Impact of manufacturing system design, organizational processes and leadership on manufacturing system change and implementation

Abstract

Manufacturing system design methodologies often ignore the importance of enterprise related issues that affect the implementation and improvement efforts. Systems Engineering provides a rigorous approach to system design and coupled with a decomposition approach can result in effective system design. Manufacturing system design must be linked to the strategy and objectives of the firm. The decomposition ensures that low-level design decisions are related to the higher-level objectives of the firm. Manufacturing system design is a complicated process that involves all sections of the manufacturing organization; systems engineering provides the rigor to guide the design and implementation process through various phases and ensures that the design is comprehensive. However, the manufacturing organization cannot function independent of the enterprise. Often projects aimed at implementing effective system designs fail as the organizational processes are not aligned and the system is not prepared for the change. Leadership owns the responsibility for aligning interfaces and processes to facilitate change. The thesis is aimed at providing a case study based illustration of the above discussion that highlights certain causes of poor systemic performance. Finally the thesis proposes a methodology that combines some of the pioneering research at the Production System design Laboratory in the area of manufacturing system design to the systems engineering approach and relates these to issues of strategy, organizational processes and alignment of enterprise interfaces.