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When a design team faces the problem of designing a complex system, they are required to make several decisions. Because such design problems are difficult to solve all at once, teams often decompose the design problem into several smaller subproblems. This paper discusses the results of a study designed to understand how design teams decompose a factory redesign problem into sets of related subproblems and compare the subproblems obtained for each design team. This exploratory study analyzed the design activities of eight teams of professionals and used clustering to group the variables that the design teams considered. We found that the design teams used different decomposition strategies and different subproblems, but they more often considered subproblems with design variables of the same type, and some teams followed a top-down design process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We present a simulation model constructed in collaboration with Intel Corporation to measure and gauge the interaction of non-linear supply chain phenomena (such as waste, uncertainty, congestion, bullwhip, and vulnerability). A representative model that mimics part of Intel's supply chain from fabrication to delivery is modeled using discrete-event simulation in ARENA. A “phenomena evaluation” framework is proposed to link model inputs and supply chain phenomena in order to evaluate supply chain configurations. Using a sample supply chain decision (safety stock level determination) we follow the “phenomena evaluation” framework to illustrate a final recommendation. Results show that our supply chain phenomena evaluation approach helps better illustrate some trade-offs than an evaluation approach based only on the traditional metrics (cost, service, assets etc.). [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]