Editorial: Six things to manage – equipment

From the moment when the first ancient human picked up a sharp stone to help kill an animal, we have always taken advantage of tools to help us do a job. Nowadays tools and equipment can be seen as a class of physical resources that must be dealt with in the management of operations. Equipment can range from simple tools such as pencils or screwdrivers, through power tools, machines, computers and FMS cells and lines, to whole plant and the entire factory. At the simpler end, we tend to use simple stock control techniques to make sure hand tools are always available in some convenient location. Service departments use clever housekeeping techniques such as shadow boards to ensure tools are returned to their proper locations and the work area is kept tidy. In medical operations, rigorous procedures are used to ensure that all instruments are accounted for. Similarly, inspection tools and gauges, besides automated machinery, require strict procedures for calibration to ensure that correct dimensions are maintained over a long period of production. Tool wear has to be managed. For instance in die casting, mould cavities enlarge so that convex features such as pins or spigots grow and concave features such as holes or shrink. If the tools are not managed carefully a moulded pin can become too large to fit a moulded hole. More sophisticated equipment requires more servicing, with the evolution of schedules of minor activities that can be done by the operator, more specialised ones requiring specific maintenance training, and major activities that result in the equipment being out of service for a considerable period of time. Equipment designers sometimes take these matters into account – but perhaps they could benefit from a more operational understanding. Operations managers are not generally the ones who design the equipment, but they will be closely involved in the scheduling of maintenance operations. The renewal of rolls or bearings in a rolling mill or printing press is a commonplace matter – as well known as the effect on production if the maintenance is not completed on time. One aspect of equipment has always fallen to the lot of the operations manager – the layout of plant and equipment in the factory. Considerable research has been done on the move away from the traditional approach of grouping like machines together – which is often fine for one-ofa-kind production, towards alternatives such as production lines, and cells. Lines, or in the extreme the process flows in bulk material production such as refining, seem to present the highest efficiency but also the lowest flexibility. The different ways equipment and workgroups can be arranged remains a difficult problem as technologies develop. There are also questions for other industries – is a process flow line the best solution for treating patients in a hospital or customers in a restaurant? Lots of situational issues complicate a very straightforward problem, which is about much more than productivity. Similarly, there is also no simple answer to the question of what tool or machine to use for a particular production activity. We know the cheapest production might come from expensive equipment where volume is high, but where volume is low a different answer is found. Yet most of our products go through a lifecycle increasing from low to high volume, and then reducing again. Rather than move products to alternative facilities as they decline, we seem to cease production when volumes reduce. Do we get the right answer? We also have to consider one of the most strategic decisions for companies – where in the world to site the facilities? Service industries prefer to be near the customer, but this is less true for manufacturers. This decision is affected by some of the most difficult matters to deal with, those of people, economics and politics. Do operations managers operate at a senior enough level to deal with these decisions? If so, what theoretical approaches can we apply to these decisions? This short summary of some of the issues related to facilities makes clear how many different, difficult decisions are faced by operations managers. Production Planning and Control is keen to publish the latest research findings from any of these areas that can help operations managers to approach these decisions. The main tool managers use is theory. As researchers, can we provide managers with better tools? Dr Stephen J Childe Editor