Integrated Manufacturing Systems: Volume 12 Issue 7

Small firms under MICROSCOPE: international differences in production/operations management practices and performance

Raffaella Cagliano, Kate Blackmon, Chris Voss

Although the importance of operations in reaching world‐class competitiveness has been highlighted in the operations management literature, small and medium‐sized companies (SMEs…

The strategic context of customer‐supplier partnerships: evidence from a global survey

Gianluca Spina, Giulio Zotteri

Explores strategic and structural contingencies surrounding customer‐supplier partnerships, in a global sample of 218 firms from the engineering sector. Collaborative practice is…

A state‐time model to measure the reconfigurability of manufacturing areas – key to performance

Hermann Ku¨hnle

Looks at reconfigurability – the ability of organizations to become self‐driven – as a challenge to manufacturing success factors. States that reconfigurability is the main…

An approach to scalability and line balancing for reconfigurable manufacturing systems

Sung‐Yong Son, Tava Lennon Olsen, Derek Yip‐Hoi

Line balancing has been an important technique for manufacturing system design, because a completely balanced system can provide maximum resource utilization at the designed…

Exploring team formation processes in virtual partnerships

Violina Ratcheva, Shailendra Vyakarnam

Different types of new ventures require different types of new venture teams in order to operate successfully. Virtual teams formed across organisational boundaries and organised…

Achieving lean supply through agile manufacturing

Peter McCullen, Denis Towill

Drawing on results from supply chain modelling and dynamic simulation, presents four material flow principles which can be employed to reduce the bullwhip effect. A case study…

Agility in manufacturing systems: an exploratory modeling framework and simulation

Ranga Ramasesh, Shailesh Kulkarni, Maliyakal Jayakumar

It has been widely recognized that agility enables manufacturing systems to respond to dynamic and unpredictable changes in today’s competitive environment. Develops a…