Purpose -There is increasing concern about the environmental aspects of business and production processes, and many companies have chosen to implement environmental management systems (EMSs). The purpose of this paper is to examine whether change management efforts improve the perceived success of EMS implementation. Design/methodology/approach -The paper analyzes empirical survey data using hierarchical regression analyses with a sample of mid-level engineers and managers in manufacturing facilities. Findings -Change management efforts appear to enhance the perceived environmental performance of manufacturing establishments, primarily driven by top management support for EMS implementation and efforts to institutionalize the EMS. Research limitations/implications -Results are generalizable to large manufacturing facilities implementing EMSs. Results should be replicated with a larger sample and using measures of actual environmental performance. Practical implications -Change management techniques can enhance the environmental performance outcomes of EMS implementations. Originality/value -Change management concepts have been neglected in examinations of EMS implementation outcomes, and they may help explain mixed findings on EMS success to date. The findings suggest that change management efforts can enhance the value of firms' EMS implementations.
The i nuse of cellular manufacturing configurations designed to grapple with increasing competitive p~essures is providing manufacturing managers and engineers with a broad variety of operational challenges. Many questions concerning the best procedurts and policies for the day-to-day operation of manufacturing cells are still unanswered. The primary objective of this study is to compare the performance of traditional single-stage heuristics and the two-stage p u p scheduling heuristics that have exhibited superior performance in previous studies in a flow-through cell environment under a rigorous set of experimental conditions. Such a comparison is of great interest since each previous study has f o c d on proposing new heuristics and testing them against some particular baseline heuristic, often without comprehensive comparisons to the broad variety of previously ptoposed heuristics.Two single-stage heuristics and four two-stage heuristics are examined under sixteen experimental conditions (four experimental factors at two levels each). The experimental factors examined am shop load, due date tightness, setup to run-time ratio, and interarrival time distribution. Results vary by experimental condition and performance criteria, but in general, two-stage heuristics outpcrfonned singlestage heuristics under all experimental conditions, as well as being relatively insensitive to changing experimental conditions. In addition, two of the two-stage heuristics displayed superior performance on all performance measures under most experimental conditions. Finally, the results indicated that interarrival time distribution does have a major impact on the performance of scheduling heuristics.
Subject Areas: Cellular Manufacturing, Group Scheduling, Production/Opcrations Management, and Simulation.+The authors wish to thank the anonymous reviewers for their constructive comments and suggestions. ?his work was partially supported by the Clarkson University School of Management.
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Decision Sciences[Vol. 23
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