Product Line Management Research Articles

Research on Production Management and Optimization of Multisensor Intelligent Clothing in 5G Era

The influence of 5G has penetrated into all aspects of people’s lives. The field of garment production management is inevitably affected by 5G. The various advanced technologies it promotes can greatly promote the production and management of clothing. Learning and understanding these technologies can help you learn how to change in the changing garment factory to obtain more intelligent and efficient production methods without being excluded by age. The garment production line management system proposed in this paper is based on the garment production line, introduces Internet technology into the garment production process, and monitors all links of the garment production process through the Zigbee network. The system improves the automation degree of enterprises, greatly expands the application scope of wireless sensor networks, and improves the application level of data acquisition, monitoring, equipment maintenance, and diagnosis in China’s industrial field. Wireless network node location technology is also an important supporting technology for managing wireless Zigbee networks. The visual display of a physical topology map can effectively help administrators manage and maintain wireless networks.

“Pulling the sheep’s wool”: The labour of online thrift in a Chinese factory

This paper draws on data collected during ethnographic fieldwork in a factory in south-east China to describe the significance of a group of activities colloquially known as “pulling the sheep’s wool” ( haoyangmao). This wide-ranging set of thrift-oriented practices involves gaining rewards and discounts by collecting various credits and points, most often through activities conducted on online shopping, news and payment platforms. Recent studies have sought to reposition thrift as a morally-infused consumptive practice for the creation of value, through which the concept of the house is enacted. However, this paper demonstrates how thrift is viewed by labourers as a kind of “work”. As such, it is able to act in a factory environment largely unmoored from notions of domesticity, instead delineating social boundaries between production line workers and managers, fostering communal behaviours amongst labourers and—through a process of earmarking—allowing for workers to direct a greater share of their wages toward household economies. We argue that this conception of thrift as labour actually reworks the way that consumption conjoins with production, challenging our received understandings of consumption, while also providing new possibilities for the creation of both value and personhood.

A paler shade of green: implications of green product deletion on supply chains

Product management activities by operations, marketing, and finance functions have typically focused on the innovation, acquisition, growth, and management of product lines and products. The same is true when considering product management for green products. The latter stages of critical strategic decisions related to product deletion or discontinuation have received less emphasis. In this conceptual paper, the focus is on green product deletion implications for supply chain management and operations. Organisations may view green product deletion as evolving from a deep green to a paler shade of green in their product offerings. A proposed strategic framework pays particular attention to the implications of the green product deletion decision for supply chain processes and operational competencies. In this situation, lessened organisational greenness needs to be weighed against other organisational and operational competencies. The strategic and inter-organisational relationships associated with this decision help set the stage for future research on this critical, yet neglected, organisational and operational supply chain issue.

STRATEGIC SET OF PRODUCT POLICY AND STRATEGIES OF PRODUCT LINE MANAGEMENT

STRATEGIC SET OF PRODUCT POLICY AND STRATEGIES OF PRODUCT LINE MANAGEMENT

Brand relevance and the effects of product proliferation across product categories

Product proliferation may not be an effective strategy for every brand in every product category. Rather, the success of product proliferation may be conditional on previously unconsidered differences across product categories. In particular, brand relevance in category (BRiC), which is closely associated with an array of category-level characteristics, offers a potentially influential contingency. We rely on a survey study (Study 1a) and a lab experiment (Study 1b) to examine individual consumer reactions to product proliferation. These studies show that product proliferation has a stronger impact on customer-based brand equity in high BRiC categories than in low BRiC categories. From a firm perspective, Study 2 explores the effect of product proliferation on brand sales performance using IRI scanner data; it indicates conversely that BRiC has an opposing moderating effect, such that product proliferation has a stronger impact on brand sales in low BRiC categories than in high BRiC categories. Together, these nuanced results have important implications for product line and brand management resource allocation decisions.

Implementation Criteria for Intelligent Systems in Motor Production Line Process Management

In this study, the factors that affect the implementation of intelligent systems in motor production lines are analyzed. A motor production line located in Vietnam is used as the research object. The research methods include secondary data collection, field study, and interviews. This study demonstrates the following: firstly, the implementation of intelligent systems in motor production lines is heading toward Industry 4.0. Secondly, it is proposed that three functional systems—robot arm, image recognition, and big data analysis—can be introduced in the motor production line. This study analyzes the process involved in coil and motor production lines and attempts to combine intelligent system functions. It is expected that in the future, manpower will be reduced, production line productivity will increase, and intelligent production lines will be proposed. The factors that affect the introduction of intelligent systems in motor production lines are improved, and the importance of intelligent systems, which has been rarely considered in previous studies, is highlighted. In the implementation criteria of the intelligent system in the process management of the motor production line, this study provides some suggestions (to coil and motor assembly line) for the production process management. These suggestions can be provided as a reference for production lines that acquaint with intelligent systems.

Model‐based Product Line Engineering–Enabling Product Families with Variants

ABSTRACTProduct Lines are a group of related products manufactured or produced within or between collaborating organizations. Effectively managing a product line requires understanding the similarities and differences between products, optimizing the development life cycle to leverage the similarities, and concentrating development on the differences. ISO 26550:2013 Software & Systems Engineering–Reference Model for Product Line Management & Engineering provides a standard for defining similarities, differences, and the choices between them. Model‐Based Systems and Software Engineering (MBSE) using the Systems Modeling Language (SysML) and the Unified Modeling Language (UML) provides a means of modeling systems and software. Bringing the two together allows users to model product lines in industry standard formats. These standards provide Model‐Based Product Line Engineering (MB‐PLE). Combining these with an execution engine means product models can be created for specific products, whilst maintaining the original product line model, providing significant return on investment (ROI) for aerospace companies.

Design of Management and Control System of Aero-engine Nozzle Processing Line

This paper introduces a kind of management and control system of machining production line for aero-engine nozzle. The main logistics is based on the logic control of PLC, which can dispatch a robot to realize the automatic transfer of the parts between workstations, automatic feeding and unloading of processing and testing equipment. Workstations are equipped with RFID to detect the identification of each nozzle. The system can reconstruct the process route according to the nozzle type, associate processing and test data of the nozzle with their identification number to establish the processing file. It realizes data exchanges between management and control systems by OPC interface, achieves centralized monitoring and control of the equipment of the whole line and improves the informatization level of workshop.

Applying Feature‐Based Systems and Software Product Line Engineering in Unclassified and Classified Environments

AbstractGlobal aerospace and defense companies are reaping the benefits of feature‐based systems and software product line engineering and management (FBPLE) in those situations where production must seamlessly span unclassified and classified environments (Gregg et al. 2014) (Gregg et al. 2015) (Krueger et al. 2014) (Lanman et al. 2011). These benefits include leveraging company talent while awaiting access to classified material; leveraging employees who are members of other sovereign states; and optimizing system production and maintenance for export / import. In this whitepaper we present the architectural design and accompanying business processes for a PLE factory and its artifacts that comprise unclassified and classified digital assets1. These digital assets are used in automated generation of unclassified and classified product instances. All production activities occur within a single logical enterprise spanning multiple information systems comprising multiple security zones2.

Organizational specificity of batch production enterprises of processing industry

This article deals with the approaches to the management of batch production in enterprises of processing industries. The advantages of batch production in comparison with piece production and continuous production are proved in the text. The authors show the mechanism of parallel or consecutive production line management. The comparison of key parameters of batch production in foreign and Russian enterprises is carried out in the article. The authors describe similarity and difference of batch production at the enterprises which are characterized by the discontinuity of production cycle with an exact calculation of temporal parameters of the stages of direct labor process. This comparison is made according to the methodology of similarity determination of the elements of production management in its various types and primarily in batch and piece production. Three variants of productive process modernization of the batch production are analyzed in the text of the article. Their integrating efficiency is assessed using such parameters as annual production volume of output, production cycle continuity, level of prime equipment load.

Proposing an Online Testing Method for Gradual Migration of Information and Control System

To respond to changes in the requirements of the information and control system, it is necessary to rebuild the system with new functions and/or systems with a different architecture. In this paper, we propose a method that enables on-site technicians to perform step-wise migration from a legacy system to a target system without having to stop the whole system and without requiring advance preparation or support from a system engineer who is an expert in system design and development. Accordingly, we aimed to develop a technology for the coexistence of and cooperation between with target and legacy systems and cooperation test between heterogeneous systems. We implemented this method and evaluated its effectiveness by applying it for rebuilding a production line management system.

Application of PI-VM for management of the metal target plasma etching processes in OLED display manufacturing

Generation of the defect particles during the plasma-assisted metal dry etching process is induced by the various mechanisms. Most of these mechanisms are caused by the non-volatility of metal-halide compounds generated during the etching process. Degeneration of the metal etching process chamber condition is observed as the frequent process fault caused by the defects, but the worse condition is not recovered by itself. Because of this property of the metal etching process, proper work of the preventive maintenance (PM) to restore the process chamber or the addition of a discharge cleaning step is required periodically. However, inadequate PM or discharge cleaning by the uncertain cause analysis of the defect generation should be a just temporary remedy, and might lead the repetition of similar problems. To solve this problem, the virtual metrology (VM) model based on the plasma information (PI) parameters, known as PI-VM, was developed and applied for the defect control of the metal layer dry etching processes in organic light emitting diode (OLED) display manufacturing. To obtain the information about the generation rates of non-volatile compounds and their removal rates by the exhaustion system, PI parameters are designed with the consideration of the reaction kinetics in the metal etching plasma volume, sheath, and reacting surface using the big data of equipment engineering system (EES) and optical emission spectroscopy (OES) accumulated during the mass production process. The developed PI-VM index could be applied to a 2–3 h earlier alarm system for the defect occurrence, and had succeeded over 90% of alarm rate. This PI-VM alarm was applied to predictive control of the process by the early substitution of the discharge cleaning step or by the repair of the proper parts in the process chamber. By the control of processes based on the predicted results of the PI-VM, management of the mass production line with about 30% decreased defect was possible in OLED display manufacturing.

Addition by subtraction: Integrating product deletion with lean and sustainable supply chain management

Product management activities have typically focused on the innovation, acquisition, expansion and management of product lines and products. However, product deletion or discontinuation is also critical. Despite its strategic importance, product deletion has received relatively less attention in both academia and practice. Researchers have conceptually investigated product deletion, its influence on firm's resources, the factors influencing product deletion decisions, and the product deletion process. However, very few papers have related product deletion decisions to supply chain management, especially when leanness and sustainability are major objectives. This paper aims to integrate lean and sustainable supply chain dimensions with product deletion by proposing a multilevel decision model that can facilitate a product deletion decision with an objective of developing a leaner and more sustainable supply chain. The model has three major decision dimensions with 8 factors with 29 influencing determinants. The model uses an integrated analytical hierarchy/network process (AHP/ANP) and a benefits, opportunities, cost and risks (BOCR) analysis. An illustrative company scenario is provided for the model application. The paper contributes by filling an important gap by integrating lean and sustainable supply chain management and product deletion literature to formulate a product deletion decision making model which aids in enhancing the leanness and sustainability of supply chains. The model also allows for cross-functional participation involving marketing, operations, finance, and environmental sustainability fields.

Risky travel: The missing piece for holistic cyber security risk management

What types of risk might the following professionals introduce to their business during a business trip with corporate information assets: CEO travelling to initiate acquisition negotiations; engineer travelling for impact analysis of new inventions with a business partner; VP Marketing travelling to ‘sell’ the benefits of his company’s latest product; cyber security expert responsible for network architecture design traveling to attend HACKFEST conference? The risk common to all these professionals is the exposure of their network to a sophisticated cyber security attack by infection, wiretapping, interception, substitution or sessions replay. This paper defines and considers Operational Technology (OT), as opposed to Information Technology (IT), which refers to computing systems that are used to manage industrial operations rather than administrative operations. Operational systems include production line management, mining operations control, oil and gas monitoring, etc. Due to the nature of the impact of potential threats, OT networks require maximum protection, not only in terms of data but also — and above all — to avoid security breaches that may have an impact on national security or even human life. Stuxnet, Dragonfly and BlackEnergy are well-known malicious programs that have damaged many OT networks, with major consequences for power production, storage and distribution. Stuxnet destroyed much of the centrifuge of Iran’s uranium enrichment programme. Germany revealed in a government report that a steel production furnace had been damaged in a cyber security attack by Dragonfly. At Christmas 2015, several Ukrainian companies in the energy sector were attacked by BlackEnergy, causing blackouts in at least eight regions of Ukraine. The paper concludes by encouraging OT professionals to focus on a model that leans on human, process and technology in order to provide the most appropriate mobility services.

A Paler Shade of Green: Implications of Green Product Deletion on Supply Chains

Product management activities by marketing, operations, and finance functions have typically focused on the innovation, acquisition, growth, and management of product lines and products. The same i...

Industry shakeouts and product strategies: lessons from the US laser printer industry

ABSTRACTMany industries experience a shakeout, which occurs when, after an initial increase, the number of firms drops significantly in a short period of time. A shakeout drives changes in the market structure and, thus, accompanying changes in firms’ strategies. In this paper, we explore differences in firms’ product strategies (i.e. product quality improvement, product line management, and product market strategy) before and after the initiation of an industry shakeout, focusing on the role of product exit. In analyzing a sample of US laser printer manufacturers and their products for the period between 1983 and 2002, we find clear differences in firms’ product exit decisions before and after the initiation of a shakeout. With these findings, our study contributes to the understanding of the link between industry shakeouts and firms’ product strategies.

A re-transmitted chipless tag using CSRR coupled structure

To reduce the cost of the traditional RFID tags, a re-transmitted chipless tag based on high Q CSRR structure working on UWB frequency band is proposed, which is composed of two orthogonal polarization transmitting and receiving microstrip broadband monopole antennas, loaded with multiple CSRR resonators. Data encoding is utilized the hybrid encoding technology by the significantly spectral signature of the high-Q CSRR resonator and the different amplitude on the same frequency point. The coding capacity is achieved 84 bits, which is far greater than other structures chipless tag. Several typical re-transmitted chipless tags based on CSRR structure are designed by HFSS software. The results of simulation and test are well agreeable to verify the feasibility of the proposed tag such tag, and it has low cost, narrow bandwidth and compact structure. It can be applied to low-cost logistics, production line management and other fields.

Production line 3D visualization monitoring system design based on OpenGL

New production line management technologies are required and adopted recently with the development of modern manufacturing industry. In this study, a production line three-dimensional (3D) visualization monitoring system based on OpenGL modeling, open database connectivity (ODBC), and database management technology is established on a VC++6.0 platform to satisfy effective production. A client/server model is adopted in the system, and data on processing information, interactive operation, and failure process are stored in the server side database. A client reads the workpiece process information from the server, and the machining process of every workpiece is visually represented in the form of 3D visualization. Production line 3D visualization provides production capacity simulation to optimize the parameter settings. When compared with the analysis results of production line capacity, the key parameters possess the same optimal values, and this proves the accuracy of production line 3D visualization monitoring system. The system provides effective data support for production line monitoring and management in enterprises.

An Automated Fault Tree Generation Approach With Fault Configuration Based on Model Checking

Fault tree generation technology is a key issue for safety analysis of large complex systems. Traditional safety analysis methods usually describe the origin, propagation, or concrete behavior of the fault and do not portray the constraints between faults. However, these constraints are the system’s characteristics, and a lack of expression of these constraints will make the fault model defective, thereby resulting in a fault tree that will reduce the accuracy of the safety analysis. To improve the efficiency and accuracy of safety analysis, this paper proposes a fault tree generation method that is based on fault configuration and introduces the variability management of software product lines to model system faults and perform the formal analysis. First, the fault feature diagram is defined to describe the constraint relationships between system faults, and the fault-labeled transition system is defined based on the Kripke structure to describe the system behavior. Then, based on the model semantics, the procedure for generating fault trees by model checking is established. Finally, using temporal logic to describe the system safety attributes, we adopt the model checking tool SNIP to verify the safety attributes and generate the fault tree automatically. The fault modeling method that is proposed in this paper includes the inherent constraints between faults, which makes the system fault model more realistic and accurate. A case study demonstrates the effectiveness of the proposed method.

Changes in customer preference heterogeneity patterns: a simulation study

PurposeAt the core of the success of any firm is its ability to satisfy customer preferences. It has also been part of managerial wisdom that it is good management practice to treat a market as that comprising several market segments and to serve each segment with a different marketing mix. It thus goes without saying that market segments are believed to be very important to profitability. The purpose of this paper is to contend that preference-based segments form and evolve through social interactions between customers. This argument puts forth the questions: How do they form? How do they evolve?Design/methodology/approachThe authors used controlled computer simulations to study the patterns of segments that emerge in markets as consumers in them engage in social interactions.FindingsThe simulation results show that market segments emerge across a wide set of assumptions. Further, the paper offers a number of conjectures and propositions for both research and managerial applications, based on the patterns of the emergent segments that were observed.Research limitations/implicationsA research program could/should be developed based on the empirical measurement of preferences, longitudinally, over the life cycle of a product for a fixed sample group, and on the collection of factors about social interaction (ν), social intervention (β) and the propensity to differentiate (α). The results of this study also indicate that further computational work may be able to find the points of criticality where patterns of behavior will change. With the availability of internet data, close empirical examination and operationalization, and refinement of the authors' initial attempts has become possible. For example, data sets that may be applicable are Zafarani and Liu (2009), Leskovec (2012), Newman (2011), and Arenas (2012).Practical implicationsThe findings of the study have implications for product line management, conditions under which a first-mover advantage may prevail, and the critical measurements needed to understand segment evolution.Originality/valueTo the authors' knowledge, this paper is the first to study the patterns of emergence of segments over several scenarios.