Information #ows for high-performance manufacturing

The successful implementation of many management best practices (just-in-time, total quality management, concurrent engineering, etc.) heavily depends on proper organisational communication and information management. In this paper, we address the issue of how these best practices, labelled as high-performance manufacturing (HPM) practices, can a!ect a "rm's communication structure. The paper "rstly develops a reference framework for the analysis of information #ows in operations. This reference framework integrates research in operations management and in organizational communication. The paper then applies the proposed framework to investigate how information #ows tend to be characterised in HPM. In doing so, the proposed framework relates cost, time and quality performances to three operational processes (physical transformation, product development and material #ow management) and to three classes of information #ows: vertical, horizontal and external information #ows. ( 2001 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.