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Modified
Failure Mode and Effects Analysis: A Reliability and Cost-based
Approach
-- V
P Arunachalam and C Jegadheesan
High
quality products, with minimum time to market at competitive
prices, can meet the changing demands of the customers in
the present day global competition. Concurrent Engineering
(CE) tools have proved their worth in achieving the objective.
Failure Mode and Effects Analysis (FMEA), one of the tools
of CE, has been widely used to identify and eliminate potential
failures before the product or service reaches the customer.
It has been found that very limited work has been done in
the area of service FMEA. A modified FMEA, with a reliability
and cost-based approach, has been presented for the cooling
system of passenger transport vehicles, by collecting data
from a state transport corporation depot.
©
2006 IUP . All Rights Reserved.
Reliability
Considerations in a Target Costing Process: An FMEA Approach
--R
Gandhinathan and N Raviswaran
The
New Product Development (NPD) process has undergone some revolutionary
changes during the past few years due to the emerging global
economic scenario. Much has been written about the Japanese
practices in NPD. The main strength of the Japanese companies,
especially the automotive companies, appears to be their ability
to manage the costs effectively. One of the many NPD tools
that have emerged from Japan is target costing, which is gaining
popularity in industries in the West. In this market-oriented
economy, organizations are striving to offer the customers
maximum value at a minimum possible price. Target costing
has emerged as one of the powerful tools to address the apparently
paradoxical situation, i.e., to offer more value at a lesser
price and still maintain profitability. Literature has seen
target costing primarily as a technique for profit management.
Firms use target costing to ensure that new products are profitable
when launched. The primary objective of this article is to
address the reliability issues which arise in a target costing
process due to cost reduction pressures. An analysisFailure
Modes and Effects Analysis (FMEA)has been proposed in this
work to help the product designers to ensure product reliability
during target costing process. This work claims uniqueness
in the fact that most of the literature on target costing
has focused on the managerial accounting aspects and only
a few have attempted to study the implementation issues like
reliability concerns. The proposed FMEA model for target costing
has been validated by using a case study conducted at an automotive
component manufacturing company based at Coimbatore, South
India.
©
2006 IUP . All Rights Reserved.
Performance
Evaluation of World Class Manufacturing System: An
Overview
-- N Anantharaman and R
M Nachiappan
The
World Class Manufacturing (WCM) system has attracted the attention
of industries all over the world. The perceptible impact of
WCM lies in attaining the far-reaching world class standards.
This article discovers and differentiates the WCM system and
traditional manufacturing system, based on individual components
of a manufacturing system. The role of performance measurement
is described, and a set of nine performance elementsinnovation,
productivity, quality, cost, flexibility, delivery, safety,
morale and environmentis developed to measure the status of
WCM. The designed nine performance elements are weighed with
respect to the basic components of a manufacturing system.
The importance of individual Measures of Performance (MOP)
under each performance element is also analyzed. In order
to achieve excellence in manufacturing, companies must begin
to incorporate WCM proactively and intelligently with effectively
designed performing elements, and adopt changes in MOP with
respect to the global scenario. The designed MOP chart is
used to evaluate the WCM system performance of an organization.
©
2006 IUP . All Rights Reserved.
Ranking
Hazards: A Fuzzy Set Approach for Rational Use of Intuition
--P
K Bandyopadhyay, S C Roy and S N Sen
The
Fuzzyset Approach is based on the premise that traditional
crisp boundaries (yes/no, etc.) are inadequate in dealing
with risk assessment in real life situations. Gradual memberships
of sets in terms of linguistic variables are therefore introduced
to make the model intuitively easy to accept, since concepts
such as `very high', `moderate' and `low' are quite acceptable
terms, and more or less uniformly understood in the parlance
of risk assessment. In this article, a multi-objective decision-making
model, using the structural forms supplied by the fuzzy set
theory ordinal information on preferences, and importance
of the individual objectives, has been employed, thereby avoiding
the subjectiveness involved in assigning membership functions.
©
2006 IUP . All Rights Reserved.
Shift
Scheduling and Materials Planning: A Management Game
--
B
V Cadambi
This
article deals with shift scheduling and materials planning,
which is considered to be a management game. The power of
management games in providing experiential learning, based
on the research of numerous experts, is highlighted. The game,
the approach to its conduct in classroom settings, and potential
learning are the subjects of discussion of this article. Such
a game can be used as an aid in Operations Management courses
both in the postgraduate and executive development programs.
©2006 IUP . All Rights Reserved.
Case
Study
Avon
Products Inc. Redesigning its Supply Chain
-- T Gayatri
Avon
Products Inc., the world's largest direct seller of cosmetics
and beauty-related products, began reviving its supply-chain
by the end of 1990s. Over the last decade, the company has
expanded its markets by launching more number of brands. It
had also opened retail stores and online shopping portals.
As it expanded into different markets, inefficiency in its
supply chain came to light as it had a tough time meeting
the spurt in the demand. To counter this situation, Andrew
Jung launched a Business Transformation Initiative in 1999,
and later, Lou Mignone was put in charge of the supply chain
specific initiatives. A major supply chain overhaul was undertaken,
resulting in savings from each stage of the value chain. Inventory
was centralized, supplier relations were strengthened and
demand forecasting was automated. Thus, supply chain overheads
came down and the operating margins of the company improved.
The case highlights the supply chain transformation initiatives
of Avon Products Inc., in light of the increasing demand and
facing the sophisticated global market arena. The case helps
to discuss how supply chain strategies pertaining to subtle
elements of supply chain can significantly help in improving
the bottom line.
©
2005 IBS Case Development Center. All
Rights Reserved. For accessing and procuring the case study,
log on to www.ecch.cranfield.ac.uk |
