https://epublications.marquette.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1270&context=mgmt_fac

Qualitative case studies in operations management: Trends, research outcomes, and future research implications

The nature of manufacturing systems faces ever more complex, dynamic and at times even chaotic behaviors. In order to being able to satisfy the demand for high-quality products in an efficient manner, it is essential to utilize all means available. One area, which saw fast pace developments in terms of not only promising results but also usability, is machine learning. Promising an answer to many of the old and new challenges of manufacturing, machine learning is widely discussed by researchers and practitioners alike. However, the field is very broad and even confusing which presents a challenge and a barrier hindering wide application. Here, this paper contributes in presenting an overview of available machine learning techniques and structuring this rather complicated area. A special focus is laid on the potential benefit, and examples of successful applications in a manufacturing environment.

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Machine learning in manufacturing: advantages, challenges, and applications

This study examines how comprehensive performance measurement systems (PMS) affect managerial performance. It is proposed that the effect of comprehensive PMS on managerial performance is indirect through the mediating variables of role clarity and psychological empowerment. Data collected from a survey of 83 strategic business unit managers are used to test the model. Results from a structural model tested using Partial Least Squares regression indicate that comprehensive PMS is indirectly related to managerial performance through the intervening variables of role clarity and psychological empowerment. This result highlights the role of cognitive and motivational mechanisms in explaining the effect of management accounting systems on managerial performance. In particular, the results indicate that comprehensive PMS influences managers’ cognition and motivation, which, in turn, influence managerial performance.

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The effect of comprehensive performance measurement systems on role clarity, psychological empowerment and managerial performance

Agile supply chain capabilities: Determinants of competitive objectives

Information technology matters to business success because it directly affects the mechanisms through which they create and capture value to earn a profit: IT is thus integral to a firm's business-level strategy. Much of the extant research on the IT/strategy relationship, however, inaccurately frames IT as only a functional-level strategy. This widespread under-appreciation of the business-level role of IT indicates a need for substantial retheorizing of its role in strategy and its complex and interdependent relationship with the mechanisms through which firms generate profit. Using a comprehensive framework of potential profit mechanisms, we argue that while IT activities remain integral to the functional-level strategies of the firm, they also play several significant roles in business strategy, with substantial performance implications. IT affects industry structure and the set of business-level strategic alternatives and value-creation opportunities that a firm may pursue. Along with complementary organizational changes, IT both enhances the firm's current (ordinary) capabilities and enables new (dynamic) capabilities, including the flexibility to focus on rapidly changing opportunities or to abandon losing initiatives while salvaging substantial asset value. Such digitally attributable capabilities also determine how much of this value, once created, can be captured by the firm--and how much will be dissipated through competition or through the power of value chain partners, the governance of which itself depends on IT. We explore these business-level strategic roles of IT and discuss several provocative implications and future research directions in the converging information systems and strategy domains.

Information technology and business-level strategy: toward an integrated theoretical perspective

The purpose of this paper is to discuss the resources, including operations and information technology that have contributed to the competitive position of the Port of Singapore. We present a detailed discussion of the Port and its resources, and analyze the case using the resource-based view of strategy. A firm with a competitive advantage excels in time, quality, or cost, or a combination of such over its competitors. We argue that a combination of resources including supportive government policies, ample investment, and well thought out operations and information technology along with location and a natural deep harbor to help create a sustainable advantage for the Port. We find that Singapore compensated for some of its natural disadvantages like small land area by successfully applying information technology in critical areas to increase the island's capacity to handle shipping.

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A resource-based view of competitive advantage at the Port of Singapore

This article reports on ten field studies of the implementation of CAD/CAM in Canadian manufacturing firms of a three-year period, focusing on the implementation efforts of the sponsors (patriarchs) and champions (evangelists) in each case. Although the patriarch appeared critical in the new technology involved, it was the evangelist who stayed with the project throughout its life and whose efforts were critical to its successful implementation and integration. The successful evangelists were those who fulfilled three basic roles (pathfinding, problem solving, and implementing) and who demonstrated faith and persuasion. The authors offer prescriptions for senior management with regard to the selection and management of project champions in the implementation of Advanced Manufacturing Technologies.

Preaching the Gospel: The Evangelists of New Technology:

In spite of the recognition that the manufacturing function can create and sustain a competitive advantage for the firm, only a few empirical studies have examined the relationship between manufacturing practices and plant performance. In this paper, based on responses from a large number of Canadian manufacturing plants and a number of Australian manufacturing plants, we identify the manufacturing practices which distinguish the "Most Successful" (MS) plants from the "Least Successful" (LS) plants. Success was measured by asking respondents to indicate year-over-year trends for each of 22 performance measures by specifying whether there had been an increase, a decrease or no change. The differences in the manufacturing practices used by the MS plants and the LS plants reflect three general distinctions between the two groups: (i) adopting a logical portfolio of practices which relate to competitive priorities, (ii) workforce focus, and (iii) process orientation.

Assessing manufacturing plant competitiveness - An empirical field study

Manufacturing practices and competitive capability: an Australian study

The rapid and successful emergence of flexible-working-hour systems in Europe presents new evidence about the effects of systems of participation in management. After comparing the assumptions underlying flexible working hours with those basic to many other participative systems, the authors find a significant difference, upon which they base a number of hypotheses that explain the general success of this innovative management system.

John R. M. Gordon

Papers

A resource-based view of competitive advantage at the Port of Singapore

Preaching the Gospel: The Evangelists of New Technology:

Assessing manufacturing plant competitiveness - An empirical field study

Manufacturing practices and competitive capability: an Australian study

Flexible Working Hours: The Missing Link