Identifying and Ranking the Causes of Delay Based on Production Strategies in Manufacturing Projects

Today, due to the increase in complexities and uncertainties faced by manufacturing organizations, the production of products faces planned/unplanned events that happen during the production life cycle. Meanwhile, some factors can have a significant impact on the success or failure of the organization, and the most effective of such factors is the occurrence of delays and disruptions in the production and delivery schedule. Some of these factors are caused by the nature of the industry, which is difficult to reduce/eliminate. The effect of many other factors can be reduced and sometimes eliminated. Most of the manufacturing-related literature focuses on providing solutions to the issues that lead to delays. The neglected point in the literature is to identify the underlying factors that lead to delays in the production schedule and delivery of products and to provide a comprehensive framework for identifying delays in production environments. This study aims to reduce delays and optimize production time by identifying and ranking the possible factors causing delays in production organizations based on the review of the literature related to production and empirical research.

Design/methodology/approach

: This research includes a combination of quantitative and qualitative methods to provide a more detailed analysis of the dimensions related to the problem. First, four types of production systems, i.e., engineering to order, manufacturing to order, assembly to order and production to warehouse have been described, and then these production environments have been compared with different aspects. In the following, by reviewing previous research and benefiting from experts, factors affecting delays in production projects have been identified and localized, and the weight of each criterion has been determined using Shannon's entropy method. Finally, by applying this model in the manufacturing industries of Iran and using the TOPSIS technique, the causes of delay have been ranked.

Due to their nature, production systems are exposed to risks caused by various delay factors. The results indicated that engineering based on order, manufacturing based on order, assembly based on order, and production for warehouse are exposed to more risks, respectively. The most important causes of delay in each production system were among the other results. Based on the findings, it seems that manufacturing organizations, knowing the nature of the system, rank their system in terms of delays, and prevent unfortunate events in this field by careful planning.

Research limitations/implications:

 The extent of industries and manufacturing companies in identifying comprehensive criteria contributed to the study. However, from the point of view of specialization of the results, every industry must obtain relevant results by implementing the proposed approach according to the type of its production system. Therefore, more context-specific research is needed to examine the unique aspects of organizational cultures that include social, political, economic, technological, personnel, and personal considerations. Therefore, future studies should provide the analysis and findings in each case because each one will bring distinctive and unique findings in its case.

Practical implications:

 Accurate identification of the production system used in manufacturing industries and the main causes of delay can provide managers with a more effective view to prevent destructive consequences.

Originality/value:

 This study investigated the causes of delays in various production projects in Iranian manufacturing organizations. No research has been performed on investigating the reasons for delays in various types of production environments in the manufacturing organizations in Iran, as a developing country exhibiting differences in the aspects of cultures, social, political, economic, technological, personnel and personal.