Susanna Kunttu

Executing Sustainable Business in Practice—A Case Study on How to Support Sustainable Investment Decisions

Too often, B2B negotiations only look at the purchasing cost and do not take the costs and effects on the environment of the whole life cycle of the product into account. Products that have less impact on the environment often have a higher purchasing price. It is generally believed that when a customer can see the estimates of the use period costs, he can accept the higher purchasing price more easily. This paper describes a practical LCC tool developed for life cycle cost calculations and how this kind of tool can be used by manufacturers in developing their own product portfolios and selling their products. For manufacturers, LCC calculations can reveal weak points of their solutions. In negotiations with customers, the LCC calculation indicates the kind of value they will obtain in the long run and guides them to choose products that cause less harm to the environment and have financial benefits.

Asset Management Decisions—Based on System Thinking and Data Analysis

Asset related data is collected in several information systems (e.g. enterprise resource management (ERP) and computerized maintenance management systems (CMMS) systems) at industrial plants. Information systems including asset related data are typically used for operational level decisions (e.g. creating maintenance work orders) but maintenance history data is also valuable when making asset management level decisions (e.g. investment decisions). Even though there is a huge amount of stored data, tacit knowledge is needed for risk conscious asset decisions both for supplementing the data contained in IT-systems and for creating the understanding of the production system itself and its interrelationships. The paper describes how data collected from ERP and CMMS system can be utilized when improving operational efficiency and researching investment opportunities and evaluating investment options.

Methods and Tools for Sustainable Manufacturing Networks—Results of a Case Study

Manufacturers need be proactive, innovative and operationally efficient to succeed in the current business environment. The transition toward sustainable manufacturing requires new approaches in the design, manufacture and use of products and services. These approaches need to take into account the network of stakeholders who influence and can be influenced by the sustainability of the product in the course of its life cycle. This paper presents results of a case study that used and tested methods and tools developed for creating a sustainable business model for a manufacturing company. The main research questions addressed here are: how to develop a sustainable business model; and how to explicitly illustrate to potential customers the life cycle costs of different solutions.

Risk Assessment Using Group Elicitation: Case Study on Start-up of a New Logistics System

This chapter presents a risk assessment for the start-up of a new logistics system within the pulp and paper manufacturer Stora Enso. The risk assessment was realised as a structured expert elicitation workshop using a computerised group support system. Experts representing different parts of the logistics system were invited to a one-day workshop to assess risks concerning the system start-up. The main topics of the workshop were hazard identification, risk estimation and risk control. Each identified risk scenario was assessed with regard to its likelihood and three consequence types related to logistics: timeliness, product quality and information quality. The top priority risks were identified and risk controls were outlined.

Life Cycle Cost Calculations as the Means for Value Communication in Networks

Financial benefits of products and services during the whole life cycle can be challenging to communicate to different stakeholders in industrial networks. To support the decision-making processes, the supplier and its network partners should discuss with the buyers the pros and cons achieved by their products and services and transform those into monetary values. There is a need for tools to facilitate the communication in the network. The aim of this chapter is to describe how product service suppliers and their network partners can support their customers by providing information about life cycle costs with the help of a LCC tool. The chapter describes the role of a LCC tool in a network, related background theory, LCC calculation process, and a case example.

Life Cycle Cost Calculations Supporting Service Offering; Case Study of Air Conditioning Systems

The benefits of services, in terms of life cycle cost, can be challenging to prove to a customer making service purchase decisions. To support the buyers’ decision-making, the service provider can highlight all the benefits achieved by services and compare those to the service costs. In this paper, we will describe a practical case study the aim of which was to develop a method and a tool for estimating life cycle costs with or without service. The case company is Chiller Ltd. which is the largest manufacturer of air conditioning equipment in Finland.

Support for Life Cycle Decision-Making in Sustainable Manufacturing – Results of an Industrial Case Study

This paper presents results of a case study in which a life cycle cost estimation tool has been developed and tested. Improving sustainability requires holistic information on the life cycle costs of the system. There is a need to increase the transparency of decision-making by informing customers about the costs of the solutions when taking into consideration the whole life cycle. This benefits both the supplier and the customer in forms of showing the total costs of the system and selecting the system with the lowest total costs.

Developing Knowledge–Intensive Product–Service Systems–Interview Results from Finnish Manufacturing Companies

Product manufacturers have increasingly started moving into the service business by introducing services along with their core products. However, there seem to be difficulties in the transition from product-based to service-based business. Manufacturers have strongly focused on planning and producing physical products, and services have been compulsory add-ons to products. Moreover, the design of industrial services is predominantly done with little or no systemization. We have started a research project the main objective of which is to outline a framework for the concurrent design of physical product and knowledge-intensive services. We consider it essential to develop support and service processes in parallel with the design of the product. Interviews among Finnish product manufacturers confirm this assumption. In this paper we will introduce the main results from our interviews, which focused on product and service development.

Empirical experiences of investment portfolio management in a capital-intensive business environment: a dimension of strategic asset management

The aim of this article is to describe the investment portfolio management method and how the method affected portfolio management from different strategic (corporate, business and functional) perspectives. This study focused on describing the investment portfolio management method (input and output information), which is tested for its practical relevance in the four case companies in the capital-intensive business environment. Investment portfolio management is a managerial and strategy intensive process, which aims to select the right set of investment projects for execution. The investment portfolio management method integrates technical, operational and strategic information to improve the quality of investment and business decisions. According to the study the investment portfolio management method applies knowledge, skills, tools and techniques to the collection of projects in order to meet or exceed the needs and expectations of the organisation’s investment strategy.

In Search Of Best Practices In Industrial Maintenance: Some Underlying Factors

Abstract Business requirements and characteristics of production systems determine the effective modes of operations in industrial maintenance. In order to identify the best practices the first task is to identify the best performance in various business environments using relevant key performance indicators. The next step is to identify the modes of operations which create the best performance. There are several research strategies to find out the best practices. However, there are a lot of challenges in data collection and therefore a research process requires a long term roadmap in order to boost knowledge on behavior behind peak performance. This paper presents some of the results of a long research process, which form a solid basis for determining the best practices in the area of industrial maintenance.