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Manufacturing management research
by Catherine Beard
Dr Ken Platts from Cambridge University runs the Centre for Strategy and Performance for firms in the manufacturing sector. He was recently in New Zealand and gave some lectures at Auckland University. I attended one and was impressed with some practical examples of how a good strategy and execution can add significantly to a manufacturer’s competitiveness and on-going success.
Dr Platts says at a time of rapidly evolving technologies, short product life cycles and high customer expectations a clear strategic vision and an effective performance measurement system are essential to build unique capabilities and lasting competitive advantage.
The research themes they cover include:
Strategy modelling and visualisation
Developing visual approaches to support strategy development that help companies deal with the large amounts of complex information involved.
Strategic decision making
Building structured approaches that support decision making in dynamic business environments to reduce risk and make decisions and actions align with strategy.
Competence, capability and resource analysis
Studying the way companies co-ordinate resources to improve capabilities and performance; the role of company values in generating high performance. They currently have a PHD student studying what enables continuous improvement.
Performance measurement
Understanding the challenges involved in developing and implementing appropriate performance measurement systems; tools and techniques to improve the process.
Servitization
Developing tools to support ‘availability contracting’ – enhanced service contracts covering a product’s entire life. Cultural, organisational and risk factors involved in moving from manufacturing to service provision. I thought that “servitization” was an interesting concept. It is where a manufacturer moves from selling a product only to selling a product and a service. An example he gave was that of Rolls Royce, a company they have done a lot of work with. Rolls Royce sell the ability to use one of their engines rather than the engine itself. They charge a usage fee and they service the engines. Under their old model they used to sell the engines at cost and make their money on spare parts and servicing. However other manufacturers competed on parts and used to do cheaper knock off versions. Now using an “availability contract” there is a barrier to competition from copy-cats. Enhanced service contracts are now available that cover the products entire life.
Strategy options for start-ups
Exploring the challenges for start-ups when bringing a new technology, product or service to market; selecting the most appropriate strategy. They found when studying technology start-ups that they were often technically capable but not business capable. The ones that continued to be run by the technology experts were the ones that struggled and those that recruited the skills that they did not have (e.g. management or marketing etc.) did better.
For more information http://www.ifm.eng.cam.ac.uk/csp/
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