Purpose
Company pressure for manufacturers is mounting from two angles: increasing pressure of global competition, and rapid advancements in technology such as additive manufacturing (AM) that are altering the way that goods are manufactured. The purpose of this paper is to explore the adoption process of AM within a manufacturing system and its business impact.
Design/methodology/approach
Research was conducted to collect empirical data at two manufacturing case companies in the North West England. Both cases are located in areas of industrial recovery using AM engineering innovation for value creation.
Findings
Early findings showed that the implementation of AM caused a shift in value propositions and the creation of additional value streams (VSs) for the case study companies. AM was shown to compliment and strengthen traditional manufacturing VSs rather than replacing them.
Research limitations/implications
Limitations include the generalizability due to the number and location of case companies included in this research.
Practical implications
It is worthwhile to explore the opportunities that AM brings with the existing customer base as it has the potential to add unexplored and untapped value. However, managers need to be mindful of the capability and resources required to put the VS into practice.
Social implications
Both cases resulted in skill retainment and development due to the implementation of AM. Hence, the innovation contributed to regional economic recovery and business survival.
Originality/value
This empirical research is one of the early field explorations focussing on the impact of AM on VS structures. Hence, this paper contributes to the area of technology enhanced manufacturing systems.
Purpose-The purpose of this paper is to examine the uptake of supply chain integration (SCI) principles internationally and the resultant integration maturity. Design/methodology/approach-A rigorous supply chain diagnostics methodology called the Quick Scan is used to assess the integration maturity of 72 value streams located in New Zealand, Thailand and the UK. Findings-The majority of the organisations studied are struggling to turn the SCI concept into reality. Supply chains on average are poorly integrated. However, there exist a handful of exemplar cases that provide guidance; levels of integration maturity appear not to differ internationally. Research limitations/implications-Only three nations are compared, hence the sample is not fully representative of all countries and industries. There is a significant gap between supply chain rhetoric and practice; clear guidance on how to enable effective integration is required. National settings do not appear to affect the extent of application of supply chain management concepts. Practical implications-SCI is a very difficult undertaking. Indifferent practice is the norm. If organisations can attain even the middle ground of internal integration they will outperform many of their competitors. Originality/value-The paper presents an international benchmark of SCI maturity involving three triangulated measures of supply chain performance.
When seeking to adopt innovative supply chain (SC) best practices from apparently better-performing organisations during re-engineering, it is important to acknowledge that context also impacts performance. Hence, the purpose of this study is to evaluate the SC uncertainty circle model for its potential to yield direct performance comparisons even when the benchmarked organisations are located in different business sectors and economic settings. Using a rigorous wellestablished audit methodology, longitudinal field research with an engineer-to-order SC company demonstrates how highly effective, potentially transferable best practices can be reliably identified when systems thinking is allied to a context-free uncertainty metric, and how reducing product delivery process uncertainty can itself increase innovation capability.
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