Moving to a Flexible Shop Floor by Analyzing the Information Flow Coming from Levels of Decision on the Shop Floor of Developing Countries Using Artificial Neural Network: Cameroon, Case Study

André Marie Mbakop (), Joseph Voufo (), Florent Biyeme () and Jean Raymond Lucien Meva’a ()
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André Marie Mbakop: National Advanced School of Engineering of Yaoundé (NASEY)
Joseph Voufo: National Advanced School of Engineering of Yaoundé (NASEY)
Florent Biyeme: National Advanced School of Engineering of Yaoundé (NASEY)
Jean Raymond Lucien Meva’a: National Advanced School of Engineering of Yaoundé (NASEY)

Global Journal of Flexible Systems Management, 2022, vol. 23, issue 2, No 6, 255-270

Abstract: Abstract Performance improvement in manufacturing is the major target of small and medium size enterprises (SMEs) of developing countries. This performance has always been linked to the good management of information flow (MIF) which is also a key to transforming a non-flexible shop floor to a flexible one. The MIF in developing countries has always been accurate when characterizing the information flow. The good MIF is always based on the value of information flow (VIF). In this paper, we analyze the influence of the direction (decision-making levels or information from hierarchy’s offices) and also the dimension (medium) of information flow on VIF on the shop floor of developing countries, with Cameroon as a case study. The audit results obtained from shop floors show that, in developing countries such as Cameroon, there is still a great impact of the non-digital information flow in production operations, such as paper, audio, and visual information. The results also show that the collaboration between the personnel influences the production operations jobs on the shop floor as long as hierarchy’s levels of decision making are concerned. From the results obtained, a proposed model of information sharing depending on the direction and the dimension in a woodworking company is presented with a decision flowchart based on the VIF. The analyzed VIF with artificial neural network shows that SMEs can become efficient by considering the visual information at every job post. A shop floor can only become flexible when it has a good VIF.

Keywords: Developing countries; Dimension; Direction; Flexible shop floor; Performance; Value of information flow (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

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DOI: 10.1007/s40171-022-00299-9

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