Proceedings of the 3rd International Conference on Industrial Application Engineering 2015 © 2015 The Institute of Industrial Applications Engineers, Japan. Impact of an organizational structure on the resilience of production processes based on artificial factors in the chemical industry Hajime Eguchi a,* , Tomomi Aoyama a , Kohei Seki a , Donal O’Donovan b , Ichiro Koshijima a a Nagoya Institute of Technology, Gokiso-cho, Showa-ku, Nagoya-city, Aichi-ken, 466-8555, Japan b Cork Institute of Technology, Rossa Avenue, Bishopstown, Cork, Ireland * Corresponding author: h.e@triton.ocn.ne.jp Abstract The production process in the chemical industry should be resilient against the influence of disruptive signals introduced into, and emanating from, the production process. Resilience is necessary to maintain high productivity, and is produced by (a) the skills and knowledge of the production staff (human factors), (b) the production units and the production support system (PSS, The computer system to support the production) (artificial factors). In order to maintain the higher resilience produced by the artificial factors, such as a production unit or a PSS, it is critical for the managerial objectives to organize effectively the managerial components, identified as the key element by the organization. In this paper, the aspects under consideration are the managerial components of the resilience matrix classified by the scale of disruptive signal, the managerial objectives used to improve the resilience by the artificial factors in the production process, the specific approaches adopted to manage these artificial factors, and some concluding remarks regarding the managerial objectives. The production unit cannot cope with a large disruptive signal that has not occurred yet, and the skills and knowledge of the human factors are the only one countermeasure against this kind of disruptive signal. The PSS copes with the small or medium disruptive signal instead of the human factor, and it yields the margin of work hours to practice the training and education for the improvement of the skills and knowledge of the production staff. Keywords: Chemical industry, Resilience, Production process, Artificial factors, Disruptive signal. 1. Introduction There is a large variety of disruptive signals that affect, or originate from the production process. These signals often influence or disturb the operation of the production process itself (See Fig.1). The concept of resilience is defined as the capability to restrain the influences of a disruptive signal (1, 2, 3) . It is possible to classify a disruptive signal by scale, and by response provider, who is in charge of the organizational measures necessary to manage the resilience, i.e. individual, group and/or organization (4) . The authors of this paper have already discussed the managerial components to restrain the disruptive signal, i.e. to improve resilience based on human factors (5) . The principal elements of a production process and the source of resilience are: (a) the skills and knowledge of the production staff (i.e. human factors), (b) the production units and the production support system, hereafter, referred to as PSS (i.e. artificial factors). This paper discusses the managerial components, the managerial objectives and the specific approaches, that are necessary to maintain and improve resilience by the artificial factors in the production process. Only the human factors cope with a large disruptive signal that has not occurred yet. The PSS can deal with the small or medium disruptive signal instead of the human factors, and the margin of work hours yielded in the daily routine of the production staff will be devoted to the training and education to improve the skills and knowledge. So, the artificial factors in the production process have to contribute to draw out the capability of production staff. DOI: 10.12792/iciae2015.021 100