Axiomatic Design of Production Systems for Performance Improvement: A Project Identification and Prioritization Model

Companies should align production systems according to their overall strategy and consider the strategic goals of the organization as a whole. To be competitive and profitable, it is not sufficient to improvise, although it is necessary to consider all the variables and scenarios and accommodate the different contexts and situations as appropriate. To improve their competitive abilities and to enhance cost-reduction opportunities and process efficiency, organizations are bringing about improvements in their operations and processes, adding global operations optimization to a global manufacturing strategy. However companies’ ability to develop sustainable competitive advantage from these improvements is hampered by the lack of objective approaches for targeting their improvement efforts. There are significant limitations to the approaches used for project selection and priori- tization, therefore the purpose of this work is to provide a structured approach, using Axiomatic Design (AD) principles, to identify and prioritize the best projects that are conducive to process excellence and performance improvement. Through the application of the Axiomatic Design method, we identify where complexity exists within the requirements and design activities that underpin the model. Using this analysis, this work identifies the critical points within the Project Identification and Prioritization model, and suggests necessary improvements to facilitate the implementation of Process Efficiency within a company.