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Editorial: the new century - Analytical techniques Article
The article entitled: "Editorial: the new century" is in the Analytical techniques Articles section of Operations Management Papers area...
ARTICLE DESCRIPTION: The start of a new century (and a new millennium) is a good time to look further ahead, and at a wider range of activities than we might normally do...
MORE INFO: Editorial: the new century The start of a new century (and a new millennium) is a good time to look further ahead, and at a wider range of activities than we might normally do... During the last century there have been major developments in technology, which have had far reaching effects on our business and social lives. The rate of innovation has accelerated increasingly during the last quarter of a century and this will continue more rapidly in the coming years. The Internet will provide a major area of development of business during the next few years. The educational and general information available on the Net is truly staggering, but the changes to business practices may be more profound. The Prime Minister has said that if you don't see the Internet as an opportunity - it will be a threat. There will be radical changes to so many activities. Many companies have had websites for some time and are moving forward to advertise, market and sell their products as confidence grows in the payment and security procedures. The e-commerce channels provide excellent opportunities for businesses to interact and collaborate with their customers and much attention is being given to development of Customer Relationship Management (CRM). A number of hauliers now provide information on the Net to allow clients to monitor individual parcel or pallet deliveries through the various stages of their computerised delivery systems. Progressing of urgent or late deliveries used to require a large amount of telephoning between different locations. Now the booking and monitoring is done automatically with bar code scanning of packages and prompt downloading of information from drivers/depots into the main system. It is a simple step to relate the haulier's package reference to the manufacturer's despatch reference and sales order number and line, and where appropriate monitor back to the works order with any other relevant data. The manufacturer and the final customer could both be given the facility to monitor progress along this path. As the IOM, and in our previous life as BPICS, we have a strong involvement with operational planning and control. The last quarter century saw MRP/MRPII/ERP which gave us much, but also generally fell rather short of expectations for a variety of reasons. A number of improvements were sought and found through TQM, JIT, KANBANS. There is now a growing interest in Advanced Planning and Scheduling (APS) which has been the subject of some good articles in Control and the Institute has recently established a new Special Interest Group for this topic. This area promises significant advances for the future and significant changes will be needed on a regular basis. Increasingly customers require a wider variety of products and shorter lead times. The planning and scheduling will need to be reviewed and revised more frequently, perhaps daily with a real time monitoring of actual requirements as orders are received. It will be necessary to ensure that all plans are in step all along the supply chain and ideally to provide on-line, real time visibility for customers and suppliers using the Net. Should the APS models be kept simple, tailored to each individual operation, optimising for only the major constraints but supplemented by regular/real time information to monitor actual loadings on different resources? Rather than holding traditional safety stocks, will it be better to provide safety capacity of each major resource for last minute supplies of parts as needed? Above all the developments will be frequent and ongoing; each change must be flexible to anticipate the following new development. This will be very interesting, very challenging and very exciting! Best wishes for the New Century!
PUBLISHER: Institute of Operations Management
Page number: Page: 5 Word count: Words: approx. 350
Vol 26 - No 01 - February 2000
The article can be downloaded in full from the publisher's site i.e. the Institute of Operations Management.
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