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Industrial Management

Markus Hammer

Management Approach
for Resource-Productive
Operations
Design of a Time-Based
and Analytics-Supported
Methodology Grounded in Six Sigma
Industrial Management

Series editor
H. Biedermann, Leoben, Austria
C. Ramsauer, Graz, Austria
W. Sihn, Wien, Austria
Die Schriftenreihe behandelt Themen des gesamten Lebenszyklus von Pro­
dukten aus und in der produzierenden Industrie. Damit umfasst das Industrial
Management die Produktinnovation, die Produktionsüberleitung, von der eigent­
lichen Produktion und Auslieferung der industriell produzierten Erzeugnisse bis
hin zum Recycling. Die Beherrschung der neuen Themen wie Digitalisierung,
Agilität, Interdisziplinarität, demographischer Wandel und Offenheit beein­
flussen den Erfolg im Produktentstehungsprozess. In der Produktentwicklung
stehen modernste technische Methoden zur Verfügung gepaart mit Rapid-Proto­
typing-Maschinen, um beispielsweise in FabLabs und anderen öffentlichen oder
privaten Makerspaces Prototypen zu bauen. Das Anlaufmanagement beschäftigt
sich damit, wie man rasch Produkte mit maximaler Kapazitätsauslastung produ­
zieren kann. Die industrielle Produktion benötigt meist hochverfügbare Maschi­
nen mit hohem Investitionsbedarf. Das strategisch-operative Asset Management
spielt dabei eine entscheidende Rolle. Aus ökonomisch-ökologischer Sicht hat
die Ressourceneffizienz (insbesondere Material und Energie) hohe Bedeutung.
Die in der Industrie beschäftigten Mitarbeiter bedürfen wegen des hohen Inno­
vationsgrades weiterer Befähigung und benötigen ergonomisch gestaltete Arbeits­
plätze. Die Kostenposition wird nicht zuletzt von der Wahl des Industriestandorts
und der richtigen Fabriksplanung beeinflusst. Die Digitalisierung betrifft die ge-
samte Wertschöpfungskette und ist die Voraussetzung für neue Geschäftsmodelle
und ein agiles Unternehmen. Das Industrial Management entwickelt zu all diesen
Themen Theorien, Konzepte, Modelle, Methoden und praxisrelevante Instru­
mente.

Reihe herausgegeben von:

Prof. Dr. Hubert Biedermann Prof. Dr. Wilfried Sihn
Montanuniversität Leoben Technische Universität Wien
Österreich Österreich
Prof. Dr. Christian Ramsauer
Technische Universität Graz
Österreich

More information about this series at http://www.springer.com/series/16058

Markus Hammer

Management Approach
for Resource-Productive
Operations
Design of a Time-Based
and Analytics-Supported
Methodology Grounded in Six Sigma
With a foreword by
Univ.-Prof. Dipl.-Ing. Dr. techn. Christian Ramsauer
and Prof. Dipl.-Wirt.-Inf. Dr. Christian Terwiesch
Markus Hammer
Graz, Austria

Dissertation Graz University of Technology, Austria, 2017

ISSN 2523-3866 ISSN 2523-3874 (electronic)

Industrial Management
ISBN 978-3-658-22938-2 ISBN 978-3-658-22939-9 (eBook)
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-658-22939-9

Library of Congress Control Number: 2018949896

Springer Gabler
© Springer Fachmedien Wiesbaden GmbH, part of Springer Nature 2019
This work is subject to copyright. All rights are reserved by the Publisher, whether the whole or part
of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations,
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Foreword

Academics often spend too much time developing complex mathematical models
while failing to recognize that business leaders struggle with very different deci-
sions. One of these under-researched decisions that we see many business leaders
facing, relates to their search for management approaches that help them connect
their operational decision making with their corporate financial performance.
The research work of Mr. Hammer presents a unique implementation meth-
odology of a management approach that aims to optimize profits using a financial,
time-based target operating parameter, e.g., profit per hour. By connecting the de-
cision making with real time data, this work provides decision makers with a sim-
ple yard stick they can use to run their operations.
The research of Mr. Hammer is clearly conceptual and application focused
and we view it as an important contribution on how to implement performance
management systems. The work also touches on related topics that, in our view,
have received insufficient attention from the performance management literature,
including Big Data, Data Analytics, as well as Industry 4.0.
The abundance of data that modern plant managers in theory have access to
is in sharp contrast to the sophistication of their current planning methodologies.
This deficit is especially becoming a challenge in times of increasing volatility and
complexity.
Throughout the document, Mr. Hammer uses relevant sources of literature
and builds upon the current body of international publications in the field. Through
his careful referencing and citations, Mr. Hammer demonstrates a high degree of
academic integrity. He only claims credit for what he contributes himself, while
being generous pointing to the contributions of those who went before him.
The work submitted by Mr. Hammer provides a significant contribution to
the field of industrial operations management.

Univ.-Prof. Dipl.-Ing. Dr.techn. Christian Ramsauer

Institute of Innovation and Industrial Management

Prof. Dipl.-Wirt.-Inf. Dr. Christian Terwiesch

The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania
Acknowledgements

I would like to thank my supervisor Prof. Dr. Christian Ramsauer for being a role
model and for his support and trust. I thank Prof. Dr. Christian Terwiesch for being
my second assessor and early thought partner on pursuing a PhD. Furthermore, I
would like to acknowledge Prof. Dr. Stefan Vorbach, for his advice and for being
the head of the examination board.
Being part of the team at the Institute for Innovation and Industrial Manage-
ment has been a fantastic experience. Thank you Alex, Christian, Christoph,
Daniela, Elma, Hans, Hugo, Jasmin, Kerstin, Mario, Martin, Matthias, Nils,
Patrick, Philipp, Sascha, Silke, Stefan, Thomas, et al. I would also like to thank
my work colleagues, in particular, Joris, Ken, Olivier, and Robert and the three
industrial companies who agreed to contribute with the practical cases.
I owe deep gratitude to my family, my parents Roswitha and Helmut, my
loving wife Raquel, and my two sons Lucas and David, to whom I dedicate this
work.

Dipl.-Ing. Dr. techn. Markus Hammer

Abstract

The objective of this doctoral thesis is to investigate a time-based and analytics-

supported operations management approach and develop a structured implemen-
tation methodology.
In the context of digitization, the Industry 4.0 and the Industrial Internet of
Things the amount of available technology and data is continuously rising. At the
same time increasing volatility, uncertainty and complexity demand making
operations decisions in ever shorter intervals trending towards real-time.
This research explores five perspectives, the needs of industry, in particular
manufacturing in process industries; the impact of digitization, with focus on Big
Data and analytics; the management of operations through time-based perfor-
mance metrics; how operations improvement methods and advanced process
control help achieve resource-productive operations; and learning from practice
based on two empirical case studies.
Next an implementation methodology for a time-based and analytics-
supported operations management approach is conceived, explained and tested.
The methodology is structured around five phases known from Six Sigma: Define,
Measure, Analyze, Improve, Control and contains 17 specific steps which are
explained and subsequently validated in an industrial case study.
This thesis discusses the criteria when this approach is meaningful, for
example, situations when trade-off decisions between conflicting targets are
required, time is the constraint, close to real time decision making is required,
cumulative profit maximization is the desired long term goal, and where invested
capital and/or resource intensity is high.
Pre-conditions for implementations are stated, for example, infrastructure
such as sensors, meters, or data storage; data to compute the metric; access to
advanced algorithms required to solve for profit per hour as a target function; an
implementation process; and the required skills.
It can be concluded that a time-based and analytics-supported operations
management approach for maximizing profits is meaningful if the pre-conditions
are met. The final case study proves that the developed implementation
methodology works in practice.
Contents

List of Figures ................................................................................................... XV

List of Tables ................................................................................................... XIX
List of Equations .............................................................................................. XXI
List of Abbreviations .................................................................................... XXIII

1 Introduction ..................................................................................................... 1
1.1 Initial Situation and Motivation .............................................................. 1
1.2 Objective of the Research ....................................................................... 2
1.3 Research Questions ................................................................................. 4
1.4 Research Design and Structure ............................................................... 4
1.5 Thesis Outline ......................................................................................... 8

2 Industry Perspective: Challenges in Manufacturing in Process Industries .... 11

2.1 Megatrends in Industry ......................................................................... 11
2.2 Manufacturing Industries ...................................................................... 18
2.3 Process Industries ................................................................................. 22
2.4 Summary: Manufacturing in Process Industries ................................... 25

3 Digitization Perspective: Impact of Digital Technologies in Manu-

facturing ........................................................................................................ 27
3.1 Digitization ........................................................................................... 27
3.2 Industry 4.0 ........................................................................................... 32
3.3 Industrial Internet of Things ................................................................. 40
3.4 Big Data ................................................................................................ 48
3.5 Advanced Analytics .............................................................................. 56
3.6 Summary: Impact of Digitization on Manufacturing ............................ 67

4 Management Perspective: Performance Opportunities with Decision-

Support Systems ............................................................................................ 69
4.1 Decision Making ................................................................................... 69
4.2 Performance Measures .......................................................................... 75
4.2.1 Return on Invested Capital ........................................................ 79
4.2.2 Time-Based Performance Measures .......................................... 82
4.2.3 Current State, Challenges and Opportunities ............................. 86
XII Contents

4.3 Performance Measurement and Management Systems......................... 87

4.4 Decision Support Systems .................................................................... 91
4.5 Summary: Performance Opportunities with Decision-Support
Systems ................................................................................................. 94

5 Operations Perspective: Achieving Resource-Productive Operations .......... 97

5.1 Resource-Productive Operations .......................................................... 97
5.2 Lean .................................................................................................... 108
5.3 Six Sigma ............................................................................................ 112
5.4 Theory of Constraints ......................................................................... 117
5.5 Agility ................................................................................................. 119
5.6 Advanced Process Control .................................................................. 122
5.7 Summary: Achieving Resource-Productive Operations ..................... 136

6 Practice Perspective: Learning from Case Research in the Cement

and Ammonia Industry ................................................................................ 139
6.1 Cement ................................................................................................ 139
6.1.1 Context .................................................................................... 140
6.1.2 Application .............................................................................. 140
6.1.3 Results ..................................................................................... 143
6.2 Ammonia ............................................................................................ 144
6.2.1 Context .................................................................................... 144
6.2.2 Application .............................................................................. 145
6.2.3 Results ..................................................................................... 145
6.3 Summary: Challenges and Opportunities in Practice.......................... 146

7 Interim Conclusion: Scope of Work............................................................ 147

7.1 Research Gap ...................................................................................... 147
7.2 Delimitation of Research Focus and Summary of Requirements ....... 148

8 Methodology Conception: Framing a Time-Based and Analytics

Supported Operations Management Approach ........................................... 151
8.1 Concept ............................................................................................... 151
8.1.1 Technology .............................................................................. 152
8.1.2 Economics ............................................................................... 154
8.2 Classification ...................................................................................... 155
8.2.1 Application Oriented Theory ................................................... 155
8.2.2 System Theory Classification .................................................. 156
8.2.3 Model Theory Classification ................................................... 159
8.2.4 Summary of Relevance............................................................ 160
8.3 Applicability ....................................................................................... 160
Contents XIII

8.3.1
Trade-Off Decisions are Required ........................................... 161
8.3.2
Time is the Constraint ............................................................. 162
8.3.3
“Real Time” (Short Interval) Decision Making is Required ... 162
8.3.4
Cumulative Profit Maximization is the Desired Long
Term Goal ............................................................................... 162
8.3.5 High Invested Capital, High Resource Intensity and/or
Resource Scarcity .................................................................... 163
8.4 Pre-Conditions .................................................................................... 163
8.4.1 Technology .............................................................................. 166
8.4.2 People ...................................................................................... 168
8.4.3 Process Methodology .............................................................. 169
8.5 Summary: Constituents of a Time-Based and Analytics-
Supported Operations Management Methodology ............................. 172

9 Methodology: Implementing an Analytics, Time and Six Sigma

Based Operations Management Approach .................................................. 173
9.1 Phase 1 – Define ................................................................................. 174
9.2 Phase 2 – Measure .............................................................................. 179
9.3 Phase 3 – Analyze ............................................................................... 180
9.4 Phase 4 – Improve .............................................................................. 181
9.5 Phase 5 – Control ................................................................................ 183
9.6 Summary of Methodology .................................................................. 185

10 Methodology Validation: Prototypical Application in the Pulp

Manufacturing Industry ............................................................................... 187
10.1 Context ............................................................................................... 187
10.2 Application ......................................................................................... 188
10.3 Conclusion .......................................................................................... 210

11 Conclusion .................................................................................................. 213

11.1 Summary............................................................................................. 213
11.2 Discussion ........................................................................................... 214
11.3 Outlook ............................................................................................... 216

Bibliography ..................................................................................................... 219

Appendix: Pulp Manufacturing Case Study...................................................... 251

List of Figures

Figure 1: Framing the objective ..................................................................... 3

Figure 2: Conceptual framework (heuristic) of this research ......................... 6
Figure 3: Research timeline ........................................................................... 7
Figure 4: Research design and structure of this thesis ................................... 9
Figure 5: What VUCA really means for you
(Bennett, Lemoine 2014, p. 27) .................................................... 13
Figure 6: Supply Chain Volatility Index 1970-2015
(Christopher, Holweg 2017, p. 8) ................................................. 14
Figure 7: Effects of uncertainty on operations (Kremsmayr 2017, p. 59).... 16
Figure 8: Different parts of the value chain (Horngren et al. 2015, p. 28)... 19
Figure 9: Definition/basic meaning of production (Hitomi 1996, p. 7) ....... 19
Figure 10: Capital circulation Karl Marx
(Marx 1990, p. 321; Hitomi 1996, p. 10) ..................................... 20
Figure 11: Value opportunity of digital transformation to 2025
(World Economic Forum 2016, p. 61) ......................................... 28
Figure 12: Building blocks of digital transformation (MIT Center for
Digital Business and Capgemini Consulting 2011, p. 17) ........... 31
Figure 13: Dimensions and associated fields of Industry 4.0
(Lichtblau et al. 2015, p. 22) ........................................................ 36
Figure 14: The new dimension introduced in the Internet of things
(ITU-T 2012, p. 3) ........................................................................ 41
Figure 15: Functionalities of CPPS
(Bauernhansl 2016, p. 454) .......................................................... 43
Figure 16: Current IT/OT state and transformation potential
(IIC - Industrial Internet Consortium 2016, p. 18) ....................... 46
Figure 17: 5 Vs of Big Data (BDV PPP & BDVA 2016, p. 19) .................... 49
Figure 18: Value of data over time (Walker 2015, p. 42) .............................. 51
Figure 19: Achieving high return on Big Data by leveraging high
velocity and high precision in Big Data (Walker 2015, p. 52) ..... 52
Figure 20: Sources of value of Big Data analytics for companies
(Omri 2015, p. 104). ..................................................................... 54
Figure 21: The spectrum of BI technologies (Eckerson 2007, p. 5) .............. 57
Figure 22: Analytics spectrum (Minelli et al. 2013, p. 14) ............................ 59
XVI List of Figures

Figure 23: (a) Individual processing element, (b) structure of a

feed-forward neural network (Agachi 2006, p. 39) ...................... 60
Figure 24: Data value chain (Curry et al. 2016, p. 18) .................................. 61
Figure 25: Generic analytics process flow (Franks 2014, p. 179).................. 62
Figure 26: Main types of decision making and cognitive effort
(Novatsis, Wilkinson 2016, p. 139) .............................................. 71
Figure 27: Five-step decision making process
(Horngren et al. 2015, p. 472) ...................................................... 72
Figure 28: Information characteristics for managerial decisions
(Curtis, Cobham 2005, p. 10) ....................................................... 73
Figure 29: Value driver tree (Koller et al. 2015, p. 582) ............................... 80
Figure 30: Du Pont equation (Davies 1950, p. 7; Chandler 1977, p. 447) ..... 81
Figure 31: Matrix p/unit, unit/h, ROA (Rothschild et al. 2015, vii) .............. 85
Figure 32: Closed loop performance management
(Neely et al. 1995, p. 107) ............................................................ 88
Figure 33: Evolution and trends for performance measurement and man-
agement (adapted from Yadav, Sagar 2013, p. 950, 956, 962)... 89
Figure 34: Criticism, factors and properties of PMM systems
(Kleindienst 2016, p. 3) ................................................................ 89
Figure 35: Dashboard for oil refinery (Hu et al. 2012, p. 734) ...................... 90
Figure 36: Diagrammatic representation of a problem-solving system
(Ackoff 1978, p. 191) ................................................................... 93
Figure 37: Corporate adaptation (decision making/latency)
(Schuh et al. 2017, p. 11).............................................................. 94
Figure 38: The scope of production and operations management
(Steyn 1989, p. 12) ....................................................................... 98
Figure 39: Positioning within the core goals of production management
(Schuh, Schmidt 2014, p. 22) ..................................................... 100
Figure 40: Analyzing the theoretical limit exposes unseen losses
(Hammer, Somers 2015, p. 16) .................................................. 104
Figure 41: Resource-productive operations loss bridge
(Hammer et al. 2017a, p. 7) ........................................................ 105
Figure 42: The approaches on the two dimensions of improvement
(Slack et al. 2010, p. 558) ........................................................... 107
Figure 43: Lean mindsets and behaviors (Drew et al. 2004, p. 69) ............. 111
Figure 44: Generic Six Sigma process (Patela 2016, p. 5)........................... 114
Figure 45: Dynamic of change capacity
(Wiendahl, Hernández 2002, p. 135) .......................................... 120
Figure 46: Mechanics of change (Rabitsch 2016, p. 95).............................. 121
List of Figures XVII

Figure 47: Definition of input and output variables considered for

control system design (Agachi 2006, p. 2) ................................. 124
Figure 48: Automation formalism (Nof 2009a, p. 14) ................................. 125
Figure 49: Five levels of process control and optimization in
manufacturing (adapted from Seborg et al. 2004, p. 511) ......... 127
Figure 50: Feedback control system (Groover 2001, p. 70) ........................ 128
Figure 51: Process control: advanced vs. traditional
(Anderson et al. 1994, p. 79) ...................................................... 129
Figure 52: Economic benefit given by the use of advanced process
control (APC) (Agachi 2006, p. 24) ........................................... 129
Figure 53: Classification of advanced control techniques
(Agachi 2006, p. 12)................................................................... 130
Figure 54: Distribution of MPC application versus the degree of
process nonlinearity (Agachi 2006, p. 25).................................. 131
Figure 55: Block diagram for model predictive control
(Seborg et al. 2004, p. 535) ........................................................ 132
Figure 56: Sustaining APC value (Canney 2003, p. 49) .............................. 134
Figure 57: Advanced analytics goes beyond APC systems
(Feldmann et al. 2016, p. 3)........................................................ 136
Figure 58: Value driver tree for cement (Heldmann et al. 2017, p. 84) ....... 141
Figure 59: Specific energy consumption ..................................................... 142
Figure 60: Key parameters and their impact on torque ................................ 143
Figure 61: Cumulative profit losses (Hammer et al. 2017b, p. 719) ............ 145
Figure 62: Technology, economics and manufacturing management
(adapted from Skinner 1978, p. 96) ............................................ 152
Figure 63: Plant-level active disturbance handling by using reactive/
proactive operation modes (Monostori et al. 2016, p. 626) ........ 153
Figure 64: Economic aspect of time-based profit management approach ... 155
Figure 65: Basic terms in systems thinking
(Haberfellner et al. 2012, p. 34) ................................................. 156
Figure 66: Systems theory, cybernetics, and management theory
(Ulrich 2001, p. 44) .................................................................... 158
Figure 67: Classification of economic models
(Schweitzer, Krause 1997, p. 9) ................................................. 159
Figure 68: System-dynamics based conceptual framework for time-
based manufacturing strategy (Hutchinson 2007, p. 140) .......... 160
Figure 69: Trade-offs for resource-productive operations
(Hammer, Somers 2016, p. 89) .................................................. 161
Figure 70: Data lake (Porter, Heppelmann 2015) ........................................ 167
XVIII List of Figures

Figure 71: Direct, develop, deploy strategic improvement cycle

(Slack, Lewis 2011, p. 220) ........................................................ 172
Figure 72: Methodology overview .............................................................. 173
Figure 73: Example ROIC tree for pulp and paper ...................................... 175
Figure 74: Digital twin as result of modelling and basis for optimization ... 181
Figure 75: Example of profit per hour dashboard ........................................ 182
Figure 76: Double-loop learning (Slack, Lewis 2011, p. 331)..................... 184
Figure 77: Scale-up matrix with sites, regions and technologies ................. 185
Figure 78: Summary of methodology .......................................................... 186
Figure 79: Pulp making process overview ................................................... 188
Figure 80: Overview of process optimization functionality and value
drivers ......................................................................................... 190
Figure 81: Value driver tree ......................................................................... 191
Figure 82: Maximum Sustainable Rate (MSR)............................................ 193
Figure 83: Profit per hour ............................................................................ 194
Figure 84: Cumulative profit losses compared to the top-decile ................. 194
Figure 85: Project charter ............................................................................ 195
Figure 86: Systems overview....................................................................... 197
Figure 87: Shifting of data to match time stamps ........................................ 198
Figure 88: Visualization of trends in the bleaching process ........................ 199
Figure 89: Heat map Fiberline ..................................................................... 200
Figure 90: Tree map..................................................................................... 201
Figure 91: Cluster analysis .......................................................................... 202
Figure 92: Predictive model for acid pH...................................................... 203
Figure 93: Advanced process control diagram for delignification ............... 205
Figure 94: Discharge control diagram ......................................................... 206
Figure 95: Dashboard .................................................................................. 207
Figure 96: Extract of shift report ................................................................. 207
Figure 97: Model Predictive Control for O2 bleaching ................................ 208
Figure 98: Roll-out opportunities ................................................................ 211
List of Tables

Table 1: Overview of case studies ............................................................. 5

Table 2: Megatrends beyond technology with effects on
industrial production (Westkämper 2013b, p. 8) ...................... 12
Table 3: Differences between process industries and discrete
industries (Ashayeri et al. 1996, p. 3312) ................................. 23
Table 4: Characteristics continuous vs. batch
(Fransoo, Rutten 1994, p. 53) .................................................... 24
Table 5: Summary of conclusions from industry perspective.................. 26
Table 6: Improvement opportunities by categories
(Bughin et al. 2016, p. 33) ......................................................... 28
Table 7: Themes of the Digital Economy (Tapscott 2014, pp. 78–80) .... 30
Table 8: The four stages of the industrial revolution
(Kagermann et al. 2013, p. 13) .................................................. 32
Table 9: Estimated benefits of Industry 4.0 (Bauernhansl 2014, p. 31)... 33
Table 10: Current focuses of selected countries and regions in the
context of Industry 4.0 (Gausemeier, Klocke 2016, p. 33) ....... 34
Table 11: Comparison of today´s with an Industry 4.0 factory
(Lee et al. 2015a, p. 19) ............................................................. 37
Table 12: Four capabilities of smart, connected products
(Porter, Heppelmann 2014) ....................................................... 38
Table 13: Maturity of technologies (agiplan et al. 2015, p. 24)................. 45
Table 14: Five types of enablers are needed for maximum IoT impact
(Manyika et al. 2015, p. 101) .................................................... 47
Table 15: Examples of Big Data applications along the value creation
process (Kleindienst 2017, p. 54) .............................................. 55
Table 16: Analytics 3.0: Fast business impact for the data economy
(Franks 2014, p. 16) .................................................................. 58
Table 17: Industrial analytics requirements (Diab et al. 2017, p. 11) ........ 64
Table 18: Industrial analytics capabilities (Diab et al. 2017, p. 13)........... 65
Table 19: The roles of data scientists (Meir-Huber, Köhler 2014, p. 35) .. 65
Table 20: Cross-sectorial requirements for Big Data research
(Becker et al. 2016, p. 275) ....................................................... 66
Table 21: Summary of conclusions from digitization perspective ............ 68
XX List of Tables

Table 22: Some distinctions between management control and

operational control (Anthony 1965, p. 93) ................................ 74
Table 23: Results and determinants - performance measures across
six dimensions (Brignall et al. 1991, p. 36) ............................... 77
Table 24: Multiple dimensions of quality, time, cost and flexibility
(Neely et al. 1995, p. 83) ........................................................... 78
Table 25: Terminology for using and analyzing data
(Davenport 2014a, p. 10) ........................................................... 92
Table 26: Summary of conclusions from management perspective .......... 95
Table 27: Trade-off decisions in manufacturing - "you can´t have it
both ways" (Skinner 1969, p. 7) .............................................. 102
Table 28: Five core beliefs to unlock industrial resource productivity
(Hammer, Somers 2016, p. 34) ............................................... 106
Table 29: Six Sigma tools per phase (Lunau 2009, p. 12) ....................... 115
Table 30: Comparison between continuous and discrete control
(Groover 2001, pp. 62–63) ...................................................... 125
Table 31: Summary of conclusions from operations perspective ............ 137
Table 32: Summary of conclusions from practice perspective ................ 146
Table 33: Delimitation of research focus based on related work and
theory....................................................................................... 150
Table 34: Success criteria and issues in management of complex
operations (Gundersen 2017, pp. 87–88, 93)........................... 165
Table 35: Three stages of analytics adoption
(LaValle et al. 2011, p. 24) ...................................................... 169
Table 36: Comparison of process methodologies .................................... 171
Table 37: Project charter (Lunau 2009, pp. 30–31) ................................. 176
Table 38: Dimension of readiness assessment ......................................... 178
Table 39: Cost optimizer ......................................................................... 192
Table 40: Status of initiatives .................................................................. 209
Table 41: Readiness assessment from case study in pulp manu-
facturing .................................................................................. 255
Table 42: General interview questions and answers from case study
in pulp manufacturing ............................................................. 256
Table 43: Specific interview questions and answers from case study
in pulp manufacturing ............................................................. 258
List of Equations

Equation 1: ROIC calculation (Koller et al. 2015, p. 210) .............................. 81

Equation 2: Return per factory hour (Galloway, Waldron 1988a, p. 34) ......... 83
Equation 3: Cost per factory hour (Galloway, Waldron 1988a, p. 34) ............ 83
Equation 4: Throughput accounting (TA) ratio
(Galloway, Waldron 1988a, p. 34) .............................................. 83
List of Abbreviations

APC Advanced Process Control.

APICS American Production and Inventory Control Society.
APL Action-Profit-Linkage.
BI Business Intelligence.
BSC Balanced ScoreCard.
CAGR Compound Annual Growth Rate.
CM2025 China Manufacturing 2025.
CoV Coefficient of Variation.
CPPS Cyber-Physical Production Systems.
CPS Cyber-Physical Systems.
CRISP-DM Cross Industry Standard Process for Data Mining.
CTQ Critical-to-Quality.
DBR Drum-Buffer-Rope.
DCS Distributed Control System.
DELTTA Data, Enterprise, Leadership, Targets, Technology, Analytics and
data scientists.
DMAIC Define, Measure, Analyze, Improve, Control.
DOE Design of Experiments.
EBIT Earnings before interest and taxes.
EFQM European Foundation for Quality Management.
ERP Enterprise Resource Planning.
EVO Efficiency Valuation Organization.
FMEA Failure Mode Effect Analysis.
GDP Gross Domestic Product.
IIoT Industrial Internet of Things.
IoT Internet of Things.
IPMVP International Performance Measurement and Verification Protocol.
ISA International Society of Automation.
ISO International Organization for Standardization.
IT Information Technology.
ITU International Telecommunication Union.
KDD Knowledge Discovery in Databases.
KPI Key Performance Indicator.
XXIV List of Abbreviations

M2M Machine-to-machine.
MES Manufacturing Execution System.
MIS Management Information System.
MIT Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
MPC Model Predictive Control.
MSR Maximum Sustainable Rate.
OEE Overall Equipment Effectiveness.
OEM Original Equipment Manufacturer.
OLAP Online Analytical Processing.
OM Operations Management.
OPC OLE (Object Linking and Embedding) for Process Control.
OT Operational Technology.
PDCA Plan, Do, Check, Act.
PDSA Plan, Do, Study, Act.
PIMS Process Information Management System.
PMA Performance Management Analytics.
PMM Performance measurement and management.
PPE Property, Plant, and Equipment.
R&D Research & Development.
ROA Return on Assets.
ROE Return on Equity.
ROIC Return on Invested Capital.
RQ Research Question.
RTO Real-Time Optimization.
S&OP Sales & Operations Planning.
SCVI Supply Chain Volatility Index.
SEMMA Sample, Explore, Modify, Model, Analyze.
SIGMA Source of data, Innovation, Growth mindset, Market opportunities,
Analytics.
SIPOC Supplier, Input, Process, Output, Customer.
SIPOC Supplier-Input-Process-Output-Customer.
SMART Start with strategy, Measure metrics and data, Analyze your data,
Report your results, Transform your business and decision making.
SPC Statistical Process Control.
SQL Structured Query Language.
TA Throughput Accounting.
TEEP Total Effective Equipment Performance.
TOC Theory of Constraints.
TPS Toyota Production System.
TQM Total Quality Management.
List of Abbreviations XXV

USAF United States Air Force.

VDMA Verband Deutscher Maschinen- und Anlagenbau e.V. (German
Mechanical Engineering Industry Association).
VPN Virtual Private Network.
VUCA Volatile, Uncertain, Complex, Ambiguous.
WAN Wide Area Network.
WEF World Economic Forum.
1 Introduction

Chapter 1 provides an introduction to this thesis in four sections. Section 1.1

describes the initial situation and motivation for this research. Section 1.2 defines
the objective of the research, section 1.3 articulates the research questions, and
section 1.4 lays out the research design and structure of the thesis.

1.1 Initial Situation and Motivation

Industrial companies are currently facing challenging times due to globalization,

rapid changes in both, supplier and customer markets, and innovation in
technology (Westkämper, Zahn 2009, V). Key challenges like volatility and
uncertainty are steadily increasing in today’s business environment (Abele,
Reinhart 2011, 5-32). As an example, the volatility of revenues and profitability
in US firms doubled between 1960 and 2000 (Sull 2009, p. 9). The pressure on
manufacturing industries has been intensifying due to their typically high capital
employed and resulting costs (Friedli, Schuh 2012, p. 12). Industrial companies in
high cost countries need to consider topics such as agility, automation and resource
efficiency to remain competitive (Ramsauer 2013a, pp. 3–4). In this constant state
of change, organizations which recognize and react quickly and intelligently to
market swings increase their competitiveness (Davenport 2014b, p. 48). More
effective and quicker decisions might be achieved through transformation of
currently available data into information and knowledge (Vercellis 2009, XIV).
The availability of data is driven by innovation in advanced manufacturing
technologies. The integration of digital and intelligent technologies enables
companies to raise the level of management with the objective of finding its best
operating model (Zhou 2013, p. 6). Digitalization, and the creation of the Internet
of Things in manufacturing leading to the fourth industrial revolution, is
commonly discussed under the umbrella term “Industry 4.0” (Kagermann et al.
2013, p. 13). However, according to a recent study of more than 500 companies,
only 13% of industrial companies have, for example, adopted Big Data initiatives
as part of their business routines (Bange et al. 2015, p. 11). The goal of this
research is to enable smart operational decision making to optimize operations for
maximum profitability using a time-based and analytics-supported operations
management approach.

© Springer Fachmedien Wiesbaden GmbH, part of Springer Nature 2019

M. Hammer, Management Approach for Resource-Productive Operations,
Industrial Management, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-658-22939-9_1
2 Introduction

“The search for the one objective is essentially a search for a magic formula that will
make judgement unnecessary. But the attempt to replace judgement by formula is
always irrational; all that can be done is to make judgement possible by narrowing its
range and the available alternatives, giving it clear focus, sound foundation in facts
and reliable measurements of the effects and validity of actions and decisions”
(Drucker 1966, p. 59).

The rise of Industry 4.0 and in particular Big Data analytics of production
parameters offers exciting new ways for optimization. Currently, the majority of
factories, for example in process industries, aim either for output maximization,
yield increase, or cost reduction. With the availability of real time data and
opportunity to process it online with advanced algorithms a profit per hour
management approach becomes possible. Profit per hour as a target control metric
enables running factories at the optimal currently available operating point taking
all revenue and cost drivers into account.
This thesis describes a methodology to implement profit per hour as target
key performance indicator in production in process industries. The author explains
how this management approach helps to make better operational decisions, trading
off yield, energy, throughput among other factors, and the resulting cumulative
benefits. He also lays out how Big Data and advanced algorithms are the key
enablers to this new approach. With profit per hour an agile control approach is
presented which aims to optimize the performance of industrial manufacturing
systems in a world of ever increasing volatility.

1.2 Objective of the Research

The objective of this thesis is to derive a structured implementation methodology

for an operational management approach leveraging advanced analytics and a
time-based profit key performance indicator (KPI), Figure 1, in the context of In-
dustry 4.0 and Big Data.
Objective of the Research 3

Industry 4.0

Time-based Profit KPI Advanced analytics Big data

Operations
management
approach

External context (e.g., volatility, uncertainty)

Figure 1: Framing the objective

“Developing a structured management process for using measures to support

decision makers, set goals, allocate resources and inform management” has been
stated as academic research priority (Busi, Bititci 2006, p. 20). For industrial
companies this is equally a priority as they “struggle to incorporate data-driven
insights into day-to-day business processes” (Henke et al. 2016a, vi). Diab et al
emphasize that

“Industrial analytics, especially at its early stage of development, requires a systematic

and architectural approach that is flexible to meet the operational and business
requirements and forward looking in accommodating usage changes and
technological advances” (Diab et al. 2017, p. 15).

Horvath et al. see a need to integrate predictive analytics into performance

management and to further develop value driver models considering inter-
dependences between operative KPIs and profit (Horvath et al. 2015, p. 105).
These research needs should be addressed as part of techno-economic research.
According to Bauer, the term techno-economics results from the intersection be-
tween the scientific areas of technology and economics and are grounded in real-
ism and experience. Fundamentally, there are 3 questions to be answered:
(1) is the idea technically solvable, (2) is it economically feasible, and (3) does it
serve people and society? (Bauer 2013, pp. 10–11).
4 Introduction

For this research and the resulting methodology, four objectives can be defined:

Objective 1: Identification of criteria (when meaningful?)

Objective 2: Identification of pre-conditions (what is needed?)
Objective 3: Conception of a methodology (how to implement?)
Objective 4: Validation of the developed methodology (does it work?)

In line with the general operations management research process, the next step is
to determine research questions and to choose a research approach (Karlsson 2016,
pp. 16–17).

1.3 Research Questions

Research questions are the pre-cursor of research design and serve as guardrails
for targeted research (Töpfer 2012, pp. 155–157). Research questions can be clas-
sified in four types (exploratory, descriptive, explanatory, prescriptive) and six
forms (who, what, where, when, how, why) (Åhlström 2016, p. 66). Based on the
objectives of the research from the previous section three research questions (RQ)
have been formulated:

RQ1: Under what conditions does a profit per hour management approach help
to take the best decisions? When does it fail?
RQ2: In practice, what keeps companies from implementing a profit per hour
approach? What are the pre-conditions and why?
RQ3: How would companies implement a profit per hour operations management
approach?

While the first two research questions are of exploratory and explanatory nature,
the third question aims to be prescriptive.

1.4 Research Design and Structure

The techno-economic research efforts at TU-Austria-Universities is considered to

be mainly application oriented. The aim is to apply economic theories to technical-
natural scientific problems and to find answers to the question of practical
implementability in industrial practice (Bauer 2013, pp. 18–19). As per Ulrich, the
applied research process begins with the identification of relevant practical
problems, which are subsequently investigated from a scientific perspective
Research Design and Structure 5

building on existing literature and relevant theories. The derived models are
validated in the specific application context. The result of applied research is to
provide guidance to practitioners based on the learning from the research (Ulrich
1981, p. 20). Academics in production research ask for applied research, that is
“less armchair research and more empirical and experimental work out there in the
field” (Akkermans, van Wassenhove 2013, p. 6754). This is the intention of this
thesis: investigating a relevant practical problem based on real-life case studies,
developing a suitable methodology grounded in theory to solve the problem, and
to demonstrate the applicability in practice. According to Yin case study research
is
“an empirical inquiry that investigates a contemporary phenomenon within its real-
life context […, that] copes with [a] technical distinctive situation […,] relies on
multiple sources of evidence […and that] benefits from the prior development of
theoretical propositions” (Yin 2003, pp. 13–14).

This thesis includes three industrial case studies from manufacturers in process
industries. Table 1, gives an overview of the cases studied as part of this research,
their location, investigation time interval, subject, focus, and the role of the
researcher. As part of this research, the author was consultant, observer and
sounding board/partner as defined by Karlsson 2016, pp. 15–16.

Cement Ammonia Pulp

Location Northern Europe Western Europe Western Europe
Investigation May – Aug 2016 Sep. – Dec. 2016 Apr – Jul. 2017
duration1
Investigation subject Proof-of-concept Pilot implementation Ongoing continuous
process improvement
Investigation focus Analytics based Profit per hour Validation of
process control modelling methodology
Role of researcher Consultant Observer Sounding board and
partner

Table 1: Overview of case studies

The cement and the ammonia cases are of explorative nature providing valuable
empirical insights for defining requirements and identifying design elements of
the developed methodology. The third case of pulp manufacturing serves to

1 Note that project periods extend beyond investigation duration

6 Introduction

describe and validate the derived methodology in practice. Yin points out the
advantage of multiple case studies (Yin 2003, p. 19). For the review of theory and
related work a heuristic, conceptual framework is used, which is a defined step in
the research process by Karlsson 2016, p. 17. Heuristics such as Figure 2 are
helpful in research “enabling a person to discover or learn something for them” 2,
“involving or serving as an aid to learning, discovery, or problem-solving” 3.

Systems boundary
for methodology
Internal External

Industry: Management Operations

▪ Manufacturing ▪ Decision ▪ Resource-
▪ Process industries making Productive Markets
▪ Performance Operations ▪ Volatility
measures ▪ Operations Profit ▪ Price
▪ Performance improvement rate ▪ Demand
management methods ▪ Customers
▪ Decision ▪ (Advanced)
support Process
systems Control

Digitization
▪ Industry 4.0 ▪ Industrial IoT ▪ Big Data ▪ Analytics

Figure 2: Conceptual framework (heuristic) of this research

The literature review for the terms and concepts related to industry, management,
operations and digitization was conducted in the period of April 2015 and April
2017. Next to the library sources of Graz University of Technology 4, common
scientific search engines such as Google Scholar5, Science Direct6 and Scopus7,
were used as they cover a wide range of relevant electronic and printed documents
with free full-text access to the author.Figure 3, gives an overview of the overall
timeline of the research.

2 https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/heuristic, last accessed 16.08.2017

3 https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/heuristic, last accessed 16.08.2017
4 http://ub.tugraz.at
5 http://scholar.google.com
6 http://www.sciencedirect.com
7 http://www.scopus.com
Research Design and Structure 7

Theory
Literature study and review of related theories

Practice 15 years of prior

Case Case Case
industry
I II III
experience

2015 2016 2017 2018

Figure 3: Research timeline

The design research methodology follows four phases: (1) research clarification
defining goals, (2) descriptive study to gain deeper understanding, (3) prescriptive
study resulting in a methodology, and (4) descriptive study for empirical
evaluation (Blessing, Chakrabarti 2009, p. 15). Application-oriented research,
according to Ulrich follows seven steps: (1) identification of relevant problems;
(2) identification and interpretation of problem-relevant theories; (3) identification
and specification of problem-relevant methodologies; (4) identification and
investigation of application context; (5) derivation of evaluation criteria, design
rules and models; (6) validation of rules and models in the application context; and
(7) advice for practice. The research design for this thesis integrates the aspects of
Ulrich, Blessing and Chakrabarti, and takes practical considerations such as
access, skills and interest into account (Åhlström 2016, p. 72). Furthermore, it
aims to address relevant criteria for exploratory and descriptive case study re-
search: justification of the research approach, construct validity defining the unit
of analysis and using multiple sources of evidence, external validity by using the
theory to define domain for generalization and applicability, and reliability of the
case study research by making the research process transparent (Yin 2003, p. 28,
Voss et al. 2016, p. 192).
8 Introduction

1.5 Thesis Outline

This thesis is structured in eleven chapters as indicated in Figure 4 on the next

page. Chapter 1 serves as an introduction to the topic commencing with the initial
situation, problems identified, research gap and motivation for this thesis stating
its objectives, design, research questions and structure. Chapter 2 takes a look at
current challenges from an industrial perspective. It starts with reviewing current
megatrends and the impact of external factors such as increased volatility,
uncertainty or complexity. Chapter 3 reviews the impact of digitization driven by
Industry 4.0 and the Industrial Internet of Things leading to the rise of Big Data
and advanced analytics. Chapter 4 provides a management view on the topic
dealing with decision making based on performance measures, management
systems and decision support systems. Chapter 5 deals with operations and how
to make them resource-productive. It includes a coverage of relevant operational
improvement methods, e.g., lean, Six Sigma and the Theory of Constraints and in
addition, it looks at advanced process control systems. Chapter 6 adds practical
insights drawing from two cases studies of manufacturing in process industries,
cement and ammonia. Chapter 7 syntheses the theoretical concepts, literature and
practical learning in order to define the scope of work, specific requirements and
its delimitation. Chapter 8 conceives the methodology, looks at criteria when it is
meaningful, and derives pre-conditions for implementation. Chapter 9 explains the
implementation methodology and its underlying steps in detail. In chapter 10, the
methodology is validated through an industrial case study from pulp
manufacturing. Chapter 11 concludes this thesis with a summary, critically
reviews answers to the research questions, and provides an outlook for further
research.
Another random document with
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like cucumbers than men, and are introduced merely that the knight
may have the pleasure of slicing them.

We cannot claim any condensed poetical merit for the Metrical

Romances. They have very few quotable passages and fewer
vigorous single lines. Their merit consists in a diffuse
picturesqueness, and reading them is like turning over illuminated
missals in a traveler’s half-hour, which leave a vague impression on
the mind of something vivid and fanciful, without one’s being able to
recall any particular beauty. Some of them have great narrative
merit, being straightforward and to the purpose, never entangling
themselves in reflection or subordinating the story to the expression.
In this respect they are refreshing after reading many poems of the
modern school, which, under the pretense of sensuousness, are
truly sensual, and deal quite as much with the upholstery as with the
soul of poetry. The thought has nowadays become of less
importance than the vehicle of it, and amid the pomp of words we
are too often reminded of an Egyptian procession, in which all the
painful musical instruments then invented, priests, soldiers, and
royalty itself, accompany the triumphal chariot containing perhaps,
after all, only an embalmed monkey or a pickled ibis.

There is none of this nonsense in the Old Romances, though

sometimes they are tediously sentimental, and we wonder as much
at the capacity of our ancestors in bearing dry verses as dry blows.
Generally, however, they show an unaffected piety and love of
nature. The delight of the old minstrels in the return of Spring is
particularly agreeable, and another argument in favor of the Northern
origin of this class of poems. Many of them open with passages like
this:

Merry it is in the month of May,

When the small fowls sing their lay,
Then flowers the apple-tree and perry,
And the little birds sing merry;
Then the ladies strew their bowers
With red roses and lily flowers,
 The damisels lead down the dance,
And the knights play with shield and lance.

Some of the comparisons, also, drawn from Nature, are as fresh as

dew. For example, when a lady sees her lover:

She is as glad at that sight

As the birds are of the light.

Or,

As glad as grass is of the rain.

A knight is said to be

As weary as water in a weir,

a simile full of imagination.

The most airy glimpses of the picturesque occur sometimes; as

describing a troop of knights:

They rode away full serriedly,

Their gilded pennons of silk of Ind
Merrily rattled with the wind;
The steeds so noble and so wight
Leaped and neighed beneath each knight.

After quoting various specimens of these poems, Mr. Lowell gave the
following sketch of the manners and customs of Romance-land,
“condensed from the best authorities.”
If you are born in this remarkable country and destined for a hero,
the chances are that by the time you are seven years old your father
will have gone off to fight the infidels, and a neighboring earl will
have taken possession of his estates and his too-hastily-supposed
widow. You resent this in various ways, especially by calling your
step-father all the proper names you can think of that are improper.
He, for some unexplained reason, is unable to get rid of you, though
he tries a variety of plots level with the meanest capacity. You, being
of uncommon sagacity, are saved by the aid of three or four
superfluous miracles. Meanwhile you contrive to pick up a good
knightly education, and by the time you are seventeen are bigger
and stronger and handsomer than anybody else, except, of course,
the giants. So, one day you buckle on your armor, mount your horse,
who is as remarkable in his way as yourself, and go adventuring.
Presently you come to a castle where you are most courteously
received. Maidens as white as whale’s bone and fair as flowers (they
are all so in Romance-land) help you off with your armor, and dress
you in richest silks. You then go to dine with the Lord of the Castle,
who is a knight of very affable manners and agreeable conversation,
but with an aversion to religious topics. His daughter, the fairest lady
on the ground, assists at the meal. You are conducted to your
chamber, and after a refreshing sleep meet your host and hostess at
breakfast. At a suitable time you return thanks for your kind
treatment and ask for your horse. The knight, however, in the
blandest manner tells you that a little custom of his will interfere with
your departure. He is in the habit of fighting with all his guests, and
has hitherto been successful in killing them all to the number of
several hundred. This is precisely the account which you are fond of
settling, and after a few allusions to Mahomed and Termagant and
Alcoban, you accept the challenge and, of course, come off victor.
This seems to settle the matter for the young lady whom your lance
has just promoted to her inheritance, and she immediately offers
herself and her estates to you, telling you, at the same time, that she
had long been secretly a Christian. Though madly in love with her,
and interested in her religious views, which she details to you at
some length, you mount your steed and ride away, but without being
expected to give any reasons. You have a particular mission
nowhere, and on your way to that interesting country you kill a
megalosaurus (for whose skeleton Professor Owen would have
given his ears), and two or three incidental giants. Riding on, you
come to a Paynim-land, ruled over by a liberally-minded Soldan, who
receives you into favor after you have slain some thousands of his
subjects to get an appetite for dinner. The Soldan, of course, has a
daughter, who is converted by you, and, of course, offers you her
hand. This makes you think of the other lady, and you diplomatize.
But there is another Paynim-land, and another Soldan, who sends
word that he intends to marry your beautiful convert.

The embassy of the proud Paynim somehow results in your being

imprisoned for seven years, when it suddenly occurs to you that you
might as well step out. So you pick up a magic sword that has been
shut up with you, knock down the jailers, mount your horse which is
waiting at the door, and ride off. Now, or at some other convenient
time, you take occasion to go mad for a year or two on account of
ladye-love number one. But hearing that ladye-love number two is
about to yield to the addresses of her royal suitor, who has killed her
father, burned his capital, and put all his subjects to the sword, you
make some appropriate theological disquisitions and start to the
rescue. On your way you meet a strange knight, join combat with
him without any questions on either side, and after a doubtful fight of
a day or two, are mutually overcome with amazement at finding
anybody who cannot be beaten. Of course it turns out that the
strange knight is your father; you join forces, make short work with
the amorous Soldan and his giants, and find yourself encumbered
with a young lady, a princess too, all of whose relatives and vassals
have been slaughtered on your account, and who naturally expects
you to share her throne. In a moment of abstraction you consent to
the arrangement, and are married by an archbishop in partibus who
happens to be on the spot. As your late royal rival has slain all your
late father-in-law’s lieges, and you have done the same service for
him in turn, there are no adventures left in this part of the world.
Luckily, before the wedding-ring is warm on your finger, a
plesiosaurus turns up. This saves many disagreeable explanations
with the bride, whom you are resolved to have nothing to do with
while the other young lady is alive. You settle her comfortably on the
throne of her depopulated kingdom, slay the monster, and start for
home with your revered parent. There you overcome the usurping
Earl, reinstate your father, and assist cheerfully at the burning of your
mother for bigamy; your filial piety being less strong than your
reverence for the laws of your country. A fairy who has a particular
interest in you (and who, it seems, is your real mother, after all—a
fact which relieves your mind of any regrets on the score of the late
melancholy bonfire), lets you into the secret that ladye-love the first
is your own sister. This revives your affection for your wife, and you
go back to the kingdom of Gombraunt, find her reduced to
extremities by another matrimonial Soldan, whom you incontinently
massacre with all his giants, and now at last a prospect of quiet
domestic life seems to open. Dull, peaceful days follow, and you
begin to take desponding views of life, when your ennui is pleasantly
broken in upon by a monster who combines in himself all the
monstrosities of heraldic zoölogy. You decapitate him and
incautiously put one of his teeth in your boot as a keepsake. A
scratch ensues, physicians are in vain, and you die with an edifying
piety, deeply regretted by your subjects, if there are any left with their
heads on.

On the whole, we may think ourselves happy that we live under

somewhat different institutions.
 LECTURE IV
THE BALLADS

(Friday Evening, January 19, 1855)

IV
One of the laws of the historical Macbeth declares that “Fools,
minstrels, bards, and all other such idle people, unless they be
specially licensed by the King, shall be compelled to seek some craft
to win their living,” and the old chronicler adds approvingly, “These
and such-like laws were used by King Macbeth, through which he
governed the realm ten years in good justice.”

I do not quote this in order to blacken the memory of that unhappy

monarch. The poets commonly contrive to be even with their
enemies in the end, and Shakspeare has taken an ample revenge. I
cite it only for the phrase unless they be specially licensed by the
King, which points to a fact on which I propose to dwell for a few
moments before entering upon my more immediate object.

When Virgil said, “Arma virumque cano,” “Arms and the man I sing,”
he defined in the strictest manner the original office of the poet, and
the object of the judicious Macbeth’s ordinance was to prevent any
one from singing the wrong arms and the rival man. Formerly the
poet held a recognized place in the body politic, and if he has been
deposed from it, it may be some consolation to think that the Fools,
whom the Scottish usurper included in his penal statute, have not
lost their share in the government of the world yet, nor, if we may
trust appearances, are likely to for some time to come. But the Fools
here referred to were not those who had least, but those who had
most wit, and who assumed that disguise in order to take away any
dangerous appearance of intention from their jibes and satires.

The poet was once what the political newspaper is now, and
circulated from ear to ear with satire or panegyric. He it was who first
made public opinion a power in the State by condensing it into a
song. The invention of printing, by weakening the faculty of memory,
and by transferring the address of language from the ear to the eye,
has lessened the immediate power of the poet. A newspaper may be
suppressed, an editor may be silenced, every copy of an obnoxious
book may be destroyed, but in those old days when the minstrels
were a power, a verse could wander safely from heart to heart and
from hamlet to hamlet as unassailable as the memories on which it
was imprinted. Its force was in its impersonality, for public opinion is
disenchanted the moment it is individualized, and is terrible only so
long as it is the opinion of no one in particular. Find its author, and
the huge shadow which but now darkened half the heaven shrinks
like the genius of the Arabian story into the compass of a leaden
casket which one can hold in his hand. Nowadays one knows the
editor, perhaps, and so is on friendly terms with public opinion. You
may have dined with it yesterday, rubbed shoulders with it in the
omnibus to-day, nay, carried it in your pocket embodied in the letter
of the special correspondent.

Spenser, in his prose tract upon Ireland, has left perhaps the best
description possible of the primitive poet as he was everywhere
when the copies of a poem were so many living men, and all
publication was to the accompaniment of music. He says: “There is
amongst the Irish a certain kind of people called bards, which are to
them instead of poets, whose profession is to set forth the praises or
dispraises of men in their poems or rhythms; the which are held in
such high regard or esteem amongst them that none dare to
displease them for fear of running into reproach through this offense,
and to be made infamous in the mouths of all men.”

Nor was the sphere of the bards confined to the present alone. They
were also the embodied memory of the people. It was on the wings
of verse that the names of ancestral heroes could float down
securely over broad tracts of desert time and across the gulfs of
oblivion. And poets were sometimes made use of by sagacious
rulers to make legends serve a political purpose. The Persian poet
Firdusi is a remarkable instance of this. Virgil also attempted to braid
together the raveled ends of Roman and Greek tradition, and it is not
impossible that the minstrels of the Norman metrical romances were
guided by a similar instinct.

But the position of the inhabitants of England was a peculiar one.

The Saxons by their conversion to Christianity, and the Normans still
more by their conversion and change of language, were almost
wholly cut off from the past. The few fragments of the Celtic race
were the only natives of Britain who had an antiquity. The English
properly so called were a people who hardly knew their own
grandfathers. They no longer spoke the language, believed in the
religion, or were dominated by the ideas of their ancestors.

English writers demand of us a national literature. But where for

thirteen centuries was their own? Our ancestors brought a past with
them to Plymouth; they claimed descent from a great race; the
language they spoke had been ennobled by recording the triumphs
of ancestral daring and genius; it had gone up to Heaven wafted on
the red wings of martyr-fires; mothers hushed their new-born babes,
and priests scattered the farewell earth upon the coffin-lid, with
words made sweet or sacred by immemorial association. But the
Normans when they landed in England were a new race of armed
men almost as much cut off from the influences of the past as those
which sprang out of the ground at the sowing of the dragon’s teeth.
They found there a Saxon encampment occupying a country strange
to them also. For we must remember that though Britain was
historically old, England was not; and it was as impossible to piece
the histories of the two together to make a national record of as it
would be for us to persuade ourselves into a feeling of continental
antiquity by adopting the Mexican annals.

The ballads are the first truly national poetry in our language, and
national poetry is not either that of the drawing-room or of the
kitchen. It is the common mother-earth of the universal sentiment
that the foot of the poet must touch, through which shall steal up to
heart and brain that fine virtue which puts him in sympathy, not with
his class, but with his kind.

Fortunately for the ballad-makers, they were not encumbered with

any useless information. They had not wit enough to lose their way.
It is only the greatest brains and the most intense imagination that
can fuse learning into one substance with their own thought and
feeling, and so interpenetrate it with themselves that the acquired is
as much they as the native. The ballad-makers had not far to seek
for material. The shipwreck, the runaway match, the unhappy
marriage, the village ghost, the achievement of the border outlaw—in
short, what we read every day under the head of Items in the
newspapers, were the inspiration of their song. And they sang well,
because they thought, and felt, and believed just as their hearers
did, and because they never thought anything about it. The ballads
are pathetic because the poet did not try to make them so; and they
are models of nervous and simple diction because the business of
the poet was to tell his story, and not to adorn it; and accordingly he
went earnestly and straightforwardly to work, and let the rapid
thought snatch the word as it ran, feeling quite sure of its getting the
right one. The only art of expression is to have something to
express. We feel as wide a difference between what is manufactured
and what is spontaneous as between the sparkles of an electrical
machine, which a sufficiently muscular professor can grind out by the
dozen, and the wildfire of God that writes mene, mene, on the
crumbling palace walls of midnight cloud.

It seems to me that the ballad-maker, in respect of diction, had also

this advantage—that he had no books. Language, when it speaks to
the eye only, loses half its meaning. For the eye is an outpost of the
brain, and wears its livery oftener than that of the character. But the
temperament, the deep human nature, the aboriginal emotions,
these utter themselves in the voice. It is only by the ear that the true
mother-tongue that knows the short way to the heart is learned. I do
not believe that a man born deaf could understand Shakspeare, or
sound anything but the edges and shores of Lear’s tempestuous
woe. I think that the great masters of speech have hunted men and
not libraries, and have found the secret of their power in the street
and not upon the shelf.

It is the way of saying things that is learned by commerce with men,

and the best writers have mixed much with the world. It is there only
that the language of feeling can be acquired.

The ballads are models of narrative poetry. They are not concerned
with the utterance of thought, but only of sentiment or passion, and it
is as illustrating poetic diction that I shall chiefly cite them. If they
moralize it is always by picture, and not by preachment. What
discourse of inconstancy has the force and biting pathos of this grim
old song, the “Twa Corbies”?

As I was walking all alone

I heard twa corbies making a moan.
The one unto the other did say:
Where shall we gang and dine to-day?
In beyond that old turf dyke
I wot there lies a new-slain knight,
And naebody kens that he lies there,
But his hawk and his hound and his lady fair.
His hound is to the hunting gone,
His hawk to fetch the wild-fowl hame,
His lady’s ta’en anither mate—
Sae we may make our dinner sweet.
You’ll sit upon his white neck-bone
And I’ll pick out his bonny blue een;
With a lock of his golden hair
We’ll thatch our nest when it grows bare.
Many a one for him makes moan,
But none sall ken where he is gone;
O’er his white bones when they grow bare
The wind shall blow forever mair.
Observe, the wind simply blows. That is enough; but a modern poet
would have sought to intensify by making the wind moan, or shriek,
or sob, or something of the kind.

Mr. Lowell here quoted a ballad which tells a story of a child-murder.

It begins:

Fair Anne sate in her bower

Down by the greenwood side,
And the flowers did spring,
And the birds did sing,
’Twas the pleasant Mayday tide.

The ballad singers had all the advantage of that spur of the moment
which the excitement of speaking gives, and they also received the
magnetism which came from the sympathy of their hearers. They
knew what told, for they had their hand upon the living pulse of
feeling. There was no time to palaver; they must come to the point.

The Percy came out of Northumberland,

And a vow to God made he
That he would hunt in the mountains
Of Cheviot within days three,
In the maugre of Doughty Douglas
And all that ever with him be.

They plunge into deep water at once. And there is never any filling
up. The transitions are abrupt. You can no more foretell the swift
wheel of the feeling than that of a falcon, and the phrases flash forth
sharp-edged and deadly like a sword drawn in wrath. The passions
speak out savagely and without any delicacies of circumlocution.

It is worth thinking of whether the press, which we have a habit of

calling such a fine institution, be not weakening the fibre and
damaging the sincerity of our English and our thinking, quite as fast
as it diffuses intelligence.

Consider the meaning of expression—something wrung from us by

the grip of thought or passion, whether we will or no. But the editor is
quite as often compelled to write that he may fill an empty column as
that he may relieve an overfilled brain. And in a country like ours,
where newspapers are the only reading of the mass of the people,
there is a danger of a general contentedness in commonplace. For
we always become what we habitually read. We let our newspapers
think for us, argue for us, criticize for us, remember for us, do
everything for us, in short, that will save us from the misfortune of
being ourselves. And so, instead of men and women, we find
ourselves in a world inhabited by incarnated leaders, or paragraphs,
or items of this or that journal. We are apt to wonder at the
scholarship of the men of two centuries ago. They were scholars
because they did not read so much as we do. We spend more time
over print than they did, but instead of communing with the choice
thought of choice spirits, and insensibly acquiring the grand manner
of that supreme society, we diligently inform ourselves of such facts
as that a fine horse belonging to Mr. Smith ran away on Wednesday
and that a son of Mr. Brown fell into the canal on Thursday, or that a
gravel bank fell in and buried Patrick O’Callahan on Friday. And it is
our own fault, and not that of the editor. For we make the
newspapers, and the editor would be glad to give us better stuff if we
did not demand such as this.

Another evil of this state of things is the watering, or milk-and-

watering, of our English. Writing to which there is no higher
compelling destiny than the coming of the printer’s devil must end in
this at last. The paragraphist must make his paragraph, and the
longer he makes it, the better for him and the worse for us. The
virtue of words becomes wholly a matter of length. Accordingly, we
have now no longer any fires, but “disastrous conflagrations”;
nobody dies, but “deceases” or “demises”; men do not fall from
houses, but are “precipitated from mansions or edifices”; a convict is
not hanged, but “suffers the extreme penalty of the offended law,”
etc.
The old ballad-makers lived in a better day. They did not hear of so
many events that none of them made any impression. They did not
live, as we do, in a world that seems a great ear of Dionysius, where
if a scandal is whispered in Pekin we hear of it in New York. The
minstrels had no metaphysical bees in their bonnets. They did not
speculate about this world or the next. They had not made the great
modern discovery that a bird in a bush is worth two in the hand. They
did not analyze and refine till nothing genuine was left of this
beautiful world but an indigestion.

The ballads neither harangue nor describe; but only state things in
the least complex way. Those old singers caught language fresh and
with a flavor of the soil in it still, and their hearers were people of
healthy sensibilities who must be hit directly and hard. Accordingly,
there is a very vigorous handling. They speak bluntly and to the
purpose. If a maiden loses her lover, she merely

Turns her face unto the wall

And there her heart it breaks.

A modern poet would have hardly thrown away the opportunity

offered him for describing the chamber and its furniture; he would put
a painted window into it—for the inkstand will supply them quite as
cheaply as plain glass. He would tell you all about the tapestry which
the eyes of the dying maiden in her extreme agony would have been
likely, of course, to have been minutely interested in. He would have
given a clinical lecture on the symptoms, and a post-mortem
examination. It was so lucky for those old ballad-mongers that they
had not any ideas! And when they give a dying speech they do not
make their heroes take leave of the universe in general as if that
were going into mourning for a death more or less.

When Earl Douglas is in his death-thraw, he says to his nephew:

My wound is deep; I fain would sleep;

 Take thou the vanguard of the three.
And hide me by the brakenbush
That grows on yonder lily lee.
O bury me by the brakenbush
Beneath the blooming brere.
Let never living mortal ken
That a kindly Scot lies here.

The ballads are the only true folk-songs that we have in English.
There is no other poetry in the language that addresses us so simply
as mere men and women. Learning has tempered with modern
poetry, and the Muse, like Portia, wears a doctor’s cap and gown.

The force and earnestness of style that mark the old ballad become
very striking when contrasted with later attempts in the same way. It
is not flatness and insipidity that they are remarkable for, but for a
bare rocky grandeur in whose crevices tenderness nestles its
chance tufts of ferns and harebells. One of these sincere old verses
imbedded in the insipidities of a modern imitation looks out stern and
colossal as that charcoal head which Michael Angelo drew on the
wall of the Farnesina glowers through the paling frescoes.

Mr. Lowell here read a number of passages from the old ballad
entitled “Margaret’s Ghost,” and compared them with a few stanzas
from an “improved” version of the same by Mallet. He also read from
the ballad of “Helen of Kirkconnell,” and from others.

Of the tenderness of the ballads I must give an instance or two

before I leave them. In the old ballad of “Clerk Saunders,” Margaret
follows the ghost of her lover to his grave.

So painfully she climbed the wall,

She climbed the wall up after him,
Hose nor shoon upon her feet,
She had no time to put them on.
 O bonny, bonny, sang the bird
Sat on a coil o’ hay,
But mournfu’, mournfu’, was the maid
That followed the corpse o’ clay.

Is there any room at your head, Saunders?

Or any room at your feet?
Is there any room at your side, Saunders?
For fain, fain I would sleep.

She’s sat her down upon the grave

And mourned sae lang and sair
That the clochs and wanton flies at last
Came and built in her yellow hair.

In further illustration Mr. Lowell read from the “Clerk’s Two Sons of
Oxenford.” He concluded his lecture thus:

I think that the makers of the old ballads did stand face to face with
life in a way that is getting more and more impossible for us. Day by
day the art of printing isolates us more and more from our fellows
and from the healthy and inspiring touch of our fellows. We
continually learn more and more of mankind and less of man. We
know more of Europe than of our own village. We feel humanity from
afar.

But I must not forget that the ballads have passed through a sieve
which no modern author has the advantage of. Only those have
come down to us which imprinted themselves on the general heart.
The new editions were struck off by mothers crooning their children
to sleep, or by wandering minstrels who went about sowing the
seeds of courtesy and valor in the cottage and on the hillside. Print,
which, like the amber, preserves all an author’s grubs, gives men the
chance to try him by the average, rather than the best, of his yield.

Moreover, the Review of the ballad-singer was in the faces of his ring
of hearers, in whose glow or chill he could read at a glance a
criticism from which there was no appeal. It was not Smith or Brown,
but the human heart that judged him.

Doubtless another advantage of these old poets was their out-of-

door life. They went from audience to audience on foot, and had no
more cramped a study than the arch of heaven, no library but clouds,
streams, mountains, woods, and men. There is something more in
sunshine than mere light and heat. I fancy that a kind of flavor we
detect in the old ballads is due to it, and that it may give color and
bloom to the brain as well as to the apple and plum. Indoor
inspiration is like the stove-heat of the forcing-house, and the fruits
ripened by it are pale, dropsical, and wanting in tang. There may be
also a virtue in the fireside which gives to the Northern wind a
domestic and family warmth, and makes it skilled to teach the ethics
of home. But it is not to the chimney-corner that we can trace the
spiritual dynasties that have swayed mankind. These have sunshine
in their veins.

Perhaps another charm of these ballads is that nobody made them.

They seem to have come up like violets, and we have only to thank
God for them. And we imply a sort of fondness when we call them
“old.” It is an epithet we give endearingly and not as supposing any
decrepitude or senescence in them. Like all true poetry, they are not
only young themselves, but the renewers of youth in us; they do not
lose, but accumulate, strength and life. A true poem gets a part of its
inspiring force from each generation of men. The great stream of
Homer rolls down to us out of the past, swollen with the tributary
delight and admiration of the ages. The next generation will find
Shakspeare fuller of meaning and energy by the addition of our
enthusiasm. Sir Philip Sidney’s admiration is part of the breath that
sounds through the trumpet of “Chevy Chase.” That is no empty gift
with which we invest a poem when we bestow on it our own youth,
and it is no small debt we owe the true poem that it preserves for us
some youth to bestow.
 LECTURE V
CHAUCER

(Tuesday Evening, January 23, 1855)

V
It is always a piece of good fortune to be the earliest acknowledged
poet of any country. We prize the first poems as we do snowdrops,
not only for their own intrinsic beauty, but even more for that force of
heart and instinct of sunshine in them which brings them up, where
grass is brown and trees are bare, the outposts and forlorn hopes of
spring. There never comes anything again like a first sensation, and
those who love Chaucer, though they may have learned late to do it,
cannot help imaginatively antedating their delight, and giving him
that place in the calendar of their personal experience which belongs
to him in the order of our poetic history.

And the feeling is a true one, for although intensity be the great
characteristic of all genius, and the power of the poet is measured by
his ability to renew the charm of freshness in what is outworn and
habitual, yet there is something in Chaucer which gives him a
personal property in the epithet “vernal,” and makes him seem
always to go hand in hand with May.

In our New England especially, where Mayday is a mere superstition

and the Maypole a poor half-hardy exotic which shivers in an east
wind almost as sharp as Endicott’s axe,—where frozen children, in
unseasonable muslin, celebrate the floral games with nosegays from
the milliner’s, and winter reels back, like shattered Lear, bringing the
dead spring in his arms, her budding breast and wan dilustered
cheeks all overblown with the drifts and frosty streaks of his white
beard,—where even Chanticleer, whose sap mounts earliest in that
dawn of the year, stands dumb beneath the dripping eaves of his
harem, with his melancholy tail at half-mast,—one has only to take
down a volume of Chaucer, and forthwith he can scarce step without
crushing a daisy, and the sunshine flickers on small new leaves that
throb thick with song of merle and mavis. A breath of spring blows
out of the opening lines of the “Canterbury Tales” that seems to lift
the hair upon our brow:

When that Aprile with his showers soote

The drought of March hath pierced to the roote,
And bathed every vein in that licour
Of whose virtue engendered is the flour;
When Zephirus eke with his sweet breath
Enspired hath in every holt and heath
The tender croppes; and the younge sun
Hath in the Ram half of his course yrun;
And little fowles maken melodie,
That slepen all the night with open eye,
So nature pricketh them in their courages.

Even Shakspeare, who comes after everybody has done his best
and seems to say, “Here, let me take hold a minute and show you
how to do it,” could not mend that. With Chaucer, the sun seems
never to have run that other half of his course in the Ram, but to
have stood still there and made one long spring-day of his life.

Chaucer was probably born in 1328, seven years after the death of
Dante, and he certainly died in 1400, having lived consequently
seventy-two years. Of his family we know nothing. He was educated
either at Oxford or Cambridge, or at neither of these famous
universities. He was, perhaps, a student at the Inner Temple, on the
books of which a certain phantasmagoric Mr. Buckley had read a
record that “Geoffrey Chaucer was fined two shillings for beating a
Franciscan friar in Fleet street.”
In the thirty-ninth year of his age he received from Edward III a
pension of twenty marks (equal to $1000 now), and afterwards a
grant of a pitcher of wine daily, and the custody of a ward which gave
£104 a year, and two places in the customs. In the last year of
Edward III he was one of three envoys sent to France to negotiate a
marriage between the Prince of Wales and a daughter of the French
King. Richard II confirmed his pension of twenty marks, and granted
him another of like amount instead of the daily wine.

Chaucer married Philippa Pycard or De la Roet, sister of Katherine

Swynford, the third wife of John of Gaunt. By this connection he is
supposed to have become a favorer of Wycliffe’s doctrines, and was
in some way concerned in the insurrection of John of Northampton,
which seems to have had for its object some religious reform. He
was forced to fly into Holland, and is said to have made his peace at
last by betraying his companions. I think one’s historical comfort is
not disturbed by refusing to credit this story, especially as it stains
the fame of a great poet, and, if character may ever be judged from
writings, a good man. We may grant that he broke the Franciscan
friar’s head in Fleet street, if it were only for the alliteration, but let us
doubt that he ever broke his faith. It is very doubtful whether he was
such stuff as martyrs are made of. Plump men, though nature would
seem to have marked them as more combustible, seldom go to the
stake, but rather your lean fellows, who can feel a fine satisfaction in
not burning well to spite the Philistines.

At this period of his life Chaucer is thought to have been in straitened

circumstances, but a new pension and a yearly pipe of wine were
granted him by Richard II, and on the accession of Henry IV these
were confirmed, with a further pension of forty marks. These he only
lived a year to enjoy, dying October 25, 1400.

The most poetical event in Chaucer’s life the critics have, of course,
endeavored to take away from us. This is his meeting with Petrarch,
to which he alludes in the prologue to the Clerk’s “Tale of Griseldis.”
There is no reason for doubting this that I am able to discover,
except that it is so pleasing to think of, and that Chaucer affirms it.
Chaucer’s embassy to Italy was in 1373, the last year of Petrarch’s
life, and it was in this very year that Petrarch first read the
“Decameron.” In his letter to Boccaccio he says: “The touching story
of Griseldis has been ever since laid up in my memory that I may
relate it in my conversations with my friends.” We are forced to
believe so many things that ought never to have happened that the
heart ought to be allowed to recompense itself by receiving as fact,
without too close a scrutiny of the evidence, whatever deserved to
take place so truly as this did. Reckoning back, then, by the finer
astronomy of our poetic instinct, we find that a conjunction of these
two stars of song did undoubtedly occur in that far-off heaven of the
Past.

On the whole, we may consider the life of Chaucer as one of the

happiest, and also the most fortunate, that ever fell to the lot of
poets. In the course of it he must have been brought into relation
with all ranks of men. He had been a student of books, of manners,
and of countries. In his description of the Clerk of Oxford, in which
there is good ground for thinking that he alludes to some of his own
characteristics, he says:

For him was liefer have at his bed’s head

A twenty books clothed in black or red,
Of Aristotle and his philosophy,
Than robes rich, or fiddle or psaltery.
But albeit that he was a philosopher,
Yet had he but a little gold in coffer;
Of study took he the most care and heed,
Not a word spake he more than there was need;
And that was said in form and reverence,
And short and quick, and full of high sentence;
Sounding in moral virtue was his speech,
And gladly would he learn, and gladly teach.

What a pleasant, companionable nature the last verse testifies to.

The portrait of Chaucer, too, is perhaps more agreeable than that of
any other English poet. The downcast, meditative eyes, the rich