Sami Farooq

Manufacturing network evolution: a manufacturing plant perspective

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to examine the effect of changes at the manufacturing plant level on other plants in the manufacturing network and also investigate the role of manufacturing plants on the evolution of a manufacturing network.Design/methodology/approach – The research questions are developed by identifying the gaps in the reviewed literature. The paper is based on three case studies undertaken in Danish manufacturing companies to explore in detail their manufacturing plants and networks. The cases provide a sound basis for developing the research questions and explaining the interaction between different manufacturing plants in the network and their impact on network transformation.Findings – The paper highlights the dominant role of manufacturing plants in the continuously changing shape of a manufacturing network. The paper demonstrates that a product or process change at one manufacturing plant affects the other plants in the same network by altering their strategic roles, which l...

International manufacturing network: past, present, and future

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to examine, and present a comprehensive review of, the existing literature on the international manufacturing network (IMN). Design/methodology/approach – The original data set used for reviewing the IMN literature consisted of 107 articles selected from 21 journals: more specifically, 40 articles are concerned with plant-level analysis, and 67 articles are related to IMN-level analysis. The literature is simultaneously reviewed by two researchers. The relevance and contribution of each reviewed paper is discussed and mutually agreed upon. Findings – The paper highlights the different concepts related to IMN and traces the evolution of IMN-related research. Based on two levels of analysis (i.e. plant and network), this paper further reviews and discusses the IMN-specific literature in detail to determine the number of IMN articles published across the journals, the dominant methodologies employed, and the research focus reflected in IMN studies. A research trajectory...

Risk calculations in the manufacturing technology selection process

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to present result obtained from a developed technology selection framework and provide a detailed insight into the risk calculations and their implications in manufacturing technology selection process.Design/methodology/approach – The results illustrated in the paper are the outcome of an action research study that was conducted in an aerospace company.Findings – The paper highlights the role of risk calculations in manufacturing technology selection process by elaborating the contribution of risk associated with manufacturing technology alternatives in the shape of opportunities and threats in different decision‐making environments.Practical implications – The research quantifies the risk associated with different available manufacturing technology alternatives. This quantification of risk crystallises the process of technology selection decision making and supports an industrial manager in achieving objective and comprehensive decisions regarding selection of a ma...

A technology selection framework for integrating manufacturing within a supply chain

This paper describes a structured analytical approach for selecting a manufacturing technology. A framework consisting of six integrated steps is proposed by considering the growing importance of supply chains in manufacturing organisations. The framework makes use of the analytical hierarchy process (AHP) approach combined with strategic assessment model (SAM) to evaluate and select the technologies appropriate for providing overall competitive advantage. The framework is intended to assist industrial managers in promoting manufacturing and supply chain collaboration and co-ordination by including intra-organisational perspective in their organisational technology selection decision making process.

Interplant coordination, supply chain integration, and operational performance of a plant in a manufacturing network: a mediation analysis

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to investigate the relationships at the level of plant in a manufacturing network, labelled as networked plant in the paper, between inter-plant coordination and operational performance, supply chain integration (SCI) and operational performance and inter-plant coordination and SCI. Design/methodology/approach This paper is developed based on the data obtained from the sixth version of International Manufacturing Strategy Survey (IMSS VI). Specifically, this paper uses a subset of the IMSS VI data set from the 606 plants that identified themselves as one of the plants in a manufacturing network. Findings This paper finds that external integration is significantly related to operational performance of networked plant, whereas internal integration is not. As an enabler for external integration, the influence of internal integration on operational performance of networked plant is mediated by external integration. This paper also provides evidence to the purported positive impact of internal integration on inter-plant coordination, as well as the positive impact of inter-plant coordination on external integration. It further suggests that inter-plant coordination can influence operational performance of networked plant through external integration and also mediate the relationship from internal integration to performance through external integration. Originality/value This paper contributes to the SCI literature and extends the understanding of the impact of SCI on the operational performance by selecting networked plant as a unit of analysis. Besides, this paper distinguishes inter-plant coordination from SCI and investigates the relationship between inter-plant coordination, SCI, and operational performance for the first time.

An action research methodology for manufacturing technology selection: A supply chain perspective

This paper presents an empirical research approach to developing and implementing a manufacturing technology-selection framework. In this paper, the selection of action research as an empirical research methodology is preferred because it provides the researcher with the necessary flexibility to actively participate in the research activity and to analyse the situation in detail by being part of the research system under investigation. The main objective of this paper is to use action research as an empirical research tool in order to provide a methodology for technology selection in the context of extended supply chains considering intra- and inter-organisational (supply chain) perspective while promoting active collaboration between industry and academia.

Global Operations: A Review and Outlook

This paper starts from reviewing (1) the history of globalisation/internationalisation and related theories and (2) the history of global manufacturing and related studies. A figure is developed to illustrate the overview of the research trajectory of global (manufacturing) studies. Furthermore, the paper emphasizes that global manufacturing can further be accompanied by the internationalisation of other related value chain activities. In this case, discussions are naturally extended from global manufacturing to other global activities as well as their corresponding functional networks. The paper further shows the importance of addressing individual manufacturing, sales, service, engineering, and R&D functional networks simultaneously. Four factors are identified to be critical when addressing each functional network as well as their interactions. A similar development trend can also be observed with regard to the externalisation of both manufacturing and other value chain activities. An internationalisation and externalisation matrix is provided to illustrate the mentioned development trends in a holistic framework. Last but not least, practical implications are given ranging from micro to macro level.

Management of automation and advanced manufacturing technology (AAMT) in the context of global manufacturing

Automation and advanced manufacturing technology solutions (AAMT) that present tangible and intangible benefits remain key drivers for manufacturers from both the developed and developing countries. However, the reality is that some manufacturing companies exploit the benefits of AAMT more effectively than others and develop their competitive advantage. Historically, the International Journal of Production Research (IJPR) has been instrumental in disseminating research on the challenges and benefits associated with new manufacturing technologies and this research has predominantly been documented from either an Operations Research (OR) or an Operations Management (OM) perspective. In the 1980s, IJPR publications drew attention to a range of OR issues including justification techniques (e.g. Mkrkdtth and Surksh 1986), layout design (e.g. Aneke and Carrie 1986), flow optimisation (e.g. Kimemia and Gershwin 1985) and distributed scheduling using local area networks (Shaw 1987). At the same time publications from an OM perspective included implementation issues (e.g. Carrier et al. 1984), diffusion studies (e.g. Hyer and Wemmerlov 1989), and visions of future manufacturing paradigms (e.g. Bullinger, Warnecke, and Lentes 1986; Plossl 1988; Primrose and Leonard 1988). In the 1990s, OM IJPR publications on manufacturing technologies increased the focus on technology sourcing (e.g. Baines 1999), strategic appraisal techniques (e.g. Naik and Chakravarty 1992; Gupta 1993) and implementation issues (e.g. Ramamurthy 1994; Silveira 1999). Meanwhile, the exploration of new manufacturing paradigms continued with, for example, disassembly systems (Ng, Ip, and Lee 1999), the virtual enterprise (e.g. Zhou 1999) and rapid prototyping and extendible systems (Weston 1998). Similarly, OR studies continued into new areas including ‘design for’ new systems (e.g. Ngoi and Fang 1994), optimal use (e.g. Dong and Vijayan 1997) and improvement of new systems using sophisticated modelling techniques (see e.g. Suresh and Kaparthi 1994; Venugopal and Narendran 1994; Talluri, Huq, and Pinney 1997; Cheng-Leong, Li Pheng, and Keng Leng 1999; Zhang et al. 1999). At the dawn of the new millennium, IJPR publications on manufacturing technology still concerned conceptual and survey work on new paradigms including web-based (Yang and Xue 2003) or factory less (Bateman and Cheng 2006) manufacturing systems, reconfigurable manufacturing systems (Abdi and Labib 2003), or the application of augmented reality technologies in manufacturing (Ong, Yuan, and Nee 2008). Publications also concerned more practical challenges associated with the use or limitations of modern technologies including the need for flexible fixture design (Bi and Zhang 2001), the need for ontologies to support interoperability (Lin, Harding, and Shahbaz 2004) and applicationoriented research concerning for example the use of RFID (Liu and Chen 2009) and of collaborative autonomous agents (Ratchev, Shiau, and Valtchanov 2000). Parallel to such publications focusing on the potential or use of specific technologies and dealing with objective challenges, a stream of OM research focused on the broader topics of selection, implementation and performance of ‘advanced manufacturing technology’ (AMT). Traces of such research were also evident in IJPR and included publications on managerial challenges (Sohal et al. 2006) such as human factors (e.g. Machuca, Díaz, and Gil 2004) and contingencies related to manufacturing strategy (e.g. Das and Jayaram 2003) or the environment affecting performance-technology links. However, in the past few years, studies of the AMT-performance link and related selection and implementation challenges have dropped in number. Meanwhile, the OR stream continued to develop advanced optimisation and modelling schemes for emerging technologies or new types of manufacturing systems including for example advanced modelling of processing operations (e.g. Chan, Kwong, and Tsim 2010; Sanz-Lobera et al. 2015), applications of RFID in wireless manufacturing (Zhang et al. 2011), partner selection in virtual manufacturing (Tao et al. 2012), models for investments in premature technologies (Peters 2015) and the incorporation of sustainability considerations in various decisions (e.g. Lee and Prabhu 2015). In contrast to the studies in the 1990’s, the word AMT in the recent past has begun to encompass nascent process technologies such as additive manufacturing, nano-engineering and fabrication (e.g. Gardan 2016; Wang et al. 2016; Achillas, Tzetzis, and Raimondo 2017). Nevertheless, these technology developments and their industrial application have not been truly reflected in the existing studies and the research in this domain is still in an embryonic stage with very few studies of manufacturing technology implementation or of transition processes towards new manufacturing