Conceptual design and simulated operation of economies of scope and scale manufacturing enterprises

Much of industry is seeking scope economies, but this requires more complex and flexible product realisation. Modelling technologies have potential to support the life cycle engineering of both Economies of Scope and Scale (EoSS) manufacturing systems. However when companies operate in dynamic environments it is not sufficient to model manufacturing systems in isolation. Rather a holistic modelling methodology is needed which can create structural and behavioural models of dependencies between the manufacturing systems, and the business and engineering environments in which they operate; so that a suitable balance between economies of scope and scale can be achieved. This thesis describes the conception and development of a step wised Extended Modelling Methodology (EMM) which facilitates reasoning, and related decision making, about EoSS manufacturing systems. The EMM was conceived from exploratory research in two SMEs, following which it was applied and case tested in a large manufacturing company. Little academic attention to date has been paid to theorising about the link between ‘Economies of Scope and Scale (EoSS) phenomenon’ and ‘manufacturing systems design’. Hence many questions about EoSS manufacturing remain unanswered, such as: (1) academic communities need to know what EoSS actually means and how state-of-the-art modelling can support qualitative and quantitative analysis of EoSS system phenomenon; and (2) industry needs to know how they can benefit from EoSS, what attended costs they might incur, and what best balance between scope and scale economies can be achieved. With these general requirements in mind the thesis reports on the conception and industrial application of the EMM. This has: (A) developed new ideas about EoSS, which can be used to characterise EoSS phenomenon; (B) introduced a new way of visualising architectural aspects of EoSS at multiple-levels of abstraction; and (C) with reference to case studies has illustrated the use of multi-level modelling to enable predictions to be made about EoSS benefits and costs.