In today’s global economy, many manufacturers have networks of operations around the world. They have developed a large variety of product configurations and supply chains, even for products of the same kind, to make the most of the business opportunities provided by global market changes. Of particular importance is the rapid expansion of new markets, such as emerging and “bottom of the pyramid” (BOP) markets. Numerous factors, such as national culture, vulnerability to risk and institutional arrangements that impose different conditions for the application of manufacturing practices, come into play. This makes it difficult for manufacturing companies to clearly evaluate which practices are necessary and sufficient for their operations and provides significant challenges for implementation. The globalization of manufacturing imposes new challenges on the practices that have been advocated so far. It is time for us, as production and operations management (POM) professionals, to reorganize our POM knowledge to help in facing new challenging situations.

Value creation by services is also emerging as an important part of POM. There is a great deal of interest in how the knowledge of POM can be transferred to enhance the effectiveness of value created by service activities. This is a necessity for industry, especially in developed markets, where the service sector accounts for a substantial portion of the GDP. At the same time, the value created by service content in manufacturing has also increased. Service aspects, then, have become one of the important foci of manufacturing research.

The Third World Conference on Production and Operations Management, held in Tokyo, 2008, provided a forum based on the conference theme, Manufacturing Fundamentals: Necessity and Sufficiency. The forum provided the opportunity for professionals from around the world to exchange new ideas, establish agendas and to set directions for future research in the field of POM. Held every four years, the 2008 conference was specifically designed to focus on what comprises the fundamental knowledge of POM.

This special issue was developed from a set of 23 pre-selected papers that were especially congruent with the conference theme. After initial quality screening by editors, 11 papers were put through the review process. After the review process, four papers were selected for this special issue. The selection, following the conference theme, was based on important key words that characterize the restructuring of fundamental POM knowledge, “integration” or “fit” of activities or practices. The foci of the papers ultimately selected for this issue is related to the concept of integration or fit of activities.

The paper by Revilla and Knoppen focuses on the role of team vision in enhancing the capability of cross-functional teams in product development. The effectiveness of cross-functional teams has been previously emphasized in other research, but the potential negative effect of functional diversity within the group has been less well studied. The authors emphasize contextual enablers for developing the team vision. These enablers minimize the detrimental effects of the functional diversity and contribute to the success of new product development projects.

The paper by Biege, Lay and Buschak proposes a process of mapping or modelling that visualizes value creation processes involving both physical manufacturing and service processes. This approach specifically addresses the infrastructure for a transition from a goods-centric orientation to solution-centric orientation as exemplified in servitisation. They demonstrate how effective integration of physical and service processes is possible by mapping how both processes interact in developing value for customers.

The third paper, by Ortega, Garrido-Vega and Machuca, focuses on exploring the performance impact of the fit between manufacturing strategy and technology management practices in the automobile industry. The authors propose certain selection or congruence adaptation that underlies fit and assert that there is no misfit between the practices. In other words, neither the combination of high manufacturing strategy and low technology management practice implementation nor the combination of low manufacturing strategy and high technology management practice implementation prevails. The fit between practices naturally emerges, due to the congruence process. Performance is determined by the degree of implementation of the practices, driven by a desire for organizational improvement, not by the extent of fit (misfit).

The paper by Beelaerts van Blokland et al. explores the leverage of value creation in the supply chain. They propose a way to measure the leveraging effects that emerge from the integrated effort among members of the supply chain. The business environment described above requires manufacturing companies to develop more competitive and effective supply chains than ever before. Such supply chains compete with each other through R&D activities in addition to the traditional tasks of production, delivery and selling. The authors propose three new indicators for the measurement of the value created in the supply chain in the aerospace industry. In this industry, competitive value creation involves all supply chain members. A focal company usually leads the value creation with its own unique capabilities, such as technology and integration initiatives. The indicators developed by the authors measure the value creation leverage for such a focal company. High performers in value creation are characterized by a high degree of fit with these indicators. It is therefore suggested that high value creators are good integrators of value creation levers. The proposed indicators, emerging from the exploratory work, provide new ideas for research on metrics in supply chain management, especially for measuring the degree of value creation leverage in a supply chain. This article provides an important first step toward further research on this important topic.

The integration of activities to achieve organizational goals is a necessity for the manufacturing companies. Such integration fundamentally assumes a capability of adaptation (by human actors) where situations are continuously monitored for opportunity. For such integration and adaptation to occur, organizations need to share their goals and require an image of desirable activity patterns in achieving these goals. Thus, integration is clearly one of the most important fundamental dimensions, in reorganizing POM knowledge.

The papers in this special issue all emphasize the importance of practice integration through people in the organization. An important point is the effectiveness with which people can integrate their activities to achieve their goals. Certain mapping methods and goal sharing, as proposed by two of the papers, provide a platform for exploring this phenomenon. Congruence behavior emphasizes the importance of the creation of momentum toward overall high practice implementation in an organization. This logic, of structuring practices that take advantage of congruence behavior, will also comprise new POM knowledge.

Historically, POM knowledge has developed with the industrial growth of the world. We need, however, to continue increasing its theoretical credibility. At the same time, we need to think about the limitations of current theory for business application. New fundamental POM knowledge should cover managerial needs and should address the effective utilization of practices. This may mean POM knowledge should be reorganized under the framework of general management perspectives that focus on organizational performance. The integration of practices, explored in this issue, is an important perspective for reorganizing POM knowledge that effectuates practice implementation, as well as enhances the credibility of practices.

Acknowledgements

Editorial work was supported by the Spanish Ministry of Education and Science (National Programme of Industrial Design (project DPI 2009-11148) and the Junta de Andalucía – Spain (PAIDI Excellence Project PD08-DEJ-03841). The Guest Editors express their sincere gratitude to these organizations for their support.

Michiya Morita, Jose A.D. Machuca, Barbara Flynn, Hiro MatsuoGuest Editors

Manufacturing fundamentals: necessity and sufficiency

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