Operational Excellence in the New Digital Era

Adedeji B. Badiru, Lauralee Cromarty

• Publisher: CRC Press
• Year: 2021
• Print ISBN: 9780367509811
• eBook ISBN: 9781000453720
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Technology & Engineering
• Subtopic: Manufacturing
• Index: Technology & Engineering

Operational excellence, as a quest in the prevailing digital era, is predicated on a systems view of the operating environments in business, industry, government, academia, and other organizational entities.

This book uses a systems-based approach to show how operational excellence can be pursued, achieved, and sustained. It offers a systems perspective for operational excellence and discusses the evolution of products from the classical operation era to present day digital operations. It covers the role of global markets on domestic operations, presents operational work design and ergonomics, and combines industrial engineering, advanced research, and practical experience.

This book is a useful guide for scholars, practitioners and those involved in engineering, management, and business fields.

Classical Principles of Operations Management

1

DOI: 10.1201/9781003052036

Introduction

The classical principles of operations management provide the foundational framework for the theme of this book on operational excellence. Every organization desires to achieve and sustain operational excellence as the basis for organizational survival. Unfortunately, not every organization has the wherewithal to perform at the level of desired excellence. The discipline of industrial engineering, because of its versatility and robust coverage of both qualitative and quantitative aspects, has been proven to be a good avenue to achieving operational excellence. In this chapter, we discuss the classical principles of operations management, which morphed into the concept of scientific management, which later formed the emergence of industrial engineering. The structure of the content of this book is based on the progressive building blocks below:

1. Foundation from the classical principles of operations management.
2. How operational excellence has changed in the digital age.
3. Systems thinking as the basis for operational excellence.
4. Teamwork and work simplification for operational excellence.

The Emergence Of Industrial Engineering

Industrial engineering emerged out of industry's need for efficient work systems and processes for better utilization of workers in factory and construction operations in 1900 (Badiru, 2019). One common definition of an industrial engineer states that:

Industrial Engineer: One who is concerned with the design, installation, and improvement of integrated systems of people, materials, information, equipment, and energy by drawing upon specialized knowledge and skills in the mathematical, physical, and social sciences, together with the principles and methods of engineering analysis and design to specify, predict, and evaluate the results to be obtained from such systems.

This definition generically embodies the various aspects of what an industrial engineer does. Whether a definition is official or not, the description of the profession is always evolving as new application opportunities evolve.

An historical summary of industrial engineering reveals a great legacy of contributions to industrial and economic development. In the early history of the United States, several efforts emerged to form the future of the industrial engineering profession. George Washington was said to have been fascinated by the design of farm implements on his farm in Mount Vernon, Virginia. He had an English manufacturer send him a plow built to his specifications that included a mold on which to form new irons when old ones were worn out or would need repairs. This represents one of the early attempts to create a process of achieving a system of interchangeable parts. Thomas Jefferson invented a wooden moldboard that, when fastened to a plow, minimized the force required to pull the plow at various working depths. Jefferson also invented a device that allowed a farmer to seed four rows at a time. In pursuit of higher productivity and operational efficiency, he invented a horse-drawn threshing machine that did the work of ten men.

In 1798, Eli Whitney used mass production techniques to produce muskets for the US Army. He developed the idea of having machines make each musket part so that it could be interchangeable with other similar parts. By 1850, the principle of interchangeable parts was widely adopted. It eventually became the basis for modern mass production for assembly lines. These are examples of ingenuity and innovation in early agricultural industry. It is believed that Eli Whitney's principle of interchangeable parts contributed significantly to the Union victory during the US Civil War. Thus, the early practice of industrial engineering made significant contribution to the military and industry, even though the formal name of the profession did not emerge until much later. The heritage of industrial engineering in the military has continued until today and should be extended in a contemporary framework to meet current organizational needs for operational excellence in other spheres of organizational pursuits.

Operations Management And Industrial Engineering

The definition of industrial engineering embodies the various aspects of what every organization, military or civilian, faces in terms of operational challenges. Industrial engineering is versatile, flexible, adaptive, and diverse. Industry, service, and supply chain companies have used it successfully for many decades. Because of its versatility and robustness, the military has called upon the discipline of industrial engineering for several decades to achieve program effectiveness and operational efficiencies (Badiru and Thomas, 2009). It is known from the practice of industrial engineering that a systems orientation permeates the work of industrial engineers. This is particularly applicable to all types of business and industry, where operations and functions are designed to encompass the linking of sub-systems.

Based on the foregoing examples, classical operations management forms the basis for the pursuit of operational excellence. In past decades, the classical management theory is based on the belief that workers only had physical and economic needs, with little regard for the social and job satisfaction needs of workers. Under this concept, the advocacy was for a specialization of labor, centralized leadership, top-down decision-making, and profit maximization. The emergence of industrial engineering helped to incorporate the personal needs of workers into the overall business strategies of organizations as part of operations management. Maslow's hierarchy of needs further helped to open up additional research and practice of work management systems that incorporate the human elements into the production environment. Organizations now proactively embrace these classical and scientific management theories to improve work efficiency and increase worker productivity.

Under Frederick Taylor in the early 1900s, the classical theory of management entailed a scientific study of tasks and the workers responsible for them. Although its goal was providing workers the tools necessary for maximizing their efficiency and output, it was also criticized for creating an “assembly-line” atmosphere, where employees do only menial jobs. For this reason, it was shunned and derided. Even many organizations that embraced scientific management avoided proclaiming it publicly. But the fact is that many elements of scientific management still offer good insights into how to achieve and sustain operational excellence, and some managers believe that the theory of scientific management is better suited for operations involving repetitive factory tasks.

According to Terry (2011), to understand if scientific management is suitable for an organization, it is essential to understand the foundation of classical management theory. Classical and scientific management theory is based on four main principles:

1. Company leadership should develop a standard method for doing each job using scientific management.
2. Workers should be selected for a job based on their skil...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• Preface
• Case Study of Operational Excellence
• About the Authors
• 1 Classical Principles of Operations Management
• 2 Digital Platforms for Operational Excellence
• 3 Systems Thinking in the Digital Era
• 4 Work Performance Excellence via Project Management
• Appendix: Glossary of Terminologies in the Digital Era
• Index