Supply chain management is an important tool in a firm because it helps organizations to control the processes involved in product movement, inventory still considered work in progress and delivery of finished products. This paper will provide a review of an article by Duflou et al. that focuses on SCM, although with a focus on planning layouts that are used in manufacturing plants. The article focuses more on the energy and resource efficiency.
The main issue in this article is improving the efficiency through the adoption of a structured approach, which the authors explain is necessary for differentiating scale levels of the manufacturing systems. They expand on this concept by elaborating that the focus has to begin at the unit level before analyzing the processes at the multi-machine, and factory levels are considered. The emphasis made by these authors is on efficiency and effectiveness because they believe that energy reduction in the manufacturing stage is paramount and can be achieved by changing the types of wheels and machine fluid used.
figure 1: unit process expected to enhance scm by improving efficiency
The article’s explanation of the energy saving process is a bit shallow. However, there are other sections where the details are brought up again and explained further. In the methodology section, the authors use graphs and pie charts, which provide a good visual illustration of the problems that can be solved if SCM in the plant is employed. The advantage that it has captured however is that it makes an argument followed by a summary and a concluding statement. For instance, after explaining the steps needed to ensure energy efficiency in the manufacturing process they summarize that “In short, efficiency is doing things right, and effectiveness is doing the right things.” (Duflou et al. 588).
Works Cited
Duflou Joost, John Sutherland, David Dornfeld, Christoph Herrmann, Jack Jesweit, Sami Kara, Michael Hauschild, Karel Kellens. Towards Energy and Resource Efficient Manufacturing: A Process and Systems Approach. CIRP Annals – Manufacturing Technology, 61 (2012): 587 - 609
