A.A. Alblas

Fuzzy sustainability incentives in new product development: An empirical exploration of sustainability challenges in manufacturing companies

Purpose – This paper investigates the challenges encountered by manufacturing companies in managing sustainability in new product development (NPD). It describes six case studies of manufacturers aiming for sustainability improvements but experiencing difficulties in implementing them. Design/methodology/approach – The paper starts with a literature study. Academic literature offers explanations as to why manufacturers want to implement sustainability in NPD, and suggests methods for such implementations. This paper employs the systems theory of control to build a research framework for analyzing the challenges. Empirical data are gathered through workshops and interviews with NPD managers in the case companies. Findings – In-depth analyses have provided three insights. First, the study shows that sustainability pressures and incentives in a firms contexts can be fuzzy or even absent. The fuzziness of sustainability incentives is often neglected in the literature on sustainability and NPD. Second, the ca...

Impact of product platforms on lean production systems: evidence from industrial machinery manufacturing

The present study describes the effects of product platform changes on lean production systems. Current research into product platforms focuses mostly on the development stage. However, although the initial development of platforms is an important issue, product platforms often evolve during later stages due to emerging engineering changes. The research question for this study is: how do firms manage the impact of changes on lean production systems, and what is the role of product platforms in stabilising the resulting variety during production and use? The study illustrates the fundamental impact of changes in the platform on procurement, manufacturing, and maintenance. Based on a case study, several important requirements in the management of platform changes are identified. Firstly, platform change attributes should be clearly defined because they determine the state of the platform during its lifecycle. Further, product platform lifecycle management (PPLM) is required to support impact analysis during a platforms lifecycle. Finally, configuration management of the product base installed in the field is required. Throughout the company, data management concerning versions, variants, and changes of platform attributes has to be organised. Further research should focus on defining the attributes of a platform more precisely and, subsequently, should concentrate on the development of a change or freeze policy based on these attributes.

Managing large engineering changes : the case of a high-tech microlithography equipment manufacturer

Purpose – In new product development (NPD), changes to the initial designs are often proposed for on‐going design projects due to new insights. These engineering changes belong to a wide range from incremental to radical and, in their impact, even to discontinuous change. Consequently, the actual workload of development projects confronted with engineering changes does not match the initial work estimates for the projects work packages. Accordingly, the intended timing of readiness of development projects in an NPD program will drift away. This timing is one of the causes of change propagation to other projects which results in even more engineering changes. For larger changes, the effects on timing may be disastrous. The purpose of this paper is to reveal the cause‐and‐effect relationships triggered by various types of changes and explain the need for a more integrated approach to managing engineering change.Design/methodology/approach – A longitudinal case study was performed at a leading microlithogra...

Design resilience in the fuzzy front end (FFE) context: an empirical examination

This study provides a detailed understanding of the flexibilities that affect performance of innovation projects in the fuzzy front end (FFE) stage. We use the ambidextrous theory approach along with theories on flexibility to propose key drivers of design resilience in innovation projects. A set of six in-depth case studies across a variety of contextual settings is used to investigate important sources of flexibilities that contribute to design resilience. The effects of different design flexibility on the firms’ design resilience are examined. Specifically, an in-depth examination of ‘within case’ trends suggested key design flexibilities to be further examined in the ‘across case’ analyses. Our findings provide valuable insights about the enabling design flexibilities and contextual effects of design resilience in the FFE stage of innovation projects. Based on the findings from the case studies, four sources of design flexibility emerged that vary in terms of their influence on design resilience: (1) iterative learning, (2) modularity, (3) engineering change management and (4) design reuse. Patterns from the ‘across case’ analyses were then used to isolate specific types of design flexibilities that are important for design resilience and organisational resilience. We also provide categorisation of these drivers of design resilience in the context of passive flexibility and active flexibility practices. One of the major contributions of the study is that it provides a detailed categorisation of design resilience in relation to organisational resilience.

Representing function-technology platform based on the unified modelling language

Product platforms are used in many industries to allow a variety of products to be offered to the market while levering commonality in components. The reported approaches to designing product platforms assume mature and stable design and manufacturing technologies. Consequently, product platforms are not applicable in the semiconductor equipment manufacturing industries, where the technologies keep evolving and cannot be frozen in the product development process. In response to the application limitations of traditional platforms, a concept of function-technology (FT) platform is put forward to assist semiconductor equipment manufacturers to efficiently design product families by reusing, in a structured way, functions and technologies. To shed light on the diverse constituent elements and the complex relationships inherent in an FT platform, this study focuses on its structural representation. A formalism of FT platform representation is developed based on the unified modelling language (UML). It consists of a generic functional structure, a generic technology structure and the mapping relationships in-between. An application case in a well-known semiconductor equipment manufacturer is also reported to present the structure of an FT platform and its representation based on the UML.

Function-technology platforms improve efficiency in high-tech equipment manufacturing : a case study in complex products and systems (CoPS)

– Success in manufacturing industries often depends on the ability of a firm to apply product platforms. In speeding up product development, platforms often enable companies to benefit from scale effects by reusing existing components in the development of new products. In the delivery of complex products and system (CoPS), however, platforms are frequently modified since components have to be changed within their life cycle to meet additional customer-specific engineering demands and evolving innovations in technology. In this article, it will be illustrated that intangible design elements can be used as platforms in firms that deliver CoPS. The paper aims to discuss these issues. , – Through extensive fieldwork at a leading supplier of science-based lithography machinery, a modified platform concept was developed and tested that is labelled as the function-technology (FT) platform. The longitudinal data, collected on site, demonstrate positive effects of applying FT platforms. , – The results show that an important explanation for firms success in delivering lithography machinery with attractive performance is their ability to deliver variants that are specific in terms of physical modules, but common in terms of functions and technologies. Based on the results, it can be argued that establishing an FT platform will allow the efficient creation of variants within a family of CoPS. , – The findings add considerable insight to the existing literature on operations management by explaining how intangible design elements, instigated during development, can be reused in the delivery of CoPS. Moreover, it enables development managers to more easily structure and reuse complex development tasks.

Supply Chain Integration for Sustainability Faces Sustaining ICT Problems

This paper is concerned with the role of supply chain management in sustainable operations. It argues that sustainability requires increased supply chain co-ordination using ICT for product life cycle management. Accordingly, the paper researches integration problems in supply chains due to ICT. It addresses the question, why operational decisions are often not based on integrated information in supply chains. It argues that several current information/ communication technologies are essentially heterogeneous. Therefore, it is not easy to integrate these. The paper distinguishes (1) transactional systems (2) real-time monitoring/control systems (3) decision support systems (4) human communication (text, audio, video). Integration problems should be studied by analysing the underlying characteristics of the technology.

Process Alignment for Sustainable Product Development: The Essential Role of Supplier and Customer Involvement Processes

Sustainable product development (SPD) has received increasing attention by scholars and practitioners recently. This paper explores two essential organizational processes to support SPD: supplier and customer involvement. The empirical study in six discrete manufacturing firms shows that various types of sustainability innovations (e.g., recycling or energy efficiency) imply discontinues change in the supply chain and/or customer context, and that these themes only can be implemented when the supplier and customer integration process is sufficiently supported. The results suggest that SPD requires alignment between the type of SPD innovation and the type of SPD organizational processes.