Mark Stevenson

• Lancaster University

With our study, we aimed to enrich the discourse on supply chain disruptions by exploring the strategic responses of firms to supply chain uncertainty (SCUn) that enhance supply chain resilience (SCRes). Drawing on the dynamic capabilities view (DCV), we investigated whether and how firms utilise uncertainty amid geopolitical turmoil as a catalyst...

Purpose To investigate how providers of product-service bundles design and manage their contracts with upstream suppliers to incentivise incremental innovation for the benefit of their downstream customers, who contract the provider based on performance. Design/methodology/approach An embedded multiple-case study was conducted to examine elements...

The literature on supply chain complexity (SCC) has traditionally focused on its negative aspects, such as increased vulnerability to disruption. However, this study takes a different perspective, exploring the potential for SCC to trigger positive outcomes like enhanced supply chain viability (SCV). Informed by the dynamic capabilities view, we de...

Prior studies on traceability as an enabler of supply chain resilience (SCRes) have focused on large‐scale disruptions and developed country contexts. Few studies have focused on developing countries where chronic, small‐scale disruptions are common and resource scarcity means advanced digital technologies are rarely adopted. This research explores...

Purpose The purpose of this study is to define and investigate the governance requirements of supply chain finance (SCF). Design/methodology/approach A qualitative analysis of 849 news articles published in UK newspapers (2000–2022) using the Gioia method. Findings SCF governance relies on developing capacities for reflexive scrutiny at two stage...

Material flow control (MFC) is a key element of production planning and control. The literature typically categorizes different MFC methods according to how MFC is realized. This distinction overlooks that MFC decisions can be subdivided into three independent tasks that are executed as orders progress through the system: (i) order generation, (ii)...

Purpose – The study aims to analyze whether the presence of supply chain complexity (SCC) influences firms to improve their supply chain (SC) resilience and SC robustness capability. We also examine an important paradox: if investing in both exploitation and exploration practices is conflicting or complementary in enabling SC resilience and SC robu...

This study investigates the effect of network alliance capabilities and strategic information flow on supply chain viability in the face of supply chain complexity. Using the dynamic capability view, the research shows that complex supply chains encourage firms to develop these capabilities, thus enhancing supply chain viability. The study surveyed...

When order release is applied, jobs are withheld in a backlog from where they are released to meet certain performance targets. The decision that selects jobs for release is typically preceded by a sequencing decision. It was traditionally assumed that backlog sequencing is only responsible for releasing jobs on time, whereas more recent literature...

This study aims to shed light on the mechanisms that enable firms to manage the contradictory logics of coopetition (i.e. simultaneous cooperation and competition) in business ecosystems to achieve superior performance. In particular, we examine the relationship between coopetition and performance through the indirect effects of absorptive capacity...

Purpose - This paper aims to investigate small and medium-sized upstream suppliers’ and downstream distributors’ understandings of supply chain finance (SCF) arrangements and their decisions to adopt such schemes. Design/methodology/approach – In this paper grounded theory-informed methods are employed, involving 56 in-depth interviews with inform...

Modern slavery and conflict minerals are often treated as two separate grand challenges governed by different legislation, yet conflict mineral settings commonly involve and inflict slavery in supply chains-hence these two wicked problems are deeply interconnected. This paper focuses on due diligence in the context of conflict mineral supply chains...

Many companies in practice want to dynamically adjust planned lead times in their production planning and control systems in response to demand fluctuations. But for decades it has been recognised that this can lead to escalating planned lead times and realised throughput times. Authors have highlighted the negative impact of this ‘lead time syndro...

Purpose: There is still significant variation in firms’ efforts to address modern slavery issues in supply chains despite the importance of this grand challenge. Our research adopts the Awareness-Motivation-Capability (AMC) framework to investigate AMC-related factors that help to explain this variation. Design/methodology/approach: We hypothesize...

POLCA is an important card-based control system for low volume, high variety production contexts. A job can only be produced at an upstream station if it has acquired a POLCA card that has returned from its downstream station. A common assumption in the POLCA literature is that cards are allocated to jobs as soon as they return to the upstream stat...

In many real-life high-variety make-to-order shops, jobs are physically transported from one station to another, and transportation capacity may constrain order progress on the shop floor. Yet, the material handling literature on vehicle assignment rules remains largely inconclusive on which rule to apply, and it neglects order release control. Sim...

Purpose The study aims to examine a discrepant industrial case that demonstrates how to achieve economies of scale with additive manufacturing (AM), thereby expanding the scope of AM beyond high-variety, customised production contexts. Design/methodology/approach Abductive reasoning is applied to analyse a case of using AM to compete with conventi...

There has been considerable recent growth in supply chain (SC) traceability research due to increased Industry 4.0 solutions and the potential of traceability systems to enable SCs to bounce back from a crisis, thereby having a long-term impact on firm/SC performance. However, to date, the relationship between SC traceability and SC Resilience (SCR...

Many buying firms are implementing sustainability-oriented supplier development (SSD) projects. This paper provides a systematic literature review on the SSD process and develops a future research agenda. A total of 83 papers are analyzed according to their research content and using contingency theory variables, i.e. contingencies and response act...

Interest in business ecosystems has grown exponentially over the last decade. This article focuses on the operational benefits of business ecosystems by investigating how embeddedness in business ecosystems influences supply chain competence. Specifically, it considers the mediating effect of external knowledge capacities (i.e. absorptive, desorpti...

Purpose The purpose of this paper is twofold: first, to evaluate the roles of a transactive memory system and the supply network flexibility (SNF) of the firm as antecedents of a firm’s supply chain agility (FSCA), also incorporating the moderating role of the transactive memory system; and, second, to evaluate the relationship between FSCA and ope...

In manufacturing shops in practice, machine capacity is often constrained by more than one type of resource. Yet research mainly focusses on the effects of only one type of resource that constrains machine capacity, e.g. labour, tooling or auxiliary constraints. In response, we use simulation to assess the impact of order release, dispatching and r...

This study uses simulation to assess the performance of alternative methods for detecting momentary bottlenecks in high-variety contexts that produce on a to-order basis. The results suggest that using the utilisation level of a station to detect bottlenecks leads to the best performance, but that this method suffers from high nervousness. Using th...

Material Flow Control (MFC) mechanisms control the movement of jobs through a set of stationery capacity resources on the shop floor. Although the objective of MFC is item-centric, i.e. to control the flow of individual jobs, most existing MFC mechanisms are resource-centric, i.e. focus on managing the capacity resources. While this was justified b...

Improving flow is a core Operations Management theme that is set to become even more important following contemporary developments in manufacturing, such as smart products and digital encapsulation that enable new control concepts such as multi‐agent holonic control. But, companies often struggle to realize flow improvements in practice, both with...

Workload Control withholds orders from the shop floor in a backlog from which they are released to meet certain performance metrics. This release decision precedes the execution of orders at shop floor stations. For each station there are consequently three types of workload: indirect, released work that is still upstream of the station; direct, wo...

Multi-stage assembly systems where the demand for components depends on the market-driven demand for end products, are commonly encountered in practice. Production Planning and Control (PPC) systems for this production context include Kanban, Materials Requirement Planning (MRP), Optimised Production Technology (OPT), and Demand Driven MRP (DDMRP)....

Purpose To analyze the effect of an ambidextrous supply chain strategy (ASCS) – i.e. the combination of exploration and exploitation practices – on each of the four dimensions of supply chain flexibility (SCF): information system, operating system, sourcing and distribution flexibility. Further, to evaluate the influence of implementing the ISO 900...

This paper investigates modern slavery detection and remediation. Action research has been conducted in the textiles and fashion industry, with the primary engagement involving a multi-billion pound (GBP) turnover company and their modern slavery investigation at a high-risk supplier in South East Asia. This paper responds to calls from the literat...

The extant literature has highlighted the importance of knowledge transfer between a buyer and its supply network for strengthening supply chain competence. This is a bi-directional exchange where the buyer and supply network each act as the sender and receiver of knowledge. Prior research has however largely focused on the knowledge recipient only...

A workload limit forms an essential part of most order release methods designed for high-variety make-to-order contexts, but this mechanism does not necessarily lead to the lowest possible direct load buffer. To counter this, the Superfluous Load Avoidance Release (SLAR) procedure was developed that avoided the use of a workload limit altogether. S...

Most literature on make-to-order shops assumes that service rates are independent of the system state. In practice however, the service rate is often dependent on the workload level experienced by the worker. While a body of knowledge on state-dependent service rates exists, the available literature has not given sufficient attention to make-to-ord...

Purpose The aim of the study is to explore how two dimensions of interpersonal relationships (i.e. size and range of relationships) affect supplier-initiating risk management behaviours (SIRMB) and supply-side resilience. Further, the study aims to explore the moderating role of dependence asymmetry. Design/methodology/approach Nine hypotheses are...

Material flow control mechanisms determine: (i) whether an order should be released onto the shop floor; and, (ii) whether a station should be authorized to produce. Well‐known approaches include Kanban, Drum‐Buffer‐Rope (DBR), Constant Work‐in‐Process (ConWIP), Paired‐cell Overlapping Loops of Cards with Authorization (POLCA), Workload Control (WL...

Additive Manufacturing (AM) shops typically produce high variety, low volume products on a to-order basis. Products are first created in parallel batches at a single AM station before being subjected to several post-processing operations. While there exists an emerging literature on AM station scheduling and order book smoothing, this literature ha...

There exists a large literature on well-known Production Control Systems (PCS) such as Kanban, Constant Work-In-Process (CONWIP), Material Requirements Planning (MRP) and Paired Cell Overlapping Loops of Cards with Authorisation (POLCA). However, there are also many new systems that have emerged in the last 20 years. These systems are less well kno...

Most manufacturing shops in practice have limited physical space in front of each workstation, due, for example, to physical, economical or operational constraints. As a result, a job may cause blocking because it has to remain at a given station after an operation has been completed until space in front of the next station in its routing becomes a...

The implementation of socially sustainable practices in suppliers situated in challenging institutional contexts is examined using institutional theory, both in terms of how institutional pressures affect implementation and what explains the decoupling of practices from the day-today reality. A multi-case study approach is employed based on seven a...

Most job shops in practice are constrained by both machine and labor availability. Worker assignment in these so-called Dual Resource Constrained (DRC) job shops is typically solved in the literature via the use of meta-heuristics, i.e. “when” and “where” rules, or heuristic assignment rules. While the former does not necessarily lead to optimal re...

Literature on two-stage assembly systems typically assume that parts (subassemblies) require several sequential operations at the first production stage. However, parts can often be produced at a single station. This shifts the focus away from coordination to the provision of parts. The literature on parts feeding typically assumes the full availab...

Lot splitting is an important strategy for avoiding the starvation of workstations, for accelerating the progress of jobs, and ultimately for improving overall due date performance. While lot splitting has received much attention in the extant literature, the use of alternative lot transfer policies that determine how the flow of lots through the p...

Most shops in practice are constrained by more than one resource. Consequently, a large body of literature on dual resource constrained shops has emerged. This research typically focuses on worker assignment rules, with attention being on when and where to move workers. In contrast, the decision concerning who to reallocate to a station has receive...

Purpose Prior studies have largely overlooked the potentially negative consequences of a buyer’s relational capital (RC) with a supplier for supply-side resilience, assuming a positive linear relationship between the constructs. Meanwhile, the focus of research has been at an organisational level without incorporating the role of boundary spanning...

POLCA (i.e. Paired-cell Overlapping Loops of Cards with Authorization) is a card-based production control approach developed to support the adoption of Quick Response Manufacturing. POLCA’s control mechanism is unique since it combines a card-based element (the paired cell overlapping loops of cards) with a higher-level Material Requirements Planni...

Although there is a broad literature on capacity management, there has been only limited attention on how to support short-term capacity control decisions, especially in high-variety make-to-order shops. While finite loading has been identified as a potential means of guiding capacity adjustments, the actual performance impact of this solution has...

China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) is one of the world’s largest infrastructure projects, with its potential political and economic impact being widely discussed since its inception in 2013. Yet the phenomenon has received only limited attention in the Supply Chain Management (SCM) literature. In response, we first conduct a broad systematic re...

The simplicity of Constant Work-In-Process (ConWIP) makes it one of the most widely adopted card-based production control solutions. Its simplicity, however, also limits the opportunities that are available to improve the concept. There are arguably only two major search directions: (i) to alter the meaning of cards away from controlling jobs; and...

While supply chain resilience has been touched upon frequently, research remains (with the exception of often repeated anecdotal examples) relatively disparate on what disruptions actually are. This research aims to advance theoretical and managerial understandings around the management of supply chain disruptions . A two-stage research process is...

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to show that Hoshin Kanri has the potential to integrate the operations strategy literature into a coherent structure. Hoshin Kanri’s planning process is typically described as a top-down cascading of goals, starting with the senior management’s goals and moving to the lowest organizational level. The authors a...

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to investigate how local supply chains prepare for and respond to the threats and opportunities presented by constitutional change, thereby building resilience. Design/methodology/approach Multiple case study analysis of 14 firms in the food sector is presented in the context of the UK’s impending exit from the...

Workload Control is a production control concept for high-variety shops built on the principle of input/output control. The literature, however, has argued that input/output control overemphasises throughput improvements to the detriment of the timing of individual orders and, consequently, that it needs to be supplemented by a preceding customer e...

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to investigate how horizontal collaboration aids organisations in responding to modern slavery legislation and in gaining a socially sustainable competitive advantage. Design/methodology/approach Action research has been conducted in the textiles and fashion industry and a relational perspective adopted to inte...

Workload Control (WLC) seeks to align capacity with demand, where capacity is typically assumed to be restricted by a single constraint – machine capacity. In practice, however, shops are often restricted by dual resource constraints: labour and machines. This study, therefore, uses simulation to investigate the performance of WLC in Dual Resource...

Purpose This paper aims to investigate how supply chain risks can be identified in both collaborative and adversarial buyer–supplier relationships (BSRs). Design/methodology/approach This research includes a multiple-case study involving ten Chinese manufacturers with two informants per organisation. Data have been interpreted from a multi-level s...

Lot splitting is an important approach for shops that compete on short delivery times. Similarly, such shops can benefit from load-limiting order release mechanisms that balance workloads and regulate throughput times. Yet few studies have examined the combined effect of lot splitting and load-limiting order release. We use simulation to assess the...

Excellence is a term/concept that is widely used in research and practice. Yet, although there have been many suggested definitions of excellence and the success factors behind excellence, few organisations have been able to achieve the goal of excellence. It has been argued that this is due to a genuine confusion amongst managers on what excellenc...

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to analyse the relationship between environmental dynamism and supply chain flexibility (SCF) and to evaluate if two dynamic capabilities, i.e. operational absorptive capacity (OAC) and organisational learning (OL), are necessary competences for firms to develop such a responsive supply chain strategy as flexibi...

Kanban systems are simple yet effective means of controlling production. Production control is decentralised or exercised locally on the shop floor, i.e. a downstream station signals to an upstream station that an item is needed. If items are always the same and known, then demands can be satisfied instantaneously from stock; but if items differ an...

Bottleneck shiftiness is an important managerial problem that has received significant research attention. The extant literature has shown, for example, that protective capacity reduces the likelihood of the bottleneck shifting. Yet the actual performance impact of a bottleneck shift has been widely neglected. We posit that there are at least two i...

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to review the extant literature on supply chain risk management (SCRM, including risk identification, assessment, treatment, and monitoring), developing a comprehensive definition and conceptual framework; to evaluate prior theory use; and to identify future research directions. Design/methodology/approach A...

Much of the growing body of reshoring literature has focused on why firms reverse a prior location decision. While valuable, this work needs extending to how the decision to reshore is operationalised. Using a two-stage approach, this paper presents a conceptual framework that covers both why and how firms reshore. The framework also utilises conti...

Higher education plays an important role in furthering the sustainability agenda, as reflected in a growing body of literature. While there have been several recent reviews of this work, these have been limited in scope and do not explicitly discuss implementations of sustainability in higher education curricula. In response, this paper presents a...

One of the main elements of the theory of constraints is its Drum–Buffer–Rope (DBR) scheduling (or release) mechanism that controls the release of jobs to the system. Jobs are not released directly to the shop floor – they are withheld in a backlog and released in accordance with the output rate of the bottleneck (i.e. the drum). The sequence in wh...

Purpose In few prior empirical studies on supply chain resilience (SCRES), the focus has been on the developed world. Yet, organisations in developing countries constitute a significant part of global supply chains and have also experienced the disastrous effects of supply chain failures. The purpose of this paper is therefore to empirically invest...

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to reaffirm the suggestion that there are at least two distinct types of laws of trade-off that affect all firms and, in doing so, to contribute toward resolving the persistent trade-off debate in the literature. Design/methodology/approach Conceptual study using implicit deductive reasoning. Findings Two t...

Bottleneck shiftiness is an important managerial problem that negatively affects shop floor manageability. It has therefore received much research attention. Yet research has focused on how protective capacity can be used to influence bottleneck shiftiness rather than on assessing its operational impact. The latter is complex to evaluate since chan...

Many shops have simplified their production control by using card-based systems such as kanban and Constant Work-in-Process (ConWIP). Although these systems provide a simple and highly effective visual approach for controlling manufacturing and service operations, all too many shops struggle with failed implementations or achieve results that fall....

POLCA (i.e. Paired-cell Overlapping Loops of Cards with Authorization) is a card-based production control approach developed to support the adoption of Quick Response Manufacturing. The approach has received significant research attention but has remained largely unchanged since its introduction in the late 1990s. The main improvements have occurre...

Two key concepts in the production planning and control literature that incorporate an order release function are the Theory of Constraints, with its drum-buffer-rope release method, and Workload Control, with its load-based release methods. When order release is applied, jobs are not directly released to the shop floor – release is controlled to r...

POLCA (i.e. Paired-cell Overlapping Loops of Cards with Authorization) is a card-based decision support system for production control developed to support the adoption of Quick Response Manufacturing. In POLCA, the flow of jobs through the production system is controlled through a combination of release authorisations and production control cards -...

This paper calls for a paradigm shift in the production control literature away from assuming due date setting and order release are two independent decision levels. When order release is controlled, jobs do not enter the shop floor directly but are retained in a pre-shop pool and released to meet certain performance targets. This makes the setting...

Constant Work-in-Process (ConWIP) is a card-based control system that was developed for simple flow shops – a lack of load-balancing capabilities hinders its application to more complex shops. In contrast, load balancing is an integral part of Workload Control, a production planning and control concept developed for high-variety environments. One m...

Waste reduction is one of the main principles of lean, but it has been taken for granted that we have a common understanding of what waste means. We first present a critical, qualitative discussion that identifies four distinct waste concepts. We then conduct a systematic review of the literature that examines the different uses of these concepts....

Since the emergence of Kanban, there has been much research into card-based control systems. This has included attempts to improve Kanban and/or develop alternative systems, particularly ConWIP (i.e. Constant Work-In-Process), POLCA (i.e. Paired-cell Overlapping Loops of Cards with Authorisation) and COBACABANA (i.e. Control of Balance by Card-Base...

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to empirically investigate effective management strategies for 14 sources of supply chain uncertainty, with a particular emphasis on uncertainties or strategies that involve ethical issues. Design/methodology/approach Manufacturing strategy theory, underpinned by alignment and contingency theory, is used as the...

Wir stellen sechs Regeln für Kanban-Systeme vor. Wir arbeiten den Unterschied zwischen einem WIP-Kanban-System und einem Produktions-Kanban-System heraus. Wir erklären die Implikationen des Einsatzes von Kanban zur Steuerung des Umlaufs unabhängiger Produkt-/Dienstleistungsströme im Fertigungsbereich. Wir diskutieren den Anwendungsbereich von Kanba...

Wir stellen einen einfachen und effektiven Ansatz zur Lieferzeitschätzung vor. Wir diskutieren COBACABANA als umfassendes System, welches die Steuerung der Auftragsfreigabe mit Lieferzeitschätzungen vereint. Wir erörtern den Einsatz eines Verkäufer-Displays zur Output-Steuerung (das heißt zur Lenkung von Kapazitätsanpassungen).

Wir erklären das Konzept der Input-/Output-Steuerung. Wir stellen verschiedene Möglichkeiten zur Koordinierung der zu transformierenden Ressourcen, der Produktionsmittel und der Anforderungen an Ressourcen vor. Wir skizzieren ein Instrument zur Diagnose der Stabilität des Durchflusses von Stationen bzw. des Fertigungsbereichs als Ganzem: das Durchl...

Wir stellen eine einfache Form der Terminplanung dar, die auf Regeln zur Bildung von Rangfolgen und zur Disposition beruht. Wir umreißen eine Reihe einfacher, aber sehr effektiver Dispositionsregeln, die sich im Fertigungsbereich anwenden lassen. Wir stellen ein Instrument zur Diagnose der Leistungsfähigkeit der Regeln zur Bildung von Rangfolgen un...

Wir erörtern die Frage, wie sich die Schleifenstruktur, die Charakteristika der Karten und die relevante Informationstechnik auf die Anwendbarkeit kartenbasierter Systeme auswirken. Wir diskutieren verschachtelte kartenbasierte Steuerungssysteme vor dem Hintergrund dessen, dass die meisten Betriebe mehr als nur ein bestimmtes Steuerungsproblem zu l...

Dieser Anhang bietet einen kurz gefassten Überblick über die kartenbasierten Steuerungssysteme, die wir in diesem Buch vorgestellt und diskutiert haben. Für den Fall, dass Sie mehr wissen möchten, enthält er außerdem weiterführende Quellen aus der Literatur.

Wir skizzieren COBACABANA und vergleichen es mit anderen kartenbasierten Systemen. Wir erörtern die Frage, wie COBACABANA zu einer gleichmäßigen Arbeitsbelastung oder Beschäftigung beitragen kann. Wir diskutieren Möglichkeiten zur Vereinfachung des Problems der Schätzung von Bearbeitungszeiten. Wir erklären, weshalb es so wichtig ist, unnötigen ode...

Wir skizzieren unsere Vorstellung von einem Produktions- bzw. Dienstleistungssystem, einschließlich der Aktivitäten bzw. Geschäftsprozesse, die innerhalb eines solchen Systems stattfinden. Wir stellen die Aufgaben eines kartenbasierten Steuerungssystems vor. Wir erklären, welche Aufgaben ein kartenbasiertes Steuerungssystem nicht erfüllt. Wir stell...

Wir beschreiben den Unterschied zwischen Produktion auf Lager (Make to Stock bzw. MTS) und Produktion nach Auftrag (Make to Order bzw. MTO; Schnittstelle „auf Lager“/„nach Auftrag“). Wir beschreiben den Unterschied zwischen dem Kundenentkopplungspunkt und dem Scheidepunkt zwischen Lager- und Auftragsfertigung. Wir beschreiben den Unterschied zwisch...

Wir skizzieren ConWIP und vergleichen das System mit Kanban-Systemen. Wir erörtern den Anwendungsbereich von ConWIP.

Wir stellen POLCA vor und vergleichen es mit dem Kanban- und dem ConWIP-System. Wir diskutieren den Anwendungsbereich von POLCA.

This research aims to advance theoretical understanding around the management of supply chain disruptions through a multi-stage Delphi study on supply chain resilience. Stage one focused on polling academic experts followed by a second stage with practitioners from automotive, electronics and food industries. We examine the types of disruptions tha...

In the workload control literature, the Load-Oriented Order Release (LOOR) approach has been neglected since its robustness was questioned at the end of the 1990s. This paper revisits LOOR and evaluates whether its performance can be improved in two ways. First, an intermediate pull release mechanism is added to avoid starvation between periodic re...

Card-based systems are simple, effective means of controlling production. Yet most systems concentrate on controlling the shop floor. They neglect other planning tasks, like estimating short, feasible due dates during customer enquiry management. A card-based version of the workload control concept for job shops – COBACABANA (COntrol of BAlance by...

Kanban systems are simple, effective means of improving production that are widely applied in practice. Based on the logistic process involved, kanban systems can be divided into constant order-quantity and constant order-cycle systems. The former has received much research attention, but the latter, also known as a milk run, has been relatively ne...

One of the key functions of Workload Control is order release. Jobs are not released immediately onto the shop floor – they are withheld and selectively released to create a mix of jobs that keeps work-in-process within limits and meet due dates. A recent implementation of Workload Control’s release method highlighted an important issue thus far ov...

Card-based systems – like Kanban and Constant Work-in-Process (ConWIP) – can be simple yet effective means of controlling production. Existing systems, however, can be criticized for their limited applicability and scope. First, card-based systems have not been successful in the production environments that are arguably most in need of their help:...

Workload Control is a production planning and control concept developed for high-variety job shops. It integrates two control mechanisms: (i) input control, to regulate the inflow of work to the system; and (ii) output control, which uses capacity adjustments to regulate the outflow of work from the system. Much Workload Control research has focuse...

The counterfeiting of safety critical products such as pharmaceuticals is a significant risk to public safety, but the literature suggests that much of the causation of counterfeiting is endogenous: the decisions of legitimate producers and consumers facilitate or incentivize the manufacture of counterfeits. This study examined what effect the perc...

Das Buch beschreibt – erstmalig in deutscher Übersetzung – die Grundlagen von Kanban, ConWIP und POLCA. Es ist das erste Werk, das ein kartenbasiertes Steuerungssystem für komplexe Auftragsfertigungen präsentiert – COBACABANA. In vielen Fällen sind auftretende Steuerungsprobleme und gewählte Lösungen nicht richtig aufeinander abgestimmt. Deshalb un...

Kanban systems are widely applied in practice as they represent a simple yet effective means of controlling production. But they suffer from a lack of load balancing capabilities, which hinders their application even to pure flow shops if there is variability. In response, this study focuses on COBACABANA (Control of Balance by Card Based Navigatio...

The last major performance breakthroughs in job shop control stem from the 1980s and 1990s. We generate a new search direction for designing job shop control policies, providing a key to delivery improvements. Based on a common characteristic shared by the most effective job shop control policies, we posit that control should have a specific focus...