Business Commons^™

The Sourcing Hub And Upstream Supplier Networks, Anupam Agrawal, Luk N. Van Wassenhove, Arnoud De Meyer

Arnoud DE MEYER

In this paper, we explore how firms can better manage their sourcing by developing relationships not only with their suppliers but also with their suppliers' suppliers. We detail an empirical case study explaining how the firm developed relationships with its suppliers and raw material suppliers via a collaborative center, the sourcing hub. We then analytically model the scenarios encountered in our empirical work and examine two facets of upstream sourcing under uncertain demand scenarios: (a) firms can supply raw material directly to their suppliers, and this may be beneficial for the firm and its suppliers; and (b) firms can bring …

German, French And British Manufacturing Strategies Compared: A Growth Towards Each Other, Arnoud De Meyer

Arnoud DE MEYER

Manufacturing has gained over the last years in attention as a tool to create competitive advantage. For four years now a survey has been carried out by a research team at Insead to build a database on the manufacturing strategies as they are defined and implemented by large European companies. In this paper some of the 1987 data are presented, and a comparison of manufacturing strategies of large companies in the three most important European countries is made. Though the most important conclusion is that there are only slight differences between the three countries, one can see some difference in …

Using Strategic Partnerships To Create A Sustainable Competitive Position For Hi-Tech Start-Up Firms, Arnoud De Meyer

Arnoud DE MEYER

In most cases these companies chose or were forced to engage in a technology partnership in order to develop and survive. As one would expect, some of these partnerships succeeded whilst others failed. With hindsight it occurred to the author that success or failure was not necessarily a random event, or idiosyncratic to one particular company, but that there seemed to be a pattern. Some partnerships failed because they were a strategic misfit, others probably because they were badly implemented. Based on these clinical case studies, The author addresses these questions: when and under what conditions a partnership is needed; …

Technology Strategy And China's Technology Capacity Building, Arnoud De Meyer

Arnoud DE MEYER

China has the potential to become a major source of innovation for the world. The scientific investment is in place and rapidly growing. But in order to reap the benefits of this investment its organisations will have to become better at managing innovation. One of the key elements of innovation management is the determination and implementation of a sound technology strategy. The purpose of this paper is to offer a framework and a detailed overview of what it entails to develop and implement a technology strategy. The paper emphasizes the alignment of the strategy with the organisational competencies and the …

Lasting Improvements In Manufacturing Performance: In Search Of A New Theory, Kasra Ferdows, Arnoud De Meyer

Arnoud DE MEYER

Is there a way to avoid trading off one capability for another in manufacturing? The prevailing wisdom says no. But some manufacturers seem to have been able to defy that: compared to their competitors, they have better quality, are more dependable, respond faster to changing market conditions, and in spite of all that, achieve lower costs. How can this be explained? Our aim here is to provide an explanation. We contend that the nature of the trade-offs among manufacturing capabilities is more complex than has been assumed. Depending on the approach taken for developing each capability, the nature of the …

Flexibility: The Next Competitive Battle: The Manufacturing Futures Survey, Arnoud De Meyer, Jinichiro Nakane, Jeffrey M. Miller, Kasra Ferdows

Arnoud DE MEYER

Over the past 4 years research teams from INSEAD (Fontainebleau), Boston University and Waseda University (Tokyo) have administered a yearly survey on the manufacturing strategy of the large manufacturers of the three industrialized regions of the world. In this paper the results for the 1986 survey are compared. One of the most striking results of that year’s survey is the emphasis some of the more advanced manufacturers put on their efforts to overcome the trade-off between flexibility and cost efficiency. In particular for the Japanese respondents these attempts become clear. Europeans and North Americans are not yet seizing the opportunity …

Interpreting And Responding To Strategic Issues: The Impact Of National Culture, Susan C. Schneider, Arnoud De Meyer

Arnoud DE MEYER

Perceptions of environmental uncertainty and organizational control influence strategic behavior. As national culture influences these perceptions we expect to find cultural differences in interpretation and response to strategic issues. Given a case describing an issue concerning deregulation of the U.S. banking industry, managers completed questionnaires rating interpretations and responses to that issue. National culture was found to influence interpretation and responses. In particular, Latin European managers when compared with other managers were more likely to interpret the issue as a crisis and as a threat. Latin Europeans were also more likely to recommend proactive behavior. This study indicates that different …

Exchanging Preliminary Information In Concurrent Engineering: Alternative Coordination Strategies, Christian Terwiesch, Christoph H. Loch, Arnoud De Meyer

Arnoud DE MEYER

Successful application of concurrent development processes (concurrent engineering) requires tight coordination. To speed development, tasks often proceed in parallel by relying on preliminary information from other tasks, information that has not yet been finalized. This frequently causes substantial rework using as much as 50% of total engineering capacity. Previous studies have either described coordination as a complex social process, or have focused on the frequency, but not the content, of information exchanges. Through extensive fieldwork in a high-end German automotive manufacturer, we develop a framework of preliminary information that distinguishes information precision and information stability. Information precision refers to the …

Ecosystem Advantage: How To Successfully Harness The Power Of Partners, Peter James Williamson, Arnoud De Meyer

Arnoud DE MEYER

Changes in the global environment are generating opportunities for companies to build advantage by creating loosely coupled networks or ecosystems. Ecosystems are larger, more diverse, and more fluid than a traditional set of bilateral partnerships or complementors. By leveraging ecosystems, companies can deliver complex solutions while maintaining corporate focus. This article describes six keys to unlock ecosystem advantage: pinpointing where value is created, defining an architecture of differentiated partner roles, stimulating complementary partner investments, reducing the transaction costs, facilitating joint learning across the network, and engineering effective ways to capture profit.

Encompass: Creating Innovation In Broadcast, Everyday, Arnoud De Meyer, Anne-Valerie Ohlsson-Corboz

Arnoud DE MEYER

Headquartered in the United States, Encompass Digital Media provides digital media services through its broadcasting facilities in the United States, the United Kingdom and Asia. Encompass delivers tailor-made solutions for the management and distribution of content, including a diversified range of TV content, as well as live sports events for companies such as ESPN, IMG, Star Sports and Sony Entertainment.

Encompass Digital Media (Asia) began its operations in Singapore in 2009. By 2012, the company had captured over 50 per cent of the market for outsourced Digital Playout services in Asia. While manpower costs were significantly higher than in China, …

The Flow Of Technological Innovation In An R&D Department, Arnoud De Meyer

Arnoud DE MEYER

The flow of technological information, in particular the type of sources and transfer channels for technological information has been a focus of research interest since the very first studies concerning management of research and development. However, the results of these empirical studies, although encouraging and useful to managers, leave several questions unanswered, and even worse, contain some contradictions. In this paper we will try to explain some of these contradictions using the technology characteristics as a contingency factor. The model, which we will present has been tested in a twofold way: questionnaires were used to provide insight into the importance …

The Manufacturing Contribution To Innovation, Arnoud De Meyer

Arnoud DE MEYER

The description of the contribution of manufacturing to the innovation process is often limited to the task of providing the necessary information to enable the development function to create a design which is easy to manufacture, and to be instrumental in the fast ramp-up of the production process. Though these are important tasks, it is argued in this paper that there is a third aspect of manufacturing’s contribution to innovation, namely the creation of a manufacturing system which is favorable to product innovation. This goes far beyond the design of an appropriate production process, but requires the creation of a …

Managerial Focal Points In Manufacturing Strategy, Arnoud De Meyer

Arnoud DE MEYER

Through analysis of specific decisions in the management of manufacturing in 163 companies, we have identified the key dimensions along which mort of the differences among manufacturing strategies can be explained. Previous research—mostly based on clinical observations—has focused on describing the typical decision categories in manufacturing strategy. Our large sample has allowed us to move beyond that and focus on the differences among manufacturing strategies. Data were collected by mailed questionnaires as a part of a large research project ‘Manufacturing Futures’. The responses to a list of 35 specific current action programmes in manufacturing were reduced through a principal component …

Managing Expert Systems: A Framework And Case Study, Rob R. Weitz, Arnoud De Meyer

Arnoud DE MEYER

This paper addresses the problem of managing the development and implementation of a large expert system in an organization. A traditional systems analysis and design methodology is used as a framework to highlight similarities and differences in managing large scale traditional computer based projects and large expert systems. As a non-technical, prescriptive guide, this article focusses on defining at each stage in the project, the tasks to be accomplished, resources required, impact on the organization, likely benefits and potential problems. The case of a large expert system implemented by a multinational corporation across several European sites is used to clarify …

A Typology Of Plants In Global Manufacturing Networks, Ann Vereecke, Roland Van Dierdonck, Arnoud De Meyer

Arnoud DE MEYER

The purpose of this paper is to propose a new, empirically derived typology of plants in the international manufacturing network of multinational companies. This typology is based on the knowledge flows between the plants. In our research, network analysis has been used as a methodology for understanding the position of plants in international manufacturing networks. The focus has been primarily on the intangible knowledge network, and secondarily on the physical, logistic network. Our analysis leads to four types of plants with different network roles: the isolated plants, the receivers, the hosting network players, and the active network players. Our analysis …