Title: The SoS approach for lean manufacturing systems

Authors: Arianna Alfieri; Marco Cantamessa; Francesca Montagna

Addresses: Dipartimento di Sistemi di Produzione ed Economia dell'Azienda, Politecnico di Torino, Corso Duca degli Abruzzi, 24 10129 Torino – Italy. ' Dipartimento di Sistemi di Produzione ed Economia dell'Azienda, Politecnico di Torino, Corso Duca degli Abruzzi, 24 10129 Torino – Italy. ' Dipartimento di Sistemi di Produzione ed Economia dell'Azienda, Politecnico di Torino, Corso Duca degli Abruzzi, 24 10129 Torino – Italy

Abstract: Most academic contributions to literature on lean manufacturing (LM) focus on specific aspects of LM, while there is little discussion on overall implementation issues. This is despite the fact that lean principles encompass all aspects of manufacturing operations and the need of a systemic approach is clearly shown in practitioner-oriented literature. This paper proposes the idea of an innovative methodology able to guide the information management in LM, based on the |system of systems| (SoS) approach currently being used for complex military initiatives. It is an attempt to describe how the main aspects of manufacturing systems can be represented within the SoS framework and how SoS can support the rational definition of a path leading from corporate strategy to system redesign.

Keywords: lean manufacturing; information management strategy; system of systems; SoS; network centric operations; NCOs; corporate strategy; system redesign.

DOI: 10.1504/IJTM.2012.043956

International Journal of Technology Management, 2012 Vol.57 No.1/2/3, pp.149 - 165

Published online: 06 Apr 2013 *

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