Global Manufacturing Roundtable
Purposes of the GMR
Our goal at Cranfield School of Management is to focus on the challenges faced by practitioners in both manufacturing and services. It is our experience that sharing of ideas and discovering best practice can often prove beneficial to those with common problems.
With this aim we have developed a round table of manufacturing companies, comprised of senior managers from several UK blue chip companies with worldwide operations.
What does the GMR offer?
The members of the GMR form a consortium of organisations with a common purpose to ensure that their manufacturing strategies deliver maximum competitive advantage. The member organisations play an important role in helping to formulate and direct the programme of research to address current and emerging issues and opportunities in manufacturing. Whilst the main value to organisations results from involvement in the research projects, members also benefit from the opportunity to:
- Keep up to date with the latest research findings and new ideas
- Obtain all results from exploratory research work
- Gain advantage through early application of new approaches
- Share ideas and learn from other GMR members
- Access an international network of business and manufacturing academics
- Research-based advisory services to utilise the research results
- Have preferential access to workshops on selected topics
Current Research
Cranfield School of Management has a reputation for the quality of its operations management teaching and the industrial relevance of its research. The Operations Management Group has recently carried out research in the following areas:
Strategic Global Manufacturing Management Study
Today’s dynamic global market place requires manufacturing companies to evaluate how they strategically manage their network of factories to ensure they remain competitive. The study examined how international manufacturing operations were managed. The research indicates that the strategic management of international operations is still an emerging practice. To improve competitiveness in the global economy, European-based businesses need to coordinate the operations performed within their networks so that the network performance is greater that that achieved by the combination of the performance of individual plants. The findings of the research have suggested a pragmatic methodology for the achievement of the network management objective.
Manufacturing Flexibility - a survey
A study has been carried out of the strategies that manufacturing companies have used to make their factories more flexible, in order to satisfy unpredictable fluctuations in customer demand. Particular results of the study include:
- What companies have done to become more flexible
- Which strategies proved especially flexible
- Which actions failed to deliver the expected improvement
Manufacturing Flexibility – Cranfield’s Road Map
Most manufacturing companies are experiencing a continuous need to extend their product range to remain competitive. As a consequence, this strategy inevitably increases the complexity of the manufacturing management task. The research was focused on developing a road map to increase the manufacturing flexibility of a factory and to address the potential problem of increased manufacturing management complexity.
Product and Technology Transfer
The constant need to introduce new products brings with it the manufacturing management challenges of new process development and efficient operation. The transfer of new products and processes from a research and development environment or from another site to a production environment is now frequently carried out. Such transfers are expensive and return on investment can be more quickly accomplished through a rapid ramp-up of production to the targeted quality specification and productivity objectives. This ongoing research project aims are to examine and to propose how to make such transfers in an efficient manner.
Future research
Sustaining Improvement Initiatives
Some manufacturers start major improvement initiatives and find that, after a period of success, they start to lose momentum; yet there are organisations that have successfully sustained their improvement initiatives over the medium term and have been able to deliver higher productivity and improved quality.
We are currently investigating how successful organisations have been able to sustain improvement initiatives. Our investigation examines both the management and process related factors; the outcome of the research will be to determine what are the key enablers and inhibitors of sustainability.
If you would like to learn more about any of our research programmes please contact:
Dr Marek Szwejczewski: m.g.szwejczewski@cranfield.ac.uk
Cost of membership of the GMR varies according to the nature of the membership.
Date of next Open Day: 24th November 2011
To register, please click here
Next GMR Meeting: 13th October 2011
To learn more about the GMR, please click here.