User:Rdejuan/Example/Remplanet

A resilient supply network is prepared for unexpected events, has the capability to respond quickly to disruptions, and adapt and recover from them. Moreover, these networks protect their high-value assets as well as their continuity when a disruptive event has occurred. In these supply networks, the direction and coordination of the activities to achieve resilience objectives should be aligned with the network‘s strategic objectives and critical success operational factors.

Background
Supply networks are composed of production units (manufacturing and assembly processes, and inventories for temporary stocking) and storage points (distribution centres), connected by transportation of goods and by exchange of information, as well as their corresponding planning and control systems. Global supply networks have appeared in the last decades due to many different reasons:


 * 1) To be the best in competitive globalised environments, in which clients have sophisticated their demands, and ever shorter technology-product-process life cycles, companies are forced to focus on what they know how to do best, and subcontract every other aspects in which they are not excellent ;
 * 2)  ICTs have reduced transaction costs (partner localisation, negotiation, coordination, etc) facilitating the decentralisation of tasks in collaborative companies and their interdependence ;
 * 3) And a whole series of other reasons derived from the search for market growth in new markets, the establishment of new plant nearer local markets to reduce logistic costs and response times, the establishment of production facilities in countries with lower labour costs, etc.

Resilient Supply Networks
A resilient supply network effectively aligns its strategy, operations, management systems, governance structure, and decision-support capabilities so that it can uncover and adjust to continually changing risks, endure disruptions to its primary earnings drivers, and create advantages over less adaptive competitors. Moreover, it has the capability to respond rapidly to unforeseen changes, even chaotic disruption. The resilience of a supply network is the ability to bounce back — and, in fact, to bounce forward with speed, determination and precision. In recent studies, resilience is regarded as the next phase in the evolution of traditional, place-centric enterprise structures to highly virtualized, customer-centric structures that enable people to work anytime, anywhere.

As a resilient supply network should align its strategy and operations to adapt to risk that affects its capacities, the achievement of resilience should be reached from these two points of view.

Strategic Resilience
From the strategic resilient viewpoint, a supply network must dynamically reinvent business models and strategies as circumstances change. It is not about responding to a one-time crisis, or just having a flexible supply chain. It is about continuously anticipating and adjusting to discontinuities that can permanently impair the value preposition of a core business with special focus on delivering ultimate customer centricity. Strategic resilience, therefore, requires continuous innovation with respect to product structures, processes, but also corporate behaviour. Renewal can be regarded as the natural consequence of a supply network’s innate strategic resilience.

Operational Resilience
In terms of operational resilience, the supply networks must to respond to the ups and downs of the business cycle or to quickly rebalance product-service mix, processes, and supply chain, by bolstering enterprises agility, flexibility and robustness in the face of changing environments.

REMPLANET Project
The Resilient Multi-Plant Networks (REMPLANET) project, is focused on the development of methods, guidelines and tools for the implementation of a Resilient Multi-Plant Networks Model in non-hierarchical manufacturing networks, characterized by non-centralized decision making. This project is funded by the European Commission within the  Seventh Framework Programme (ref. EU  FP7 Project 229333) as a collaborative project under the NMP-2008-SMALL-2 call.

Related Concepts and Research Domains
In the scope of the REMPLANET project resilient organizations are related with the following concepts and research domains:


 * Strategic Resilience
 * Operational Resilience
 * Manufacturing Agility
 * Multi-plant Networks
 * Non-hierarchical Manufacturing Networks
 * Network Simulation
 * Mass Customisation
 * Open Innovation
 * Collaborative Decision Processes
 * Enterprise Modelling Languages
 * Service Oriented Architectures
 * Business Process Management Notation

Project Activities
In order to achieve the goals of the project, the REMPLANET activities are structured into the following main tasks:


 * Development of tools, methods, and guidelines to enable enterprises to foster strategic resilience profiting from open innovation.
 * Development of an Operational Resilient Supply Network Model, as well as its tools, methods, and guidelines for mass customization.
 * Integration of the Strategic and Operational Resilience views providing a framework for globalised enterprise networks.
 * Development of a Simulation and Optimization Decision-Support System (DSS) for testing the consequences of multi-plant network dynamic re-configurability.
 * Implementation of a Service-Oriented Platform (SOP) for Extended Business Process Management (EBPM) supporting a fully non-centralized decision making process.
 * Validation and enhancement of research and related tools through 6 empirical cases (pilots).

Project Results
REMPLANET project will generate the following results:


 * MCKN - Mass Customization Knowledge Network: Platform for Open Process Innovation in the domain of Mass Customization. This platform will provide a dynamic knowledge repository in the field of mass customization, as well as a broad network of experts on the topic (researchers, practitioners, etc.).
 * IMP – Idea management process: a generic process for a fair and transparent evaluation of customer ideas. The process is designed to support mass customizers in their decision-making on the integration of customer ideas.
 * ORM - Operational REMPLANET Model: Conceptual model and toolbox for facilitating the alignment between products'-processes'-supply networks' configurations in order to respond to customized market demands at the lowest possible cost and time.
 * RIF - REMPLANET Integrated Framework: Integrated strategic alignment workbook and tool which will allow companies to link network structure, operations and strategy.
 * RDSS - REMPLANET Decision Support System: A computational simulation-optimization tool to evaluate alternative flexible multi-plant network dynamic structures and policies under different operational and strategic resilience scenarios.
 * ColNet (previously known as SOP4EBPM ) - ICT Platform for Collaborative Business Processes Management to support mass-customization scenarios.

Impact
Both manufacturing enterprise networks and society in general are expected to benefit from the results of REMPLANET. This project will enable manufacturing enterprise networks to be more competitive in an ever increasing globalised economy, through shorter times for innovation, decision taking and manufacturing processes. Society in general will benefit from having more efficient and effective manufacturing enterprises, which will reduce time and resource waste.

REMPLANET Participants
The REMPLANET Consortium is composed of research groups from different universities and an industrial mass that involves Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) as well as large enterprises from Germany, United Kingdom, Switzerland, Italy and Spain.