Search results

The purpose of this paper is to explore the evolution of commercial aerospace supply chains.

The approach is presented as evolutionary steps by introduction of key supply chain practices. These steps are brought together by applying cladistics, a classification approach from the biological sciences, to classify the evolutionary relationships between supply chain forms. This is presented in two stages.

Earlier research produced a “conceptual cladogram” from secondary data that describes the evolution of aerospace supply chains. This paper expands on this through empirical validation and develops a “factual cladogram”, revealing a newly emerging supply chain form. Key practices define the change of supply chain forms in the evolutionary adaptation to market realities and to proactive responses to increased competition.

The factual cladogram as such does not necessarily prescribe world‐class performance but may serve as a platform for discussing and monitoring the properties of the emergent supply chain in light of strategies for the future. As such it becomes a strategic bench‐marking tool for the change of practices, technologies and products.

In practical terms, the approach may be developed as a strategic tool for policy development, and a decision support tool through the creation and exploration of future supply chain form scenarios.

Theoretically, this paper elaborates on a framework for how and why evolution produces diversity of supply chain form.

The purpose of this paper is to critically evaluate the state of the art of applications of organisational systematics and manufacturing cladistics in terms of strengths and weaknesses and introduce new generic cladistic and hierarchical classifications of discrete manufacturing systems. These classifications are the basis for a practical web-based expert system and diagnostic benchmarking tool.

There were two stages for the research methods, with eight re-iterative steps: one for theory building, using secondary and observational data, producing conceptual classifications; the second stage for theory testing and theory development, using quantitative data from 153 companies and 510 manufacturing systems, producing the final factual cladogram. Evolutionary relationships between 53 candidate manufacturing systems, using 13 characters with 84 states, are hypothesised and presented diagrammatically. The manufacturing systems are also organised in a hierarchical classification with 13 genera, 6 families and 3 orders under one class of discrete manufacturing.

This work addressed several weaknesses of current manufacturing cladistic classifications which include the lack of an explicit out-group comparison, limited conceptual cladogram development, limited use of characters and that previous classifications are specific to sectors. In order to correct these limitations, the paper first expands on previous work by producing a more generic manufacturing system classification. Second, it describes a novel web-based expert system for the practical application of the discrete manufacturing system.

The classifications form the basis for a practical web-based expert system and diagnostic benchmarking tool, but also have a novel use in an educational context as it simplifies and relationally organises extant manufacturing system knowledge.

The research employed a novel re-iterative methodology for both theory building, using observational data, producing the conceptual classification, and through theory testing developing the final factual cladogram that forms the basis for the practical web-based expert system and diagnostic tool.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the effects of communicative interaction on meaning construction in three focus group interviews.

Within the framework of cultural‐historical activity theory, Bakhtin's perspectives of communicative interaction was applied to three interview cases on commercial aerospace supply chains.

These interactions are found to self‐organise without the control of any single actor. However, interventions by interviewees or the researcher affect the outcome when they create disturbances that go beyond the resilience of the established perspectives of the focus group community. The researcher's intervention or guidance is helpful in opening up reality perspectives of the community.

Focus group interviews may be difficult to control by the researcher. The potential for gathering rich data may, however, out‐weigh that.

The paper illustrates how focus group interviews enhance the richness of data collection compared to other interview methods.

This paper aims to address the advantage of considering an evolutionary classification scheme for commercial aerospace supply chains. It is an industry wide approach. By going beyond the performance of the single firm and considering the whole supply chain for a product a better understanding of present states and performances of the firms within the chain can be achieved.

The approach is presented as evolutionary steps by introduction of key supply chain characters. These steps are brought together by applying cladistics to classify the evolutionary relationships between supply chain forms.

Key character states define the change of supply chain forms in the evolutionary adaptation to market realities and to proactive responses to increased competition.

The potential benefits of this approach include a benchmark of best practice, a strategic tool for policy development, and the creation of future scenarios.

This paper aims to develop an approach for improving linguistic skills to enhance work collaboration.

A framework has been developed using principles of complex systems thinking, cultural‐historical activity theory and theories of intercultural communication in an action research setting.

Organisational development and change are never a straightforward task, which the case clearly demonstrates. These are tension‐filled processes of continuously changing power relationships and distances between people. The development of shared sense making is an iterative learning process. Co‐developing shared communication strategies enhances dialogue and collaboration.

A single and in practice unsuccessful case has been the basis of the research findings. Although saturation of data was therefore never reached, typical inhibiting factors were brought to the surface. Controversy and underlying inhibitions may not always be easy to detect in successful cases. The understanding from this unsuccessful case may therefore be helpful for further research.

Collaboration and change in the workplace are complex processes and are therefore difficult to implement. Collective approaches for developing communication strategies are highly dependent on including all affected actors.

The realisation of the complexity of organisational change processes is important. This creates an awareness of a need and responsibility for everyone affected to try and co‐develop the practices for change. It is the bringing together of the diverse experiences into learning processes through dialogue that facilitates these changes. There must be an appreciation that the outcome is still unpredictable in a process of change. Collective ownership of the changes is essential for success.

This paper seeks to explore the effects of communicative interaction on integration and coordination of a commercial aerospace supply chain.

A perspective of supply chains as complex activity networks is used for data analysis based on in‐depth interviews in a global setting. Themes for interviews were identified through literature research.

The paper finds that integration through risk‐sharing partnerships is chosen for co‐developing expertise and innovative capacity. Practices of integration and coordination through communicative interaction are emerging while they are producing innovative solutions and competitive advantage. The multi‐voiced interaction between partners in the supply chain is assisting in moving the product beyond what the airframe manufacturer could have created alone.

The paper provides evidence of changing interactive practices in commercial aerospace supply chains. By applying concepts of supply chains as he interaction of multiple work activities this assists in comprehending the forces of change. Communicative interaction within the supply chain is used for co‐construction of meaning to enhance change and development.

Supply chain risk (SCR) has increasingly attracted academic and corporate interest; however, the SCR debate in academic literature is rather limited to case- and location-specific studies. Hence, the purpose of this paper is to utilize a systematic literature review (SLR) to explore the SCR research trends and gaps within the management literature.

To achieve the research objective an SLR, looking into 25 years since 1990, into supply chain risk management (SCRM) was conducted, which resulted in 114 papers.

While the SCRM literature is growing, results from the SLR identified limited organized understanding of what constitutes a holistic SCR process, and high reliance of particular categories for SCR, such as the high reliance on specific country settings (the USA and the UK); limited presence of cross competitive SCR process analysis and challenges in developing conceptual SCR frameworks.

The SCR embeds categories of location, scope of supply chain, risk management tools, and the industry sectors involved. The search for related publications was mainly used from a wide range of coverage from accountancy to design in SCR; hence, although there is indication to specific industries, and foci of risk, this could be explored further.

This review of SCRM identifies various research gaps and directions for future research to develop theory and a practical understanding of SCR.

The current literature on SCR has been assessed based on its definition and utilization. The current paper bridges this gap by synthesizing the diverse academic journal papers into the categories based on the design continuum, relationship continuum, process continuum and economic continuum. In addition, it highlights the gaps in industry context, theoretical contribution, geographic location, and research methods applied and addresses the scope for further research.

The aeronautical industry is a perfect example of a complex product industry characterized by a hierarchically‐organized supply chain. The authors can identify four types of supplier interfaces: interactive, translation, specified and standardized ones. The purpose of this paper is to understand the factors explaining the diversification of these relationships between aircraft manufacturers and their suppliers, through the example of Airbus suppliers.

Network analysis (to define the complexity level of aircraft components), data analysis (to characterize the diversity of aircraft suppliers) and a logit model were combined in order to link the supplier interfaces to the complexity of components and to the suppliers' characteristics.

It is shown that the earlier a supplier is involved in the development process, the more responsibility is delegated to him and the more intertwined its relationship is with the prime contractor. Also, it is shown that component complexity plays a major role in a supplier's involvement during the integral design and face‐to‐face interactions matter greatly during the co‐design phases of the products.

The research has rather a static perspective covering all the inter‐firm relations within Airbus programs at once. By using the same databases, one could look into the evolution of supplier interfaces within the aeronautical supply chain. A dynamic view would provide some evidence regarding the recent restructuring of the supply chain.

The originality of the paper comes from the methodology and the use of original data allowing to test in the same analysis the role of the component complexity and the characterization of the suppliers on the form of relationship between the manufacturer and its principal suppliers.

Small organizations within profit maximization supply chains form industrial clusters to share resources. They mainly deliver products and services in a reactive manner, where the cluster is only facilitating. However, the cluster management can lead business development and assign work packages intelligently to appropriate cluster members by respecting collaboration and innovation. This upgrade of the cluster management requires a systematic approach. Therefore, the intelligent Cluster Assignment Tool concept is developed and an illustrative example is given. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

Interviews and workshops were used to isolate the hierarchy of the assignment model, supported by a literature research. Fuzzy analytic hierarchy process method was applied to determine weights, consolidating data delivered by members of a Turkish aviation and defence cluster. The approach was discussed at the IEEE 2016 ICE Conference in Norway with experts to assess regional restrictions.

Cluster members are actively looking for possibilities to enhance innovation potential that they are ready to participate in systematic approaches. Cluster organizations can differ by leading their members actively, when respecting all isolated dimensions of assignment. This can lead towards a cooperation base enhancing the potential for innovation and new product development (NPD).

The illustrative example indicates a good fit to clusters without a dominant anchor firm. The generic framework was deliberated on cross-sectional perspective as satisfactory to be applied to different sectors in developing economies.

This paper helps clusters and small organizations to upgrade for innovation. Furthermore, it delivers a strategic tool supporting organizational transformation, preventing the price trap as well.

This approach is focussing on multi-criteria assignment across cluster members, upgrading it to a united organization. It delivers a strategic framework for cluster management, building a collaboration environment leading to innovation and NPD.

In order to deepen the understanding of self-organization, the purpose of the paper is to raise and analyze the state of the art in the area of innovation networks, particularly the characteristics of self-organizing, relying on the theory of complex systems to overcome any shortcomings.

The databases selected for the search were Web of Science and Scopus; the keywords searched in the titles of articles were innovation networks, complex systems, self-organization and self-organizing; the timeline of the search covers the period between 2000 and 2014 due to the presence of important studies in the field of networks starting in the early 2000s; only studies published in English were used; the articles selected were examined by first reading the titles, then the abstracts, and finally the texts in full.

The way the main constructs from the analytical perspective of innovation networks intersect with complex systems explains how self-organization is presented and how it can be allowed to occur within a view of expected benefits for the purposes of these networks.

The originality of the research lies in the questioning of the classical form of organizational management in innovation networks, essentially based on the concentration of hierarchical power.