Introduces the special issue of the papers presented at the 9th International EurOMA Conference, 2‐4 June 2002, Copenhagen, Denmark. The articles represent the wide variety of topics presented at the conference and also a common theme: “mew challenges in operations management”.
This special issue of the International Journal of Operations & Production Management is based on the papers presented at the 9th International EurOMA Conference, 2‐4 June 2002, Copenhagen, Denmark. The conference was organised jointly by the Center for Industrial Production at Aalborg University, and the Department of Operations Management at Copenhagen Business School. The conference attracted around 220 participants and 130 papers. The articles selected for this issue represent the wide variety of topics presented at the conference. Yet, in some way, they also represent a common theme: “New challenges in operations management”. The articles collected in this special issue:
suggest that old problems are solved, but present some doubt at the same time, and suggest multi‐disciplinary research to tackle these problems (Acur et al.);
present results from quantitative studies related to the new economy (e‐business) and provide clear directions for further longitudinal studies on the phenomena discussed (Cagliano et al.);
identify new classes of organisation, and suggest that research in smaller countries and, one could add, more “obscure” industries could lead to other surprises (Christiansen et al.);
put forward the need to develop multi‐level operations strategy processes in dynamic environments (Colotla et al.);
describe and analyse highly interdependent primary and support activities operated by separate companies, i.e. production and service factories (Seuring);
use a relatively rarely employed method to reveal that the debate on the ICT‐productivity paradox actually has been a methodological artefact (Sigala);
study collaborative improvement, which is regarded as one of the cornerstones of the competitiveness of supply chains (Coughlan et al.);
analyse the implementation of continuous improvement on middle‐management level (Jørgensen et al.); and
propose and discuss a classification of (change) programme management approaches (Vereecke et al.).
Half of the articles have been written by groups of authors either from different countries (Denmark, Hong‐Kong, Norway, Denmark, USA) and/or on the basis of international research projects (IMSS, CO‐IMPROVE). Growing international collaboration within the EurOMA community: a very pleasing development.
The first two articles are based on the International Manufacturing Survey (IMSS). Nuran Acur and Frank Gertsen (Aalborg University), Hongyi Sun (City University of Hong Kong) and Jan Frick (Stavanger University) address the influence of formalised manufacturing strategy on the relationship between competitive priorities, improvement goals, and action plans. Their analysis is based on the data from 378 European companies that took part in the IMSS. The main conclusion is that in companies with a formal manufacturing strategy, the consistency between competitive priorities, improvement goals, and action plans is much stronger than in companies without such manufacturing strategy. According to the authors, this suggests that Skinner's “missing link” has been re‐discovered. However, when directly asked, the same manufacturing managers, on whose responses the statistical link between corporate and manufacturing issues has been established, indicate that in fact over the years the link has become slightly weaker! The authors give a couple of possible explanations for this, requiring research that integrates theories on organisational psychology, emergent strategy, resource‐based view, and operations management. A new challenge for operations management.
Also based on the quantitative analysis of IMSS data is the contribution of Raffaella Cagliano, Federico Caniato and Gianluca Spina (Politecnico di Milano). In their article entitled “E‐business strategy: how companies are shaping their supply chain through the Internet”, the authors identify four e‐business strategies and investigate their relationship with contingent factors and supply chain integration mechanisms. The study suggests that it is necessary to define e‐business strategies in coherence with the use of traditional integration mechanisms. According to the authors further longitudinal research is needed on the types of relationship that can be supported by different e‐business strategies, their implementation, and the impact of e‐business on supply chain performance. A new challenge for operations management.
The article of Thomas Christiansen and Peter Bruun (Technical University of Denmark) and Bill Berry and Peter Ward (Ohio State University) presents a statistical analysis of a sample of 63 Danish companies. The authors identified four strategic groups, each representing a distinct manufacturing strategy, and each having their own characteristics in terms of the relationships between competitive priorities, manufacturing practices, and operational performance. The study confirmed the existence of three types identified in the earlier research, namely “low pricers”, “quality deliverers”, and “speedy deliverers”, but also identified a new group labelled “aesthetic designers”. All the companies in the latter group are heavily engaged in industrial design, have products in national and international permanent design exhibitions, and have been awarded prestigious design prizes. The Danish culture and industry are quite oriented towards design, and it may therefore not be surprising to find a new group. The authors propose more small country studies and, one could add, studies of less glossy industries, as such studies could well reveal other local or industry‐specific groups and, through that, produce new inspiration for other industries. A new challenge for operations management.
The paper of Ian Colotla, Yongjiang Shi and Mike (Cambridge University) won the 2002 Chris Voss Best Paper Award. The article, entitled “Operation and performance of international manufacturing networks”, brings us from quantitative analysis to case‐based methodology combining multiple interviews and ethnographic research. Drawing on field studies of two international manufacturing networks comprising eight factories in six countries, the article seeks to explore the interplay of factory and network capabilities. This issue has become progressively more important as companies seek to develop networks of plants capable of responding to increasingly competitive and volatile environments. The authors show that, although factory and network level capabilities simultaneously affect operational performance, decisions regarding factory and network issues are often taken independently and at different times. This suggests that there is a need for developing strategy processes to help companies reconcile these two levels, addressing the strategic implications of the interplay of factory and network capabilities, and the strategic nature of capability building over time. A new challenge for operations management.
Stefan Seuring (Carl von Ossietzky Universität Oldenburg) takes us to the world of “service factories”. His study is an exploratory analysis of the outsourcing to facility operators by chemical companies located at dedicated industry parks. One of the characteristics of the new economy is strategic outsourcing and, consequently, supply chain integration. A‐typical example is strategic “dis‐integration” of companies. Using five cases taken from the German chemical industry, the author shows how product manufacturers concentrate their business on specific products and technologies, while facility operators, acting as “service factories”, are formed to operate the infrastructure of the production site. Product manufacturers develop into multinational companies, operate sites around the globe, organise effectively integrated supply chains, have a clear focus and aim at fitting into their customers' supply chains by offering specialty products and/or the best value. Nothing shocking from the existing operations management theory. In contrast, facility operators face the challenge of operating all parts of the business the product manufacturers want to outsource. Hence, the formation of such companies reaches far beyond prototypical outsourcing, as it requires a new kind of integration between companies: primary and support activities are operated by separate companies, but are still intrinsically linked. Product manufacturers cannot run their business without the facility operator and vice‐versa. This issue has not been analysed in the outsourcing and supply chain management literature, and, as the author concludes there is still a lot to be researched before this new phenomenon is fully understood. A new challenge for operations management.
While Seuring's article is on the interface between production and service operations management, Marianna Sigala (University of Strathclyde) reports a study on the impact of ICT on the productivity of service operations, more particularly the UK hotel sector. She used Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA), a technique relatively rarely employed in operations management research, in order to overcome shortcomings of previous studies. Her findings provide robust conclusions regarding the ICT‐productivity paradox – in the three‐star hotels included in her sample, highlighting that this debate has been a methodological artifact! The study also revealed that ICT productivity benefits accrue only when the ICT network/integration, informational and transformational capabilities are exploited. Thus, for optimising ICT value, a more strategic approach to ICT implementation and management is required, aligning the ICT capabilities with business strategy and operations. The author suggests using DEA in further research aimed at investigating ICT productivity in different hotel segments and/or countries, which can produce interesting results with crucial academic and managerial implications. A new challenge for operations management.
The common theme of the next two articles is continuous improvement (CI). Frances Jørgensen, Harry Boer and Frank Gertsen (Aalborg University) are concerned with the observation that the majority of CI initiatives within the US and Europe have died out within a few years. Based on success stories from Japan, the expectation was (and is) that CI would (and will) offer companies a means to gain and maintain a competitive advantage. There are explanations as to why these efforts have not been successful. But methods for rejuvenating stagnant CI programs are still lacking. The article presents experiences from a longitudinal action research project with a middle management group in a large Danish company to illustrate how a process of facilitated self‐assessment was used to identify and address barriers to CI implementation. Perhaps the most interesting finding is that, although half of the so‐called CI enablers identified from the literature were actually in place, they simply did not function. The CI self‐assessment process helped repair that situation. CI is a simple concept, but difficult to implement. The longitudinal case study presented in the paper suggest that facilitated self‐assessment may be a powerful tool to boost the process. However, further research going beyond single cases, possibly using other forms of, and/or other tools than, self‐assessment, and aimed at developing deeper insight into the influence of enablers and disablers is needed to increase our understanding of this apparently very complex process. (Still) a (relatively) new challenge for operations management.
Paul Coughlan, David Coghlan, Fiona Lombard, Louis Brennan, Timothy McNichols and Roger Nolan (Trinity College Dublin) address the difficulties of managing collaborative relationships in a period of discontinuity. The recent slowdown in the global economy has been a trigger for discontinuous change, prompting many organisations to re‐examine their collaborative strategies. The article presents, compares and contrasts three case studies, each of distinctly separate systems integrators from within the high technology sector in Ireland. The case data presented were gathered in 2001 as part of CO‐IMPROVE – an EU‐funded action research project involving universities and companies from Denmark, Greece, Ireland, Italy, The Netherlands and Sweden. The project focuses on collaborative improvement within the extended manufacturing enterprise. The three companies studied faced different choices in their relationships with their supply bases. The authors differentiate among these choices in terms of the scope and timing of change. Against the backdrop of discontinuous change, where the focus extends beyond the single organisation, complexity of the choices for managing discontinuous change increases and, in turn, necessitates an enhanced collaborative capability. With the competition gradually moving from the level of individual firms to that of supply chains, change the only constant, and uncertainty the only certainty, this study is a small but useful step in the development of deep understanding of collaborative improvement. Further research is needed into this relatively new, but extremely important phenomenon: a challenge for operations management.
The last but not least article in this special conference issue presents a classification of development programmes and its consequences for programme management. The article has been written by Ann Vereecke, Els Pandelaere, Dirk Deschoolmeester and Marleen Stevens (Vlerick Leuven Gent Management School and Ghent University), and is included for its quality, of course, but also because it addresses a key commonality between other articles: change in operations management. The changes studied include two e‐business development programmes (ref. Cagliano et al.), exploitation of synergies between companies (ref. Seuring and Coughlan et al.), and the development of organisation structure and systems (ref. Jørgensen et al.). The classification is a result from an exploratory study in six companies. The authors show that the formalised and rigorous approach described in most programme management handbooks is not widely adopted and propose that different types of programmes require a different approach to programme management. Especially programmes that originate as a grouping of existing projects are hard to manage in a centralised and formalised way. Benefits are more difficult to grasp, compared to programmes that are set up as “greenfield” programmes. Considering the increasing interest not only in the content of manufacturing strategy but also, and quite appropriately so, in strategy formulation and implementation processes, this is a very important contribution, which will hopefully be followed by many more. A challenge for operations management.
Enjoy!
(On behalf of John Christiansen, Department of Operations Management, Copenhagen Business School, Copenhagen, Denmark, John Johansen, Center for Industrial Production, Aalborg University, Aalborg, Denmark, Jan Mouritsen, Department of Operations Management, Copenhagen Business School, Copenhagen, Denmark)
