Workload control under diagnosis

Achieving high delivery performance is important for make-to-order companies. Empirical evidence shows that an appropriate production planning and control approach could help to increase performance in practice. Erik Soepenberg's research focuses on a production planning and control approach based on the concept of Workload Control (WLC). The functioning of the concept is investigated in practice, with the aim of improving WLC theory. The research builds on existing expertise regarding the WLC concept at the University of Groningen.

Insights are gained by means of a large-scale project called “Performance improvement in the Northern Manufacturing Industry”, partly subsidized by European Union funds. Participating companies were all extensively supported to improve their performance by using the Workload Control concept. The analyses and improvement actions were supported with the Elance software developed by a participating consultancy firm Langhout and Cazemier. The Elance system systematically collected order progress and delivery time data during the projects.

By means of transferring scientific knowledge to practice, this PhD project has had a high practical contribution. The scientific contributions of this PhD thesis are twofold. The first part of the thesis presents new diagnosis instruments, developed to gain insights into the causes underlying poor delivery performance. The second part of the thesis presents new insights to improve the Workload Control concept, in order to be able to cope with dynamical circumstances and to enlarge its applicability area.

Curriculum vitae
Erik Soepenberg (Almelo, 1982) studied at the Faculty of Economics and Business and conducted his PhD resarch at the department of Operations and SOM graduate school. He will be awarded his PhD on 2 December (2.45pm). His thesis supervisor is prof.dr.ir. G.J.C. Gaalman and the thesis tile: Workload control under diagnosis.