An analysis of process industry production and inventory management systems
研究了流程行业在生产和库存管理方面落后于离散制造业的原因，通过实地调研19家工厂，识别出四个关键维度，并划分出四种不同类型的P&IM系统。
Abstract The process industries — those firms that add value by mixing, separating, forming and/or chemical reactions by either batch or continuous mode — continue to lag behind the discrete industries in the identification and implementation of effective production and inventory management (P&IM) techniques. A contributing factor is that the process industries have traditionally been lumped together and contrasted from the discrete industries as a whole, thus leading to misunderstandings regarding individual process industries. From site interviews and the literature, we identified four critical dimensions — planning resource requirements (for materials and capacity), tracking resource consumption, control of work‐in‐process (WIP), and degree of computerization — represented by seven variables by which to contrast and analyze process industries. Based on in‐depth field studies of 19 diverse process plants, we find that there exist at least four distinct types of process industry P&IM systems: (1) simple, (2) common, (3) WIP‐controlled, and (4) computerized.