawn increased research interest. The existing methods, however, may fail to discover important purchasing patterns in a multi-store environment, because of an implicit assumption that products under consideration are on shelf all the time across all stores. In this paper, we propose a new method to overcome this weakness. Our empirical evaluation shows that the proposed method is computationally efficient, and that it has advantage over the traditional method when stores are diverse in size, product mix changes rapidly over time, and larger numbers of stores and periods are considered.

Simulation-Based Benchmarking of Production Control Approaches for Complex Manufacturing Systems

In this paper, we describe benchmarking efforts for production control approaches applied to complex manufacturing systems. Complex manufacturing systems are characterized by a large number of products, an over time changing product mix, sequence-dependent set-up times, unrelated parallel machines, a mix of different process types and internal and external disturbances. In order to ensure comparison possibilities among different production control approaches, we suggest to use a simulation test-bed and a software architecture that allows for plug in of arbitrary production control software. We discuss different application areas, the advantages and also the limitations of the suggested approach.

Market responsive manufacturing for the automotive supply chain

Building to order enables manufacturing to better respond to market conditions. The time lost between changes in customer preferences and product mix disappears and customer demand can both be anticipated and shaped by the sales system. An automotive build to order supply chain must be able to meet seasonality within markets, and understand the detailed demand volatility for certain elements of the complex product mix, from which much of the profitability is derived. Market responsive manufacturing entails adaptive and flexible production and supply capability in conjunction with real‐time market interaction through revenue management. The combination of late capacity setting and revenue management can enable the whole extended enterprise to operate as a single entity. This article outlines the demand volatility examined for automotive products, integrated revenue and demand management as a solution, and the subsequent order system investment requirements.