Supply Chain Engineering and Logistics Handbook

Inventory and Production Control

Erick C. Jones

• Publisher: CRC Press
• Year: 2019
• eBook ISBN: 9781351658539
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Betriebswirtschaft
• Subtopic: Industriemanagement

This handbook begins with the history of Supply Chain (SC) Engineering, it goes on to explain how the SC is connected today, and rounds out with future trends. The overall merit of the book is that it introduces a framework similar to sundial that allows an organization to determine where their company may fall on the SC Technology Scale. The book will describe those who are using more historic technologies, companies that are using current collaboration tools for connecting their SC to other global SCs, and the SCs that are moving more towards cutting edge technologies. This book will be a handbook for practitioners, a teaching resource for academics, and a guide for military contractors.

Some figures in the eBook will be in color.

• Presents a decision model for choosing the best Supply Chain Engineering (SCE) strategies for Service and Manufacturing Operations with respect to Industrial Engineering and Operations Research techniques
• Offers an economic comparison model for evaluating SCE strategies for manufacturing outsourcing as opposed to keeping operations in-house
• Demonstrates how to integrate automation techniques such as RFID into planning and distribution operations
• Provides case studies of SC inventory reductions using automation from AIT and RFID research
• Covers planning and scheduling, as well as transportation and SC theory and problems

Part 1

Understanding Global Supply Chain Engineering

1

Introduction to the Fourth Industrial Revolution and the Supply Chain

Erick C. Jones

The very substance of the ambitious is merely the shadow of a dream.

William Shakespeare

1.1 Introduction

At the time of writing this book, many people consider we are in the Fourth Industrial Revolution. The World Economic Forum’s chairman Klaus Schwab is synonymous for addressing this term along with the use of the terms “second machine age” and “Industry 4.0”. The Fourth Industrial Revolution has been generally defined as the connection of physical, digital, and biological systems, also termed cyber-physical systems. This description integrates technologies such as robotics, artificial intelligence, nanotechnology, quantum computing, and biotechnology. These technologies are often associated with Fourth Industrial Revolution terms such as internet of things (IoT), industrial IoT, fifth-generation wireless technologies, additive manufacturing, and autonomous vehicles. At the time of this writing, there is a great deal of buzz on how companies such as Uber and other ride sharing companies, and Tesla, one of the newest car manufacturing companies that focuses on driverless vehicles, have inspired great investment into future technologies.

1.2 Other Industrial Revolutions

1.2.1 First Industrial Revolution

Benchmarking the other industrial revolutions with main events, we can identify the First Industrial Revolution, occurring in the 18th and 19th centuries, with rural, farming, and mostly agrarian communities and/or the population that moved to industrial areas where major urban cities were first created. The primary impact was the creation of steam power from large bodies of water. This period is identified by the use of the steam engine.

1.2.2 Second Industrial Revolution

The Second Industrial Revolution is approximated from the late 1800s through World War I and is generally associated with the expansion of steel, oil and gas, and the discovery of electricity. The driving industry was the railroad industry and what many called the robber barons. Correspondingly, innovations such as the telephone, light bulb, and the internal combustion engine spawned this revolution.

1.2.3 Third Industrial Revolution

The Third Industrial Revolution, which many people would argue that we are still participating in, is called the Digital Revolution. The Digital Revolution is associated with the advancement of technology from analog electronic and mechanical devices to digital devices and technology. The time is approximated as starting during the 1980s when computer giants such as Microsoft, Dell, and Microsoft corporations revolutionized the acceptance and the use of the personal computer, the internet, and other information and communication technologies. Arguably, the foundational building blocks for the Third Industrial Revolution took place during the 1940s, following World War II with large-scale computers used to decode and decipher information at a faster pace and the competitive east versus west race to space.

1.2.4 Fourth Industrial Revolution (Industry 4.0 and Smart Factory)

Again, the Fourth Industrial Revolution builds on the Digital Revolution, representing new ways in which technology becomes embedded within societies and even the human body. In the book The Fourth Industrial Revolution, Klaus Schwab describes the fourth revolution as fundamentally different from the previous three, which were characterized mainly by advances in technology; the Fourth Industrial Revolution will advance communication and connectivity rather than hardware technology. Schwab suggests that future technologies have great potential to continue to connect billions of more people to the web, drastically improve the efficiency of businesses and organizations, and help regenerate the natural environment. The Fourth Industrial Revolution is also referred to as Industry 4.0 by the German government and others who see the embodiment of the revolution as smart factory and smart communities.

1.3 Supply Chain Envisioned for the Fourth Industrial Revolution

In the following sections, we describe a sample research project and ideas that exemplify how supply chains (SCs) are planned to be impacted by the Fourth Industrial Revolution.

1.3.1 Understanding the Societal Impacts of a Maker-Based Reverse SC

The recent Maker Movement has spurred a new excitement of moving more STEM-based domestic jobs to the United States. The idea of citizen science having an impact on entrepreneurship, student learning, and increased domestic manufacturing capacity is exhilarating. Though many of these ideas build upon techniques and ideas that stem from advanced manufacturing research breakthroughs, some of these breakthroughs have been apparent in 3D printing, advanced manufacturing, and nanomanufacturing activities. There are also those who believe that soon the research will move into the quantum arena.

For these ideas to be realized, there must be a fundamental re-thinking of optimizing the SC. This project seeks to investigate the ideas that would increase manufacturing capacity through sourcing of domestic production through citizen sciences. We hypothesize that at an “amazon”-like sourcing of local production, capabilities of a maker would provide inputs to demand that would allow for SCs to be re-optimized such that outsourcing is minimized. One such research project was to investigate a framework that allows the idea of how maker-based and citizen science can bring manufacturing capacity back to the United States, exemplified by “ordering” product exemplars from National Science Foundation (NSF)-funded Engineering Research Centers (ERCs) locally. The idea was to optimize the use of the multi-million-dollar centers invested in by the U.S. government.

Utilizing the centers as HUBS to perform citizen science, the representative three main customers, routes, or omnichannel routes in a cyber-manufacturing cloud-based service are direct customer, retailers, and manufacturers. The customer definition can lead to a specific cloud-service application, for example, an open source cloud service can be the focus in customized products. In contrast, if the customer is a manufacturer or a retailer, the focus will be a software with several specifications about the product to ensure high quality of the “neighbor manufacturer” and less variety. Therefore, this framework utilizes Six-Sigma Quality Management as a common business lang...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Preface
• Acknowledgments
• Author
• Part 1 Understanding Global Supply Chain Engineering
• Part 2 Basic Knowledge for Global Supply Chain Engineering
• Part 3 Research Design in Global Supply Chain Engineering
• Part 4 Technology in Global Supply Chain Engineering
• Part 5 New Trends in Global Supply Chain Engineering
• Index