According to W. Edwards Deming, American companies require nothing less than a transformation of management style and of governmental relations with industry. In Out of the Crisis, originally published in 1982, Deming offers a theory of management based on his famous 14 Points for Management. Management's failure to plan for the future, he claims, brings about loss of market, which brings about loss of jobs. Management must be judged not only by the quarterly dividend, but by innovative plans to stay in business, protect investment, ensure future dividends, and provide more jobs through improved product and service. In simple, direct language, he explains the principles of management transformation and how to apply them.

Out of the Crisis

A survey on problems and methods in generalized assembly line balancing

Risk management plays a vital role in effectively operating supply chains in the presence of a variety of uncertainties. Over the years, many researchers have focused on supply chain risk management (SCRM) by contributing in the areas of defining, operationalising and mitigating risks. In this paper, we review and synthesise the extant literature in SCRM in the past decade in a comprehensive manner. The purpose of this paper is threefold. First, we present and categorise SCRM research appearing between 2003 and 2013. Second, we undertake a detailed review associated with research developments in supply chain risk definitions, risk types, risk factors and risk management/mitigation strategies. Third, we analyse the SCRM literature in exploring potential gaps.

https://minerva-access.unimelb.edu.au/bitstream/handle/11343/118650/8.pdf

Supply chain risk management: a literature review

State-of-the-art exact and heuristic solution procedures for simple assembly line balancing

RFID research: An academic literature review (1995–2005) and future research directions

Purpose – To place the research on radio frequency identification (RFID) usage in supply chains within a specific business and market context; in this case, the grocery industry.Design/methodology/approach – This paper considers RFID research within the context of the grocery industry and outlines the market drivers that affect the way the grocery industry approaches RFID and also specific areas of research on RFID that should be undertaken to better provide the grocery industry with managerial insights into this technology's application.Findings – Examining market drivers that are leading to RFID implementation in the grocery industry, this paper provides a theoretical framework for future applied research on RFID implementation. Specifically, it develops a research framework that includes research using modeling techniques, RFID implementation and the impact of RFID on daily operational issues.Research limitations/implications – This paper focuses on the market drivers for RFID implementation. While it ...

https://business.baylor.edu/Pedro_Reyes/publications/Future%20impacts%20of%20RFID%20on%20e-supply%20chains%20in%20grocery%20retailing.pdf

Future impacts of RFID on e‐supply chains in grocery retailing

Purpose – This research aims to empirically investigate the effect of outsourcing on firm level performance metrics, providing evidence about outsourcing influences on a firm's cost‐efficiency, productivity and profitability.Design/methodology/approach – This study is concerned with empirically examining the impact of outsourcing on a firm's performance. The results are based on a sample of 51 publicly traded firms that outsourced parts of their operations between 1990 and 2002. Publicly available accounting data are used to test for changes in operating performances that result from outsourcing decisions. Operating performances are examined over a four‐quarter period after the outsourcing announcement.Findings – This research provides evidence that outsourcing can improve a firm's cost‐efficiency. While existing literature on outsourcing has also sought to draw anecdotal and conceptual evidence that highly visible companies have improved their productivity and profitability as well through outsourcing, t...

Outsourcing effects on firms' operational performance: An empirical study

An analysis of job dissatisfaction and turnover to reduce global supply chain risk: Evidence from China

This research presents a Simulated Annealing based technique to address the assembly line balancing problem for multiple objective problems when paralleling of workstations is permitted. The Simulated Annealing methodology is used for 23 line balancing strategies across seven problems. The resulting performance of each solution was studied through a simulation experiment. Many of the problems consisted of multiple products, which were sequenced in a mixed model fashion, task times were assumed to be stochastic, and parallel workstations were permitted. Two primary performance objectives were of most interest: total cost (labour and equipment) per part, and the degree to which the desired cycle time was achieved. Other traditional line balancing and production performance measures were also collected. This paper demonstrates how Simulated Annealing can be used to obtain line balancing solutions when one or more objectives are important. The experimental results showed that Simulated Annealing approaches yi...

/pdf/using-simulated-annealing-to-solve-a-multiobjective-assembly-1uqqg40bp9.pdf

Using simulated annealing to solve a multiobjective assembly line balancing problem with parallel workstations

This paper presents a Simulated Annealing based heuristic that simultaneously considers both setups and the stability of parts usage rates when sequencing jobs for production in a just-in-time environment. Varying the emphasis of these two conflicting objectives is explored. Several test problems are solved via the Simulated Annealing heuristic, and their objective function values are compared to solutions obtained via a Tabu Search approach from the literature. Comparison shows that the Simulated Annealing approach provides superior results to the Tabu Search approach. It is also found that the Simulated Annealing approach provides near-optimal solutions for smaller problems.

Gregory V. Frazier

Papers

Future impacts of RFID on e‐supply chains in grocery retailing

Outsourcing effects on firms' operational performance: An empirical study

An analysis of job dissatisfaction and turnover to reduce global supply chain risk: Evidence from China

Using simulated annealing to solve a multiobjective assembly line balancing problem with parallel workstations

A simulated annealing approach to mixed-model sequencing with multiple objectives on a just-in-time line