لینک کردن اهداف عملیات به اقدامات:روش وصل و اجرا

This paper proposes a ‘plug and play’ (PnP) framework and software tool that allows managers to rapidly build simplified models of operations objectives. These models enable them to understand, study the cause–effect linkages of potential actions, and communicate such understanding to their colleagues. The salient features of the PnP framework are its ability to serve as scaffolding for managers building their own models, consulting other/prior models, and linking their own models to others’, and to provide a rapid modelling approach to strategic deployment. This paper introduces the PnP principle, describes the proposed framework, and discusses the issues and challenges related to its development.

In order to gain the full advantage from a manufacturing strategy, the strategy needs to be deployed and executed. Thus, once the manufacturing objectives have been established, the next stage of the strategy process is to develop the ways in which these objectives will be reached. It is useful to think of the objectives being the ‘whats’ and the supportive action plans being the ‘hows’. For successful strategy operationalisation, a process that leads strategy to action needs to be created ( Miller and Hayslip, 1989). However, a review of manufacturing strategy literature reveals that little is available to guide managers in the process of objective deployment, that is, translating a set of manufacturing objectives into action plans (see Table 1). Existing manufacturing strategy frameworks and processes ( Hill, 1989, Platts, 1990, Garvin, 1993, Suh et al., 1998, Barad and Gien, 2001 and Mills et al., 2002) seem to focus on broad directions and the establishment of manufacturing objectives, but are weak in translating the established objectives and broad strategies into detailed action plans.

Models should be used by decision makers to support decision making. But the current state of art in developing and using modelling and simulation packages typically demands at least the following skill categories: simulation language programmer, statistician, modeller, etc. It is rare that managers possess all these skills and the time to make build a comprehensive useable model from scratch. The proposed PnP approach for rapid decision modelling aims to support two important goals: productivity improvement to ensure that managers can rapidly build up models, and increase communication and decision support efficiency to ensure that those who should be using it, can and will use it. This research has so far introduced, described, and explained the PnP approach. Key issues and challenges pertaining to PnP implementation have been highlighted and discussed. Further work will primarily focus on two areas: (a) developing a PnP software tool to operationalise the proposed framework and (b) testing its feasibility in a range of companies.