Operational Flexibility via Multifunctionality

Professor Mark P. Van Oyen

Industrial and Operations Engineering Department

University of Michigan

Abstract - Many organizations are working hard to increase the level of flexibility in their operations. This is due in part to changes in technology, heightened consumer expectations for niche products, decreased vertical integration within the supply chain, and intense global competition. One of the most powerful mechanisms for achieving operational flexibility is to provide sources of production capacity (e.g., workers, machines, workstations, and plants) with multiple capabilities or functions (e.g., cross-training workers, installing flexible machines, redesigning workstations and tooling to support flexible production, and building flexible or mixed-model plants).

This talk has two components. First, we present work on controlled queueing systems as they relate to worker cross-training in serial operations (particularly those operated in a make-to-stock operation with a CONWIP release policy). Overall, we found chaining strategies for cross-training to be robust to the worker allocation (control) policy and effective in buffering variability in serial systems.

Another objective is to address the question of how to strategically determine multi-functionality (skill sets) for short average waiting times. We present work on a computationally lightweight decision-support methodology to identify which of alternative production system designs is the more flexible. This approach further supports the power of the chaining approach.

Biography: Mark P. Van Oyen earned the M.S.E. and Ph.D. degrees from the University of Michigan’s Systems Division of the Electrical Engr. and Computer Science Dept. He worked on the research staff of GE Corporate R&D of Schenectady, New York before joining Northwestern University to serve as an Assistant Professor of Industrial Engr. and Management Sciences from 1993-99. From 1999-2005 he was an Associate Professor in the School of Business Administration at Loyola University Chicago, where he was honored as SBA Researcher of the Year for 2002-2003. Dr. Van Oyen’s research interests span operations management (with emphasis on operational/supply chain flexibility and worker cross-training), applied probability, and Markov Decision Processes. He has received four grants from the National Science Foundation as well as grants from ALCOA, General Motors, and the Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI). He presently serves as an Associate Editor for Operations Research, Naval Research Logistics, and IIE Transactions.

The author gratefully acknowledges the collaborative research efforts of Seyed Iravani, Bora Kolfal, and Kate Sims as well as the National Science Foundation, which partially supported this work under grants DMI-0099821 and 0500479.

Friday, January 27, 2006

3:30 – 4:30 p.m.

Rm. 1500 EECS