Christos Tsinopoulos

Strategies for agility: an evolutionary and configurational approach

Configurational theory can significantly enhance understanding of organisational strategy and diversity. Despite this, there have been limited efforts to examine the value and utility of configurational research as a method for realising manufacturing strategies. This paper introduces a strategic management framework based on configurational theory and an evolutionary classification method (cladistics). Focusing on agile manufacturing concepts, the framework provides a system for collecting and organising information on manufacturing routines and capabilities. This facilitates the processes of strategic analysis, strategic choice and strategic information.

Supply chain integration configurations: process structure and product newness

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to explore the configurations of supply chain integration. Design/methodology/approach – The authors use qualitative data from manufacturers shortlisted for the UK’s Manufacturing Excellence awards over three years. Detailed processes and policies of 68 manufacturers are analysed. Findings – Process structure and product newness require different supply chain configurations, which change as products mature. Supply chain integration is dynamic, and the extent of collaboration between suppliers and customers will be different at different moments in time. The authors define and discuss four key supply chain configurations: customised; ramp-up; recurring; coordinated. Research limitations/implications – Future studies on supply chain integration should be controlled for the variation in the configurations. A limitation is the use of data which were derived for an award. The paper explains how the authors have mitigated the associated risks. Practical implications – The ...

Clockspeed effectiveness of lead users and product experts

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to explore the impact of collaboration with lead users (users that experience needs unknown to the public and therefore can innovate by finding solutions to those needs) and product experts (external new product development collaborators who have a commercial interest in the development of a new product) on the clockspeed of the development of new products and to determine which of the two has a higher impact.Design/methodology/approach – Survey data were collected from 421 European manufacturers, and analysed using hierarchical regression analyses.Findings – Both lead users and product experts were found to have a positive and statistically significant impact on new product development speed. Also, collaboration with lead users will lead to greater new product development speed than with product experts.Research limitations/implications – When knowledgeable individuals are involved in the new product development process as lead users, they have a better impact on ne...

Supply chain integration systems by small engineering to order companies : the challenge of implementation.

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to develop a model for overcoming the key barriers to the implementation of supply chain integration systems by small engineering to order (ETO) companies.Design/methodology/approach – Qualitative data from three in‐depth case studies are collected. The three case studies are small UK ETO companies, i.e. manufacturing companies that customise generic product types to meet specific customer requirements and only make these to order.Findings – The paper identifies three key barriers: management awareness of the benefits and implementation challenges of these systems, perceived risk to the business and to information security and intensity of skills needed for their successful implementation. The paper proposes an iterative model that aims at overcoming these barriers.Research limitations/implications – The authors apply the knowledge on technology adoption in the context of small ETO companies to explain the apparent lack of implementation of supply chain integration s...

Export Experience Counts: Exploring its Effect on Product Design Change

In this paper, we explore how managers’ export experience can affect the change in product design following changes in perceived past performance. Using data from 519 Portuguese exporters, we find that performance improvement will encourage safe decision making in which firms either will not change the product design or will change it in a way that makes it more similar across the product range. However, when managers’ export experience is greater, they encourage change in ways that could support product differentiation. The abilities of experienced managers to read the market, i.e. to interpret changes in performance and translate them into product specifications, help explain these findings. We contribute to the literature in two ways. First, we explore the relationship among past export performance change, product design, and managers’ export experience. Second, we identify specific kinds of design changes that firms adopt in response to changes in different dimensions of organizational performance. Based on our findings, we would recommend to new product development managers to consider both managers’ export experience and the dimension used to measure performance when evaluating calls for standardizing the design by export managers. Our findings suggest that such calls could be driven by short-term gains in export performance. Furthermore, we would also emphasize the need to routinely capture information from experienced export managers to ensure that it is considered in future decisions about design changes.

An outsourcing model for lead users : an empirical investigation.

Product development costs have been increasing constantly over the past few decades. Outsourcing some or all of the new product development (NPD) activities to external parties is increasingly becoming a popular option in the quest to reduce costs. Lead users (LUs), a special group of users that experience needs earlier than the public, have been identified as an important source of innovative ideas. In this article, we explore and compare the cost impact of outsourcing activities to LUs relative to in-house NPD. Using survey data from 376 European manufacturers, we show that LUs’ impact on cost reduction is higher than that achieved through higher performing in-house NPD teams. The unique attributes of LUs make them a favourable outsourcing partner of NPD activity that can help reduce costs whilst increasing an organisations innovative ability. The reduction in costs is a combination of the information sharing benefits achieved through in-house NPD and the outsourcing of NPD activities to LUs.

New product development as a complex system of decisions

Whilst manufacturing excellence helps to maintain the current survival of companies the development of new products is a critical process for ensuring future survival. The efficiency and effectiveness of the new product development (NPD) process depends on the integrated decision making ability of the system, but current NPD frameworks focus on managing the co-ordination activities and transfer of information. These existing frameworks achieve cost and lead-time reductions, but at the expense of innovation. Thus, this paper introduces a framework that seeks to address this trade-off issue by using a complex systems approach to explore and better understand the characteristics of emergence and self-organisation and their impact on NPD cost, lead-time, reliability and innovation.

Lead users, suppliers, and experts: the exploration and exploitation trade-off in product development

We develop a theoretical framework that explains how lead users, key suppliers, and product experts play into the exploration and exploitation trade-off, and how their changing roles support the development of their ideas into marketable solutions. We explain that close collaboration with product experts, suppliers and lead users supports exploitation, as it tends to enable the development and improvement of existing products. Irregular or non-systematic collaboration with lead users, on the other hand, supports exploration by providing ideas for entirely new products. Furthermore, our theoretical framework argues that the changing role of the external agents increases their understanding of the products they help to develop, supporting a process of exploration and exploitation. This learning process supports the technical abilities of the lead user group in particular, who can then use their newly acquired knowledge to further modify existing products and introduce new ones to meet their needs. At the same time, this process educates internal staff, suppliers, and product experts about the use of the product, which then enhances their ability to develop new and marketable ideas. Our proposed theoretical model has several implications for lead user theory and for product development managers seeking to enhance the development of new products and solutions, which we discuss at the end of the paper.