E-readiness of the Automotive Supply Chain: Just How Wired is the Supplier Sector? This study began with focus groups of executives in three large first-tier automotive suppliers. Participants were queried about their plans to rationalize their supply base, the role that suppliers' e-business capability would play in making choices about suppliers, ROI expected from e-business with suppliers, the capability of suppliers to meet e-business requirements, and barriers to e-business implementation. Based on the focus group results, a survey was developed. Responses were obtained from sixteen firms. These firms accounted for $70.2B in automotive sales. On average, each respondent managed a supply chain of 1303 suppliers. full report .pdf format

1. a small investment in systematic change management can yield major
   benefits,
2. a company can determine the amount of systematic change activity
   that will do it the most good, and
3. simple structured tools and methodologies can make successful change
   management practical.
   

The Guide was originally written for inclusion in an EDI Implementation Project Planner that was written for the Automotive Industry Action Group.
An updated incarnation appears in the Electronic Commerce domain of the Manufacturing Information Resource Locator.

An Approach for Evaluating Software in Terms of its Impact on End Users: Abstract: One view of software is as a tool for improving how people
work. Word processors help us create documents, CAD helps us design, and so forth. For evaluators, assessing the impact of software on work is reasonably straightforward. Its also straightforward for software developers to assess their products in terms of functionality, e.g. data access time or
interpretability. It is not so easy, however, to relate impact on work to software functionality, i.e. to make a crucial link that developers need to improve their products. This presentation will show the methodology we have developed to make this connection. The specific context is design tools for ship building.

Executive Summary: A Business Case For Electronic Commerce by Small Manufacturers: The Case of Suppliers to the Oshkosh Truck Corporation Copyright 1998 by ERIM.

Is it possible to determine the business value of electronic commerce (EC) for a small or medium sized manufacturer? We address this question
here for suppliers in the defense automotive sector, specifically, suppliers to the Oshkosh Truck Corporation (OTC). The two-year project followed six
of OTC’s suppliers as they implemented and used email, non-integrated EDI, and the World Wide Web. During the project the business processes enabled
by these technologies were: 1- email for CAD file exchange, 2- EDI for purchase orders, and 3- the Web for information seeking and advertising.

Email for CAD File Exchange Because hard copy drawings take time to process and are error prone, several ECOTS suppliers were able
to free-up significant engineering resources by receiving their customers’ drawings as CAD file attachments in email. While we could not ascertain
whether those resources were used to add value to the company, we did establish that the potential savings are very large. Overall estimates were obtained
by taking existing cases of CAD file exchange and scaling up to the total volume of engineering work done by the ECOTS suppliers. The savings for
six months were 9,000 hours and $320,000. (See figure 3 for details.) While the value of digital exchange would accrue to disk delivery as well as
email, email has the added advantage of decreasing the transit time from when a customer determines his manufacturing requirements to the time a
supplier receives the order. The decreased time can be used for one of two purposes: 1- to reduce overall procurement lead time, or 2- to give the customer some extra time to make sure requirements are stable, thus reducing the need for expediting.

Electronic Data Interchange A variety of technical and business reasons kept the suppliers from implementing integrated systems. As a result it was not possible to calculate the value of EDI in terms of its contribution to process improvement. (We do know that two of the suppliers were able to use their EDI capability to attract or keep customers other than OTC.) What would happen were the suppliers to do integrated EDI? Based on their known order volume with OTC we were able to answer this question in terms of transaction costs and return on investment. Analysis revealed that integrated EDI can be justified for some, but not all of the suppliers. When transitioning from a manual system to EDI, one firm could justify the investment within one year, with two others being able to do so within three years. The finding that EDI makes sense for only a limited number of ECOTS-like firms is confirmed by an entirely separate analysis done by OTC for its own purposes. While that analysis used different assumptions about costs, and focused on a different sample of suppliers, their conclusion was similar to ours, that the break-even point is about 33 transactions per month, and that: "24 of 192 vendors for the period 9/1/97 through 11/30/97 had more than 33 PO line items per month".

World Wide Web While data on Web use was limited, it was possible to identify several specific applications that had discernible positive impact on the suppliers. The most quantifiable one came the Web’s ability to help find discrete information that could be put to immediate use, in this case: 1- search for suppliers, and 2- check product specifications. In these cases time saved was in the order of 6-8 hours per case, with the additional benefit of providing a greater variety of potential suppliers. Less quantifiable uses included assessing ones competition, searching for sales leads, and using the company Web page for advertising.

Internal Evaluation: A Synthesis of Traditional Methods and Industrial Engineering -- Abstract In evaluation as we have been practicing it there is a trade-off between the rigor of method and the extent of involvement by a wide variety of program staff. The reason for this relationship is that evaluation rigor
requires esoteric tools and long time horizons, requirements that that are unreasonable for all but a small minority staff. Thus to insure the use of results from rigorous evaluation, evaluators must devote considerable resources to the task of knowledge transfer.

The knowledge use challenge is greatly lessened when evaluation is planned and carried out by a wide variety of the staff who work in the program
that is being evaluated. Such evaluation however, will be done by people who are not schooled in evaluation methodology, and thus will be relatively
weak from a methodological point of view.

There is a way to remove the trade-off between “rigor” and “use” by applying the tools of industrial engineering (IE). Many of these tools
use very sophisticated and powerful methods, but are packaged in a manner that allows use by people with relatively little specialized training.
They are designed in this manner because they are developed within a framework of Total Quality Management, a framework which assumes that evaluation
should be done by those closest to the process being evaluated.

There are two levels of use for IE tools in evaluation. The first level is additive. It simply requires that IE tools be added to the evaluator's
toolbox. The second level employs the methodological abilities of evaluators to adapt and improve IE tools to make them even more useful. As an example
the IE method of control charting requires accurate models of program action. Work on evaluation theory could be applied to assure the value of these
models.

Much effort is required to effect a workable integration of traditional evaluation and IE. Problems to be overcome include inserting the new evaluation
technology into program settings, training and education, and developing a different kind of relationship between professional evaluators and those
who work in settings where evaluation is takes place.

Metrics and Modes for the Evaluation of Supply Chain Integration (A version of this article appeared in an issue of the EDI Forum that was dedicated to Electronic Commerce in Manufacturing (volume 10, #1,1997). The EDI Forum is published by the EDI Group, Ltd. 221 Lake Street, Oak Park IL 60302, 708 848-0135 www.edigroup.com. Reprinted here with their permission. on-line version of manuscript
Preface: Supply chain communication refers to the flow of information among several layers of a manufacturing supply chain. In such a system
a set of customers and suppliers are constantly transmitting information about material needs, production schedules, and product availability. Supply
chain integration (SCI) refers to a state where this information is transmitted quickly among trading partners, and where the partners are able to readily
adjust their activities based on changes in requirements for material or the exigencies of production and delivery schedules. Supply chain integration
is important because information flow affects the timeliness of delivery to market, because miscommunication at any point in the chain can cause
serious problems at remote parts of the chain, and because the open-system nature of manufacturing requires constant adjustments to production plans.
Supply chains compensate for these problems by building inventory, and inventory is expensive. Proper coordination is important because it allows
information to substitute for material.

Making SCI happen is difficult because the process requires new business process, new technology, and coordinated action among sets of companies,
not all of whom are in a direct supplier - customer relations with each other. In addition to being difficult, SCI affects critical-path activities in delivering a product to market. The combination of difficulty and criticality makes SCI risky, and thus companies considering SCI need assurance that it has worked for others, and that it is likely to work for them.

That assurance can come from systematic evaluation of many exercises in SCI, which in the aggregate, can build a body of information on what works under what circumstances. As knowledge builds about best practice and best process for SCI, it will become easier (i.e. less risky) for more and more sets of trading partners to coordinate their activities. A related justification for metrics is that their value in helping to monitor intermediate progress, and thus to provide a basis for continuous improvement, a basis for mid-course corrections, and confidence during the inevitable early stages when investment in SCI is high and its payoff is low.

Good evaluation of SCI requires all the science and craft developed by evaluators for the assessment of real-world interventions. It is beyond the scope of this article to show how an entire evaluation should be done. Rather, my intent is to provide examples of how we have dealt with one particular aspect of SCI evaluation, namely the development and use of metrics and models to monitor SCI pilot programs.

Evaluation of Simulation for CNC Training in a Community College Setting "Computer numerical control" (CNC) refers to substituting human control
over machine tools with computer control. Such a substitution has numerous advantages. More machines can be operated at once. Precision and accuracy
in repetition can be increased. Very complex machining can be done. Robots can be put to work.  Training people to do such programming is problematic however, because students need real machine tools and need to practice machining real stock into real parts. This hands-on requirement results in very expensive training because tools, shop floor space and machining stock are expensive to acquire and maintain. Because of the resource
limitations:

• The number of machines available to students is much more limited than the number they may encounter in the workplace.
• Practice time is limited.
• Students are risk-averse because of fear of breaking a work-piece, or worse, breaking a machine tool.
  

Another problem is that some important information cannot be provided to students because teaching that information requires visualization that
is impossible in the real world. As an example robot arms move in tiny zig zags which are numerous and fast enough to appear as a smooth motion
to the human eye. The nature of the real motion is important, however, in understanding robot programming.

This project was an attempt to assess the value of computer simulation (from the Deneb Corporation) in ameliorating these difficulties. Fixed
choice questionnaires were used to gauge student satisfaction with the simulation, while interviews were used with instructors. The overall finding
was that simulation does in fact work well to improve CNC training, but that two difficulties inhibit its wide spread use. First, it takes deep technical expertise to set up the simulations. Second. the software (and hardware needed to run it) is very expensive, far beyond the budget of community colleges. Deneb is now taking steps, both in terms of its software and its business models, to lessen these problems.

Evaluation of the DoD's Electronic Commerce Resource Centers: The Electronic Commerce Resource Center (ECRC) system was set up by
the DoD to help small companies implement electronic commerce, mostly to improve the government's acquisition practices. Services provided by the ECRCs include training, consulting, and Web based assistance tools. The purpose of this project is to develop a system that the ECRCs can use to evaluate themselves. The primary evaluation instrument is a fixed choice questionnaire to be filled out by ECRC clients. The contents of the questionnaire are based on a model of ECRC action, depicted in the following diagram.

Delphi Requirements Analysis for the Defense Sustainment Consortium: The Defense Sustainment Consortium (DSC) is dedicated to improving the ability of the Department of Defense to maintain aging weapons systems in as cost effective a manner as possible. To succeed, new relationships will have to be built between the DoD and its suppliers. To meet its objective, the DSC is engaged in a series of studies to 1- determine the current and future states of
the sustainment industry, and 2- to guide the DSC's choice of innovative supply chain pilot projects.

A Conceptual Overview of Supply Chain Optimization: A White Paper Prepared for the National Institute of Standards and Technology:
The Research Triangle Institute and ERIM's Center for Electronic Commerce (CEC) were awarded a contract by the National Institute of Standards and Technology to research excessive costs incurred in supply chains due to a lack of a standards infrastructure. In particular, the project focused on the production phase of the product life cycle. This report was produced by ERIM early in the project, to be used as a foundation to help formulate data collection and analysis strategies. Major sections of the report are:

• Inventory and Information as Ways to Manage Uncertainty Coordinate with Customers
• Trading Partner Business Models As Way To Manage Dependency
• Local or System-Wide Optimization?
• Interoperability as an Approach to Optimizing Supply Chains
• References