Prototyping the departmental organisation of an enterprise

An Integrated Methodology for Layout Design and Work Organisation in a Furniture Manufacturing Plant

“…It is important to examine critically which type of segmentation is meant in a certain application case, and which of the different possibilities would be most suitable for this case. A critical analysis has been conducted by Zülch & Brinkmeier [13], who present a procedure that builds on the classification of the work operations within the manufacturing area, and thereby considers the relationship between the work operation and a certain order type, an individual customer or a customer group, the type of product, and the type and scope of the elementary process contained in the work operation. This approach can generally be applied beyond the area of parts manufacturing and assembly to all production-related function areas.…”

“…Zülch & Brinkmeier [13] provide various structuring principles for the assignment of work operations to organisational units -that is, departments, segments, work groups, and siteswhereby one can differentiate between function-, process-, product-, order-, and customer-orientation. While the first two strategies focus on the enterprise-internal organisational structure (endogenous strategy-orientation), the last two are orientated toward criteria from the sales market (exogenous strategy-orientation).…”

“…In the procedure presented by Zülch & Brinkmeier [13], specific features have been defined for the essential process requirements of the manufacturing processes: type of output, type of customer, type of task, complexity of task, type of order, and product structure. Figure 3 shows the set of basic characteristics of chair manufacturing processes.…”

“…Product-oriented, customer-oriented, process-oriented, task-oriented, and order-oriented structuring strategies have been identified as suitable for an efficient and effective production process (see Zülch et al [14]; Zülch & Brinkmeier [13]). However, their usefulness for a specific case must be checked before application -that is, by simulation.…”

“…To give participants the possibility of experiencing different effects, new forms of organisational structures, new forms of work organisation, and new principles of work structuring, the systematic planning of work structures is supported by a guideline that includes planning of variants. The design and evaluation of the departmental organisation of a mechanical engineering enterprise with simulation is the focus of Zülch & Brinkmeier [13] and Zülch et al [14]. In addition, Rahimifard & Weston [15] outline how a particular choice of well-proved enterprise and simulation modelling techniques can be used in an integrated fashion while describing interim research findings when using such an integrated modelling approach in a case study from the furniture manufacturing industry.…”