Build To Order

Over the past 100 years the European Automotive Industry has been repeatedly challenged by best practice. First by the United States, through the development of ‘mass production’ pioneered by Henry Ford and more recently by ‘lean production techniques’ as practised by the leading Japanese producers, particularly Toyota. It has consistently risen to these challenges and has shown it can compete and even outperform its competitors with world-class products. However, the European - dustry is now faced with growing competition and growth from new emerging low-cost countries and needs to re-define its competitive advantage to remain at the forefront of the sector. Automotive growth is driven by two factors, new m- kets and new technologies. Global competition is increasing, with technology and product differentiation becoming the most important sales factors, but with c- tinued cost pressure. Within the market the winners will be more profitable and the losers will disappear. The Automotive Industry makes a significant contribution to the socio-economic fabric of the European Union. Manufacturing output represents €700 billion and research and development spending €24 billion. European automotive suppliers number 5000 member companies and represent 5 million employees and generate €500 billion in revenues. These are significant figures that generate wealth and high value employment within the EU. European firms must consistently improve their competitive position to ensure that the industry does not migrate to growing new markets.

Optimization is a serious issue, touching many aspects of our life and activity. But it has not yet been completely absorbed in our culture. In this book the authors point out how relatively young even the word “model” is. On top of that, the concept is rather elusive. How to deal with a technology that ?nds applicationsinthingsasdi?erentaslogistics,robotics,circuitlayout,?nancial deals and tra?c control? Although, during the last decades, we made signi?cant progress, the broad public remained largely unaware of that. The days of John von Neumann, with his vast halls full of people frantically working mechanical calculators are long gone. Things that looked completely impossible in my youth, like solving mixed integer problems are routine by now. All that was not just achieved by ever faster and cheaper computers, but also by serious progress in mathematics. But even in a world that more and more understands that it cannot a?ord to waste resources, optimization remains to a large extent unknown. R It is quite logical and also fortunate that SAP , the leading supplier of enterprise management systems has embedded an optimizer in his software. The authors have very carefully investigated the capabilities and the limits of APO. Remember that optimization is still a work in progress. We do not have the tool that does everything for everybody.

An expert offers a set of rules that will help managers achieve dramatic improvements in operations performance. In recent years, management gurus have urged businesses to adopt such strategies as just-in-time, lean manufacturing, offshoring, and frequent deliveries to retail outlets. But today, these much-touted strategies may be risky. Global financial turmoil, rising labor costs in developing countries, and huge volatility in the price of oil and other commodities can disrupt a company's entire supply chain and threaten its ability to compete. In Operations Rules, David Simchi-Levi identifies the crucial element in a company's success: the link between the value it provides its customers and its operations strategies. And he offers a set of scientifically and empirically based rules that management can follow to achieve a quantum leap in operations performance. Flexibility, says Simchi-Levi, is the single most important capability that allows firms to innovate in their operations and supply chain strategies. A small investment in flexibility can achieve almost all the benefits of full flexibility. And successful companies do not all pursue the same strategies. Amazon and Wal-Mart, for example, are direct competitors but each focuses on a different market channel and provides a unique customer value proposition—Amazon, large selection and reliable fulfillment; Wal-Mart, low prices—that directly aligns with its operations strategy. Simchi-Levi's rules—regarding such issues as channels, price, product characteristics, value-added service, procurement strategy, and information technolog—-transform operations and supply chain management from an undertaking based on gut feeling and anecdotes to a science.

This ground-breaking text brings together advances in the field of purchase order management (POM) and offers a comprehensive framework for lowering costs, improving efficiency, eliminating non-value activities, and optimising the POM process.

The volume comprises the proceedings of the third International Conference on Dynamics in Logistics LDIC 2012. The scope of the conference targeted the identification, analysis, and description of the dynamics of logistic processes and networks. The spectrum ranged from the modeling and planning of processes and innovative methods like autonomous control and knowledge management to the new technologies provided by radio frequency identification, mobile communication, and networking. The growing dynamics in the area of logistics poses completely new challenges: Logistic processes and networks must rapidly and flexibly adapt to continuously changing conditions. LDIC 2012 provided a venue for researchers from academia and industry interested in the technical advances in dynamics in logistics. The conference addressed research in logistics from a wide range of fields, e.g. engineering, computer science and operations research. The volume consists of two invited papers and of 49 contributed papers divided into various subjects including transport logistics, routing in dynamic logistic networks, modeling, simulation, optimization and collaboration in logistics, identification technologies, mathematical modeling in transport and production logistics, information, communication, risk and failure in logistic systems, autonomous control in logistic processes, global supply chains and industrial applications, and the Internet of Things in the context of logistics.