Technology transfer
Capabilities
17 capabilities in which CIGIP offers consultancy and technology transfer to companies, grouped into four areas.
6 capabilities
Planning and production
Analysis and improvement of sales and operations planning processes
To be competitive, companies must efficiently synchronise customer demand with supply. When operations planning and order management are handled in isolation, with manual methods or outdated information systems, the result is high costs, non-value-adding activities and poor customer service. CIGIP analyses and redesigns operations planning processes at tactical and operational level (aggregate, master, material requirements and distribution planning) and order management processes, ensuring their integration with other processes and information systems and incorporating new technologies, so that the company can respond better to market changes and improve its efficiency and customer service.
Production/operations management in a context of uncertainty
Production and operations planning models that do not acknowledge uncertainty can be expected to generate inferior planning decisions compared to models that explicitly consider it. Due to the unavailability and uncertainty of information, it is extremely difficult to generate plans under a dynamic environment. Our position is that fuzzy set theory and possibility theory are, in general, a suitable methodology for current production and operations planning systems. The design and implementation of fuzzy mathematical programming models to solve production and operations planning problems under uncertainty can represent a great advance for companies.
Advanced design of production systems
Some companies encounter peculiar problems in their production system, such as uncertainty in the design variables of the layout or uncertainty in the product mix. These peculiarities imply a non-conventional, non-commercialized, non-standard design. The CIGIP uses advanced techniques for the design of these systems that allow adjusting the Production System to existing needs.
Design of advanced production scheduling systems
There are companies with specific problems in their production system that, due to their complexity (relationships between resources, size, dynamism, uncertainty, etc.), imply unconventional, non-commercialized/non-standard production scheduling. The CIGIP has extensive experience in the development of algorithms and implementation of software tools, which in turn integrate with the tools used by companies. This provides an advanced solution to the problem of production scheduling that favors the reduction of costs and improvement in meeting delivery deadlines.
Design and implementation of production management systems
Production activity management is one of the most complex tasks carried out within a company. It is necessary to use Production Management models adapted to the needs and characteristics of each company. From classic Production Management models such as MRP, JIT and OPT, a particular adaptation to the productive environment of each company is necessary. The definition of an adequate Production Management system guarantees success in achieving cost, quality, delivery time, etc., objectives, and is an indispensable step for the selection and implementation of a computerized Production Management package.
Modelling and simulation of production processes
Changes in production systems result in the decision to select a series of possible alternatives that involve various degrees of investment and achievement of objectives. Simulation allows the creation of production process models very close to reality. Simulation models help in the selection of alternatives based on the observation of the dynamic evolution of the system and the results obtained.
4 capabilities
Supply chain
Analysis and improvement of enterprise resilience
Companies are increasingly exposed to threats, unforeseen events and disruptive situations that affect their performance. Enterprise resilience is a key capability for dealing with these disruptions sustainably and efficiently, and a source of competitive advantage that helps to secure the company’s long-term continuity. CIGIP provides mechanisms to analyse a company’s degree of resilience and methodologies to improve it: measuring its resilience level, improving its ability to adapt to disruptions, reducing response time when they occur and increasing the efficiency of the resources used to overcome them. These tools were developed in the European project REMPLANET, under the 7th Framework Programme and coordinated by CIGIP, and validated in several industrial pilots.
Order management process development in a company and/or supply chain
Order management processes and order commitment are critical during sales and in customer relationships. A poor approach or design of these can deteriorate customer service or create unnecessary urgencies or inefficiencies in the development of industrial operations (manufacturing/assembly/storage/distribution/installation). Our researchers will help you design order management and order commitment processes for each particular situation, taking into account both traditional single-company scenarios and collaborative scenarios in sales networks of complementary product/service packages.
Collaborative forecasting in supply chain management
One of the processes that most influences decision-making in a company is demand forecasting. Accurate forecasts help provide better customer service accompanied by a reduction in inventory levels. The accuracy level of forecasts depends on the company’s ability to obtain relevant information and interpret it. Collaborative Forecasting is based on the fact that each of the companies that relate to each other (customers and suppliers or nodes of a supply chain) has relevant information for the prediction that others do not possess.
Supply chain operations re-engineering
The CIGIP has developed a methodology for the analysis and improvement of operations in a supply chain through alignment with the company’s vision and mission, modeling of the current and proposed system, implementation of the adopted solutions, monitoring, evaluation, control and continuous improvement.
3 capabilities
Performance management
Analysis and design of performance management systems in a company and/or supply chain
Performance management in organizations is increasingly becoming a competitive element and a differentiator between those companies capable of doing it and those that are not. Furthermore, they must be able to do so in a simple, continuous and effective manner in order to compensate for the effort invested in this process. In the current competitive environment, one of the key factors associated with success is the ability to measure and manage performance in the different facets of an organization’s management. CIGIP’s experience of more than two decades in this area, analyzing, designing, developing and implementing performance management systems, allows it to adapt to all types of organizations, regardless of their size and sector of activity.
Advice on the design and management of collaborative performance management systems
Many companies and supply chains or networks have no performance management system (PMS) in place, or do not use it to its full potential. CIGIP helps to design and define tailored PMSs for any type of organisation and applies quantitative techniques to identify relationships between performance measurement elements, manage the sustainability, agility and resilience of organisations, identify the inter-organisational collaboration factors that bring the greatest competitive advantage and develop multi-criteria models to manage and prioritise performance. The benefits come from better management: fewer indicators to monitor, better information to define the objectives and strategies that really matter and better decisions in finance, processes, production and customers.
Definition and implementation of performance management systems
Companies that neither measure nor manage their strategic objectives have little chance of survival, and many of those that do have a performance management system (PMS) do not make full use of it. CIGIP helps to design and define PMSs tailored to the needs of each organisation and applies quantitative techniques to identify relationships between strategic objectives and define key business indicators, design internal scenarios to project the company’s strategic position objectively in the medium and long term, and identify the main inter-organisational collaboration factors. The result is better management: fewer indicators to monitor, better information for setting objectives and strategies, short-term savings and higher profits in the medium and long term.
4 capabilities
Decision and information systems
Analysis and design of decision systems
In a business organization, the so-called Decision-Making System is fundamentally composed of decision-making processes, characterized according to their short, medium, and long-term impact (Operational, Tactical, and Strategic). Frequently, there are coordination problems in this area between the different areas of the company. In this sense, CIGIP carries out analyses of the map of decision-making centers in a company, for the detection of improvement points. Similarly, it has extensive experience in the design of the decision-making system best suited to the company’s activity. With the analysis of a company’s decision-making map and the simulation of decision-making activities, the coordination problems between the different areas of the company are determined, while optimizing decision-making activities and eliminating overloads on certain decision-makers.
Design and implementation of decision systems based on optimisation and simulation models for sales and operations planning
Operations planning and order management are complex, closely related processes whose decisions have a major impact on company efficiency and customer service. CIGIP designs and implements decision systems that integrate optimisation tools based on mathematical programming and simulation models to obtain high-quality decisions together with their level of risk, robustness and impact on other processes, analyse what-if scenarios, make decisions under uncertainty and evaluate them over a rolling horizon, and respond quickly to unexpected events. As a result, companies increase their profits, the stability of their decisions, their ability to react and their level of customer service.
ERP software selection consultancy
ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) systems are integral management systems for the company. ERPs are products that represent a high investment for the company and of which there is a wide variety of packages offered. The CIGIP has extensive experience in the analysis of management systems, offering companies an analysis of business processes and requirement capture, as well as the analysis of pre-selected ERPs based on requirements and quantification of the adaptability of each ERP to the company. In this way, the researchers at our center offer reliable advice for the selection of the most appropriate ERP for each organization through a quantitative analysis of the different alternatives for the correct decision-making.
Development of business applications based on FI-WARE technologies
Vertical solutions that support a company’s business processes usually require custom development, often from scratch. FI-WARE offers a catalogue of software modules that allows them to be assembled and adapted quickly, with shorter development times and higher quality. CIGIP provides the know-how to develop business applications by integrating and extending the components of the European projects FI-WARE and FITMAN, gained through the development of an application for product innovation in the furniture sector. These applications can be deployed in any industrial sector, particularly for production process control and agile decision-making through event monitoring and advanced visualisation of results, or to extract valuable information from blog and social media text.
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