MARCH 2016 | Issue 5
Manufacturing Institute for
REVIEW
Business model innovation Strategic approaches to asset management Inkjet printing and fluid engineering Turning research into business tools
Contents 2
IfM news
6
The innovation game: understanding business model innovation
10
Getting to grips with IP
11
A ‘social network of things’: new approaches to asset management
14
Liquid assets: inkjet printing and fluid engineering at the IfM
18
Roadmapping at BASF
22
Bridging the gap: developing business tools and processes
24
The Cambridge Value Mapping Tool
25
The alumni interview: Roger Connor and the Manufacturing Leaders Programme
29
Courses at the IfM
6
14
11
22
Cover image: joining sapphire to steel by using laser irradiation and titanium foil as a flux. Credit: Andy Payne
+44 (0)1223 766141 | ifm-enquiries@eng.cam.ac.uk | www.ifm.eng.cam.ac.uk | Twitter @IfMCambridge | youtube.com/ifmcambridge
Welcome The research we do here at the IfM is by its very nature interconnected. And that is neatly illustrated by this issue of the Review. We have all been talking about business model innovation in recent years and its strategic importance for manufacturing firms. We now have a research programme (page 6) which aims both to set the agenda for academic inquiry in this field and to provide a clear framework which will help companies successfully commercialise new technologies. The work carried out by our Inkjet Research Centre and Fluids in Advanced Manufacturing Group (page 14) underpins the development of new manufacturing processes which themselves have the potential to generate new business models, whether through the creation of entirely novel applications or by enhancing existing products and services through, for example, personalisation. Meanwhile, strategic asset management (page 11) can not only create more productive, more resilient organisations, it can also transform the way they create value both for themselves and their customers. Intellectual property (page 10) is another area which clearly has an important part to play in business model innovation and we have a new research team looking into all things IP.
One of the things that makes us different here is our emphasis on turning research into successful business tools or processes (page 22). We are about to publish a new guide which aims to share our methods with the wider world with a view to improving the overall impact of management research. Given our commitment to creating tools and processes that really work, it is interesting to hear about the benefits of roadmapping at BASF’s Chemical Construction Division (page 18) and also the challenges of embedding it into the organisation. This is something that many firms face and something that our research-and-practice STIM consortium is actively addressing. These are just some of the topics covered in this issue of the Review. As ever, they are just a glimpse of what’s going on at the IfM. If you would like to find out more about what we do, please get in touch. We would love to hear from you. Best wishes,
Professor Andy Neely Head, Institute for Manufacturing
IfM Review is published twice a year. Sign up to receive a copy by email and to hear about other IfM news at: www.ifm.eng.cam.ac.uk/ifm-review Editor: Sarah Fell Email: skbf2@cam.ac.uk Editorial advisory board: Professor Ian Hutchings, Professor Duncan McFarlane, Dr Dai Morgan, Dr Rob Phaal, Dr Jag Srai, Peter Templeton, Dr Chander Velu
Copyright © University of Cambridge Institute for Manufacturing. The content of the Institute for Manufacturing Review, with the exception of images and illustrations, is made available for noncommercial re-use in another work under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-Share-Alike Licence, subject to acknowledgement of the original authors, the title of the work and the University of Cambridge Institute for Manufacturing.
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IfM news IfM leads on new metrics report The former and current Heads of IfM, Professors Sir Mike Gregory and Andy Neely were both involved in the UK Government’s recent report on Measuring Manufacturing: Manufacturing Metrics Review. The expert group, headed by Mike Gregory, was convened in response to the Manufacturing Foresight programme’s finding that the way manufacturing is currently measured is partial. The group was asked to consider how to better explain the performance and contribution of UK manufacturing activity, identify gaps in current metrics and propose new ways to address them. By broadening the definition of manufacturing to encompass value chain activities, a review of the 2010 figures suggested that the number of jobs supported by manufacturing would have been 5.1 million rather than the 2.6 million calculated at the time. Read the report at: bit.ly/manumetricscopy
UK and Germany share approaches to innovation policy In January the IfM’s Centre for Science, Technology and Innovation Policy (CSTI) brought together a high profile group of policymakers and practitioners from UK and German institutions to share experiences and identify best practices in implementing innovation policies. They discussed the innovation agenda in their respective countries, with an emphasis on the digitalisation of manufacturing. The workshop, held at the British Embassy in Berlin is part of a series of international policy forums convened by CSTI and supported by the UK Science & Innovation Network (SIN) at which senior governmental, academic and industrial representatives from the UK can build closer links with counterparts in other key manufacturing countries. Agnes Estibals, Deputy Director for Innovation at the Department for Business, Innovation & Skills said: “The digital revolution has already changed business models in the media and retail industries. In manufacturing, how things are made and where they are made will also profoundly change. Fostering a dialogue between policymakers and businesses is very important to create the right environment for industrial innovation. This workshop was also an opportunity to share experiences between German and British Ministries.” Onwurah MP and Professor Steve Evans, Director of the IfM’s Centre for Industrial Sustainability. It provides the foundations for manufacturers and policymakers to work together to create the conditions in which manufacturing can flourish.
Recommendations for industrial sustainability The Manufacturing Commission’s inaugural report, ‘Industrial Evolution: Making British Manufacturing Sustainable’, was launched at the end
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of October 2015. It outlines measures that government and industry should take to ensure the long-term sustainability of British manufacturing. The report follows a nine-month inquiry chaired by Shadow Minister for Culture and the Digital Economy Chi
Chi Onwurah and Steve Evans said: “This report sets out how we can start redesigning our industrial system to make it more sustainable, improve our national security, and ultimately enhance our quality of life. We believe that we must take advantage of this leadership moment to make the UK more productive, efficient and resilient, and be a provider of solutions to the rest of the world.” Download the report here: bit.ly/industevolution
50 years of tribology In March 1966 a report was published on UK education and research in lubrication and whether industry’s needs were being well served. The report coined the word ‘tribology’ to describe the broad field of knowledge which encompasses the control of friction and wear in mechanical systems by lubrication and surface engineering. Progress in tribology underpins almost all engineering and technological advances – wherever one surface moves against another. In 1993 Ian Hutchings (GKN Professor of Manufacturing Engineering at the IfM and Head of the Inkjet Research Centre) and John Williams, Professor of Engineering Tribology (Emeritus), founded the Cambridge Tribology Course which runs every year and regularly attracts 30 to 40 delegates from all over the world. More than 700 people have attended the course since its inception. The 2016 Tribology Course will take place on 12 to 14 September. To find out more or book your place go to: www.ifm.eng.cam.ac.uk/events/tribology2016/ To commemorate 50 years of tribology, Ian Hutchings has written an article for the March issue of Ingenia: www.ingenia.org.uk/Ingenia/Articles/1009
An example of a tribological system: a hard disk head and arm on a platter. © Eric Gaba, Wikimedia Commons user Sting
Making the shift to services A new Executive Briefing from the Cambridge Service Alliance, Seven Critical Success Factors in the Shift to Services, sets out a roadmap for making the shift to services journey. It identifies the seven critical success factors (CSFs) in order to deliver services successfully and gives firms a set of key actions to do this. The report is based on research carried out with Service Alliance members and reflects the lessons they have learnt as they have undertaken their own service transformations. Read the report at: bit.ly/serviceCSFs
Automation seminar More than 50 manufacturing companies visited the IfM in January to hear how automation can help grow their businesses, improve their productivity and create better working environments for their staff. Experts from the IfM’s Distributed Information and Automation Laboratory and Education and Consultancy Services explained how to get the best out of automation and, crucially, how to avoid making expensive mistakes. Delegates also had a tour of the IfM’s robot lab where researchers design and test new automation systems. A number of equipment suppliers were invited to talk about and demonstrate these new technologies. The event was sponsored by the Lloyds Banking Group.
Reducing the risk of failure in new product development Project delays, cost overruns, misalignment with company strategy – these are just some of the things that can go wrong with new product development and are often directly attributable to the very earliest stages of the innovation process. The IfM’s Centre for Technology Management new practice guide, Reducing the risk of failure in new product development: getting it right at the front end of innovation, provides insights and guidance for everyone involved in the innovation process so that they can avoid common pitfalls and improve their innovation pipelines. The Practice Guide is available for download at: bit.ly/innovationguide
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IfM news Smart specialisation The concept of ‘smart specialisation’ has become a key guiding principle for European Structural and Investment Fund Investments as well as for UK government science and innovation strategies. IfM Education and Consultancy Services (IfM ECS) and the Centre for Science, Technology and Innovation Policy (CSTI) are working on an exploratory project to help UK regions and clusters identify practices, data sources and approaches to develop more competitive ‘smart specialisation’ proposals. These are proposals that more clearly articulate where a region or cluster’s distinctive competitive advantage lies, and present evidence to support their claims so that they are better positioned to participate in future bids for local investment, including science capital bids and EU smart specialisation funding. IfM ECS and CSTI are using the agri-tech industry as a case study to develop this approach, working with Agri-Tech East, a regional innovation hub bringing together farmers and growers with scientists, technologists and entrepreneurs.
Innovation in food In November, 18 innovators pitched their new ideas for food-related products and services to members of the Open Innovation Forum – a group of senior executives from major food and FMCG firms, such as Mars, Unilever, General Mills, Tate & Lyle, Tesco and Crown Packaging. The Fourth Food & FMCG Innovation Pitching Event was held at the Food Matters Live Conference in London where the joint winners were: aa
Educating the engineers of the future The IfM’s Manufacturing Industry Education Research Group (MIERG) hosted the 3rd Annual Symposium of the UK & Ireland Engineering Education Research (EER) Network in November.
aa
The OAL Group for a new automated food processing system which produces high quality, ‘chef-standard’ food and does so much more quickly than existing processes, with less wastage and lower energy costs. Citrox BioSciences for a range of innovative products and solutions that can extend the shelf-life of many food products such as soft fruit.
The Open Innovation Forum has been running for five years and was set up by IfM Education and Consultancy Services (IfM ECS) to provide support and opportunities for companies involved in the Food and FMCG value chain.
50 representatives from academia, industry and the Royal Academy of Engineering discussed the challenges facing engineering education research and developed a provisional research agenda to address them. Professor David Cardwell, Head of the Engineering Department, launched the now independent UK&I EER Network which had previously been the EER Special Interest Group (SIG) hosted by the HEA (Higher Education Academy).
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Howard Thomas from Citrox BioSciences, one of the joint winners of this year’s OI Forum pitching event
Manufacturing Analytics workshop The IfM ran a workshop on Manufacturing Analytics: The role of Big Data in the Future of Manufacturing funded by the Cambridge Big Data-EPSRC Collaborative Workshops Fund.
A vision for Alconbury Enterprise Campus IfM Education and Consultancy Services (IfM ECS) recently completed a 16-month project helping Alconbury Enterprise Campus in Cambridgeshire agree the strategy and priorities it needs in order to provide the right environment and skills for high value manufacturing in the area. The study was carried out using the UK National Competency Framework for High Value Manufacturing, which was developed by IfM ECS and Innovate UK (formerly the Technology Strategy Board).
Business strategy success story In 2016 Stainless Metalcraft, a high specification fabrication and machining company, worked with IfM ECS through the Civil Nuclear Sharing in Growth programme. The aim of the project was to develop a clear business strategy that would put the company on course to achieve its five-year growth target. Metalcraft has since secured a major contract to provide high integrity stainless steel nuclear waste storage containers to Sellafield Ltd, worth ÂŁ47 million over the next 10 years.
Representatives from a range of UK manufacturing and technology sectors (both SME and established companies), research councils and universities heard talks from Professor Andy Neely and Dr Mohamed Zaki from the Cambridge Service Alliance along with Professor Boris Otta, Fraunhofer IML and Daniel Keely from Cisco. Discussion centred on how analytics could be used in manufacturing organisations: what problems can they solve, what are the main barriers, what technologies and ICT infrastructure are needed and what are the new business models that analytics could support? The output from this workshop will be a working paper to be released in May.
IfM ECS is a delivery partner in the Civil Nuclear Sharing in Growth programme which aims to develop the UK manufacturing supply chain for civil nuclear in new build, operations and decommissioning, and to help UK companies win work in the nuclear industry at home and overseas. IfM ECS has developed a fast and effective workshopbased approach to prioritising business needs and opportunities and to developing business strategies.
Become an IfM member The IfM has two membership schemes which aim to build closer, long-term relationships between companies and our wide range of expertise, and to provide tailored support. Corporate membership: for access to research-based strategic, technical and business expertise, geared to the needs of large international companies. Company membership: for access to strategy and capability development for small and medium-sized companies, plus discounts on IfM services, training programmes and workshops. For more information, go to: www.ifm.eng.cam.ac.uk/membership
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Dr Chander Velu, head of the IfM’s Business Model Innovation research programme, explains why the time has come to put business model innovation under the microscope.
While ‘business model’ has become a widely used term – and something startups and existing businesses aspire to and fear in equal measure – work remains to be done by the research community to develop a clear understanding of the concept which can then be applied to help organisations create and maintain competitive advantage. In the manufacturing context, understanding business models and how to create new ones is becoming an increasingly urgent task: they are often the bridge between a technology and the ability to deliver a compelling value proposition. A new technology in and of itself does not necessarily deliver new value – it often needs a new business model if its benefits are to be fully realised. For example, in the US, when electric motors first replaced the steam engine on an industrial scale productivity gains were very limited. It was only when firms completely changed the business processes and the corresponding business models that the technology had a significant impact – and that took about 1 30 years .
Our manufacturing landscape is embarking on a period of radical transformation with the emergence of new production technologies such as additive manufacturing and the rapid evolution of enabling technologies such as sensors and actuators supporting developments such the Industrial Internet of Things and Industry 4.0. Understanding how to harness the potential of these new
Understanding how to harness the potential of these new technologies by creating new business models is going to play a key part in the survival of many organisations. technologies by creating new business models is going to play a key part in the survival of many organisations. Amazon, once again, gives us an interesting
example of the way new technologies can underpin a business model transformation. It is now investing in speech recognition software in order to create new ways in which we interact with – and buy from – it. The idea is that if we can ‘talk’ to Amazon through our devices, Amazon will be able to learn more about our preferences and acquire ever richer customer data – all without human intervention. At the same time, as has been widely reported, Amazon is also working on ‘Prime Air’, a drone-based delivery service which aims to get parcels to customers within 30 minutes. Both of these innovations will potentially have an impact on all aspects of manufacturing, from R&D to customer delivery. As well as changing the supply chain, drone technology, for example, could contribute to a ‘redistributed manufacturing’ agenda, using new manufacturing processes to make products in smaller quantities – or even to order – closer to the customer. Meanwhile, a deep understanding of customer
Archives Charmet/Bridgeman Images
It was back in the 1990s, when the dot com boom was in full swing, that the term ‘business models’ entered our collective consciousness. Completely new ways of doing business – enabled by the internet – sprang up seemingly overnight. Of course, many of them disappeared with equal rapidity, usually because their founders had little idea how they were going to make money from the value propositions they were offering their customers. But some of them were able to demonstrate that by harnessing new technologies it was possible to create value in entirely new ways. Amazon and eBay, for example, have fundamentally changed the world of retail. Since then we’ve seen Google and Facebook, iTunes and Spotify find innovative ways to monetise data-sharing platforms, and we now use Uber to get us from A to B and Airbnb to find us somewhere to stay when we get there.
An Assembly Line at the Ford Motor Company, c. 1910-20. The Ford Motor Company introduced electric motors to its factories from the late 1910s.
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David, P.A. (1990). The Dynamo and the Computer: An Historical Perspective on the Modern Productivity Paradox, American Economic Review Papers and Proceedings, 80(2), 355-361.
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Embracing business model thinking can help firms find new ways to create value and grow through a more integrated view of their business and its stakeholders.
As well as being a preoccupation for individual businesses, business model innovation is also an issue for national economies. In spite of the emergence of new technologies, achieving sustainable growth and productivity remain major challenges. Being able to develop business models which will bring new technologies successfully to market will help to deliver productivity gains for new and established firms alike. However, the challenges of business model innovation, particularly for existing firms, are not to be underestimated. In highly competitive, fast-moving markets large firms need to be able to respond quickly to new opportunities. This requires entrepreneurial skills and often a root and branch shift in thinking throughout the organisation. But most mature businesses will have moved from achieving ‘effectiveness’ to driving ‘efficiency’. In order to innovate they need to be less concerned with maximising short-term return on investment and become more focused on creating customer experiences. The challenge, therefore, is two-fold: they need to sustain their existing business model while the new one takes shape. These two activities – optimising existing business models and creating new ones – often need completely different capabilities, organisational structures and cultures. It is becoming increasingly common for firms to acknowledge this by creating new roles and appointing ‘business model innovation managers’ whilst embedding ownership of the business model across the organisation.
Credit: Amazon
preferences could start to feed directly into new product development, also supporting a drive to mass customisation.
The Amazon drone: delivering a new business model?
This can be a positive step but it needs to be done hand in hand with a clear understanding of the scale of organisational change required if firms are to reap the rewards of business model innovation. There are, of course, many salutary tales of incumbents that have failed to adapt to changing market conditions. If firms identify a business model that fits particularly well in a particular environment, there is the potential for ‘lock in’ and the risk of finding that model no longer relevant when the environment changes. Blockbuster is just one example of this. In 2000, when new kid on the block Netflix leveraged the postal system to develop a new business model, Blockbuster did not see the need to dilute its massively successful global brand with a mail order operation until
much later. And while Blockbuster is now out of business, Netflix continues to take advantage of technological developments in order to innovate its business model, moving from mail order to video streaming and now to hugely successful original programming.
A new research agenda So research into business model innovation is important. In the last ten years, it has been an integral part of our activities at the IfM. Research into emerging industries, into how manufacturers make the shift to services, how they find more sustainable ways of creating value and how they redesign their operations networks – all of these encompass the concept of business model innovation. But as new technologies emerge and evolve faster than ever before there is an increasingly urgent imperative to focus on it in its own right.
There are, of course, many salutary tales of incumbents that have failed to adapt to changing market conditions.
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The first task is to arrive at an agreed definition of a business model which currently exists only at a very high level of abstraction. That definition asserts that a business model comprises three things: value proposition, value creation and value capture. In other words, what products and services will be provided for which customer groups, how the products or services will be created and delivered and how the offering will be monetised – or provide other social value. But the devil is in the detail. Within that broad framework there are many different elements: not just who your customers are, but the mechanics of how you interact with them and how you realise value whether through, for example, transaction fees, data sales, advertising, device sales or margins. It is how all these different elements are put together that gives a business model its identity. Business model innovation, therefore, is the strategic configuration of a unique set of attributes that will compete both with the dominant model and new entrants. A distinctive characteristic of business model innovation is the need to collaborate. With technologies moving so fast, firms find it increasingly difficult to have all the specialist knowledge they need in-house. As a result, they need to partner with customers, suppliers and even competitors. Changing the business model
can, therefore, change the environment in which it operates: the enterprise itself, its competitors and, ultimately, the industry. The dynamics of business model innovation are complex: the evolution of the business model will be affected by its ecosystem, by technology and by internal organisational capabilities, structures and cultures. But business model innovation can, in turn, affect all these things too.
understanding of the link between the customer value proposition, how the value is created and distributed among its stakeholders. Addressing many of the ‘grand challenges’ facing the world today – energy, climate change, sustainability and healthcare – will rely on creating brand new business models.
What, then, are the key messages? From a research perspective, we need to adopt multidisciplinary approaches which involve scientists and engineers, economists and management researchers in order to understand the technologies and how they could be linked with customers and stakeholders through different business models – and hence scaled-up and commercialised. Embracing business model thinking can help firms find new ways to create value and grow through a more integrated view of their business and its stakeholders. Firms need to understand the importance both of business model innovation and evolution and have the people, capabilities and culture in place to make it happen. The business model gives us another lens through which to look at the challenges of commercialising new technologies and it does this by giving us a better
www.ifm.eng.cam.ac.uk/bmi
A collaborative research programme In 2015 the IfM’s Business Model Innovation Research Programme and the Centre for Innovation and Service Research (ISR) at the University of Exeter Business School and hosted a series of workshops as part of the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) Seminar Series on Business Models involving: University of the West of England, University of Exeter, Aston University, Lancaster University, Warwick University, Strathclyde University, and Reading University (Henley). The series has also received support from the British Academy of Management, The British Library and NEMODE. A white paper drawing together the key issues from the workshop is available here: bit.ly/bmireport For more information about the IfM’s Business Model Innovation Research Programme, contact Dr Chander Velu: c.velu@eng.cam.ac.uk Dr Chander Velu
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Getting to grips with IP
Dr Frank Tietze
Intellectual property (IP) is clearly fundamental to technology-based companies but Dr Frank Tietze from the IfM’s Centre for Technology Management thinks that many firms can benefit from taking a more strategic approach to IP management.
Interestingly, as a country the UK files relatively few patents: China, the US and Japan file the most, with Germany leading the charge for Europe. According to the latest available figures, Samsung files the largest number of patents at the European Patent Office with more than 2,500 in 2014. Intel is at number ten with just over a thousand. The top UK company, by contrast, is Unilever with just 226. This suggests that although the UK has a strong science base there is plenty of room for improvement in how it captures value from its IP. There are many different ways a company can do that. ARM is one of Cambridge’s biggest success stories. Around 80 per cent of people on the planet use devices powered by its chips but it makes nothing itself: it licenses its technology. This kind of open innovation has highlighted the need for clear IP strategies and business models. As technologies have evolved and products have become increasingly complex, firms that once would have developed and manufactured everything themselves now collaborate. A smart phone, for example, is likely to involve around 1,000 patents. How, then, do all these different companies work together and how do those which hold the IP make sure they get the value from it? An altogether different route companies can take, particularly if they are bringing a new technology to market, is to make their IP freely available in what is called a ‘patent pledge’. This might be done in order to establish the technology as an industry standard and thus drive revenues by increasing take-up and then selling complementary products.
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IP Interest Group The IfM runs an IP interest group for manufacturing companies where participants meet regularly to discuss IP-related issues from a business perspective, such as technology acquisitions or how patent data can be used to identify development partners. The group provides a trusted platform for its members to engage in in-depth discussions on strategically relevant IP topics. Membership is by invitation only.
Strategic IP Forum The Strategic IP Forum (SIPF) is an open event series launched in spring 2015 that focuses on strategic IP topics from a business perspective. SIPF brings together interested individuals from the Cambridge region and beyond including CTOs, portfolio managers, VPs, Technology, Heads of Innovation/IP/licensing from a range of manufacturing companies and sectors to engage in an IP expert community. The next SIPF will take place on 24 May 2016. Our research aims to help firms understand their options and choose those that will maximise their returns – and support the overall business strategy. We do this by taking a ‘relational’ approach to innovation and IP, looking at how companies collaborate both with external partners and internally, across functions involved with innovation processes. We also help firms think about the IP assets they already hold.
Companies with large patent portfolios tend to focus on the few which deliver the most value in the here and now. However, they can benefit from tools, frameworks and processes to decide what to do with the tranche which currently has a lower value but a potentially large future value. Even if the company has no interest in developing the product itself there may be others who would be interested in licensing the IP. Trawling through patent data for possible partners is, however, not something to be undertaken lightly. It takes some serious big data analytics to work through the world’s 80 million or so patent documents. While there is a plethora of tools and techniques that can help with this – and more being developed all the time – firms often struggle to extract valuable information from them. This is another key area of our research: the use of patent (and other IP) data to support strategic decision-making. Managing IP, like all other areas of manufacturing, is becoming increasingly complex as new technologies emerge faster than ever before. Developing a clear, strategic view of IP and making the right decisions is going to become more and more critical in bringing these new technologies and products successfully to market. For more information about the IfM’s research into IP or if you would like to join the IP Interest Group or Forum, contact Dr Frank Tietze: frank.tietze@eng.cam.ac.uk
www.ifm.eng.cam.ac.uk/research/ctm/ctmresearch/im
‘A social network of things’
© Duncan McFarlane
New approaches to asset management
Dr Ajith Parlikad, Head of the IfM’s Asset Management Group, explains how effective asset management can deliver significant value both for manufacturers and for infrastructure owners and operators – and how his team is developing a ‘social network of things’ which has the potential to revolutionise the way in which organisations manage their assets.
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If machines can report their ‘status’ into a common data-sharing platform – or social network – it becomes possible to create a single view of how the whole factory is running.
If you use a machine to perform a task, at some point that machine will fail. For manufacturers this is a fact of life, as it is for the people who build and maintain our roads and railways, bridges and tunnels. For many years maintenance was considered to be a cost – a ‘necessary evil’ – but we now understand that by delivering maximum performance and minimising risk, companies can create value and achieve significant competitive advantage through effective maintenance. The Asset Management Group is researching new ways to help companies achieve this, working closely with a number of multinationals such as Hitachi, Exxon Mobil, and BT. It is also a key partner in the Cambridge Centre for Smart Infrastructure and Construction (see right).
From maintenance to asset management In the early days of factories, standard practice was to wait until a machine failed and then fix it. But people soon began to realise that when a machine fails unexpectedly, it has all sorts of consequences: production is disrupted, quality is affected, delivery is delayed resulting in unhappy customers who take their business elsewhere. Preventive maintenance seemed to be the answer: anticipating failure and take pre-emptive steps to avoid it by replacing certain parts at fixed intervals and following a regular maintenance programme. This seemed like a good plan, based on the assumption that it should cost less than dealing with unforeseen failures. However, if a part is changed at regular intervals it is inevitably replaced more frequently than necessary because the process depends on erring on the side of caution. Recognising the additional costs they were incurring, and particularly with the advances in sensor technology, many companies moved to ‘condition-based’ maintenance based on continuous monitoring where parts are only replaced as required.
So managing maintenance has become much more sophisticated over the years. But it is still only one part of what we call asset management. Procuring the right machine, installing it, training people to use it properly, maintaining it well, operating it in the right way and managing its end-of-life replacement – all of these elements are integral to making sure each asset delivers value throughout its whole life. An asset management system is, therefore, not just an IT system, as is sometimes thought. It is as much about the kinds of people, knowledge and skills an organisation needs and its ability to effectively extract value from its assets throughout their life. To address these connected issues we cluster our research questions into three strands. At the highest level, we look at how you develop a strategic asset management system which encompasses all those different elements and how you measure the performance of your system once you have put it in place. The second strand dives deeper into the technical aspects. What data are you collecting about your assets and how do you turn that data into information and then into effective decisions? What kind of decision-making models do you need in order to optimise your conditionbased maintenance policy or to assess the amount of money you need to spend on the maintenance investments for your assets? Being able to access and interpret the right information is essential to getting a maximum return on investment. The third strand relates to the information itself. How do you ensure that it is of good quality and how do you develop a system which gets the right information to the right people at the right time?
Developing a ‘social network of things’ These three strands are brought together in this new area of research: how we
capture and manage data, how we turn it into actions through algorithms and how, in turn, this will change the way in which businesses operate and their asset management systems are organised. These days the Internet of Things and Industry 4.0 are words on every manufacturer’s lips. (In fact, the IfM’s Distributed Information and Automation Laboratory (DIAL), under the leadership of Professor Duncan McFarlane, has been at the forefront of research into this area for more than 15 years and pioneered the development of the Industrial Internet of Things.) Clearly, if a machine is connected to the internet you can get a vast amount of data out of it, you can analyse that data and you can optimise the machine’s performance. However, while the performance of each machine is important, in order to optimise the whole factory – or, indeed, the whole production network – it needs to be viewed in the context of the system. Having every machine performing optimally will not necessarily serve the system well. And while IoT holds out the promise of a solution, in practice it struggles to deliver. Individual machines are often maintained by their OEMs, which means there is no single view of how the factory operates, making it impossible to develop a truly integrated asset management strategy and system. At the IfM we are extending the concept of IoT to develop the ‘social network of things’. If machines can report their ‘status’ into a common data-sharing platform – or social network – it becomes possible to create a single view of how the whole factory is running. To extend the social network analogy further, algorithms or ‘apps’ can be run on the social network platform which look at these updates and determine, say, the best maintenance plan for the factory as a whole. A conveyor belt, for example, might report that it is experiencing high levels of vibrations and that it will fail in five days’ time. With the
www.ifm.eng.cam.ac.uk/dial
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right data links in place a ‘maintenance app’ knows that maintenance is scheduled for eight days’ time. The machine that is feeding products onto the conveyor can then calculate that if both the conveyor belt and the machine slow down, the life of the belt could be extended from five days to nine days. By slowing down the production line, it is possible to avoid either the conveyor belt failing in the middle of a production run or incurring the costs of expediting maintenance activities. Another example might be that a machine in Japan reports it has had a failure because of a part that was replaced recently. The same type of machine sitting in a UK factory can see this update, anticipate that it may suffer a similar failure and request a replacement. In these scenarios, it is the machines that are making the decisions. A human being looking at the same data – assuming they aways have access to it – would have to consider the same options and calculate the implications of each in terms of cost and productivity for the system as a whole. Machines can do this much faster and more accurately than we can. ‘Digital revolution’ is an overused phrase but it is perhaps not overstating the case to say that the ‘social network of things’ has the potential to transform asset management as we know it. Organisations will be able to make better decisions that will optimise not just individual machines but whole production – or infrastructure – systems in order to create value and increase resilience. To find out more about our work in this area, contact Dr Ajith Kumar Parlikad: aknp2@cam.ac.uk
Research into practice: tools for industrial application The Asset Management Group has developed three tools: Value-based decision-making tool This has been designed to help companies move from a cost-based to a value-based approach to asset management. It systematically determines how an asset contributes to the system’s value, how its condition can affect that value, and how the value can be managed by making the right decisions. Information risk assessment tool The quality of asset management decisions rests on the quality of information available to decision-makers. Our information risk assessment tool helps infrastructure owners identify gaps in asset information and determine risks posed by poor-quality information to their business objectives. The tool helps companies to develop an effective business case for data and information quality improvement initiatives. Futureproofing tool Understanding the challenges in futureproofing assets and systems against disruptions over their long lifecycles is not straightforward. Our futureproofing tool helps decision-makers systematically assess and plan for the future needs of their assets.
The Distributed Information and Automation Laboratory (DIAL)
The Cambridge Centre for Smart Infrastructure and Construction (CSIC)
DIAL studies ways in which advanced information systems and automated identification technologies can be combined with advanced production and asset management systems to create and deploy smart products, reconfigurable manufacturing operations and innovative services. The Asset Management Group is part of DIAL.
CSIC was founded in 2011 to translate research into commercial application in order to transform the future of infrastructure. It is an Innovate UK and EPSRC-funded Innovation and Knowledge Centre, with additional funding and input from 40 industrial partners. The IfM’s Asset Management Group is part of the core CSIC team addressing a number of questions: aa How do we operate, manage and maintain our assets to deliver best whole-life value? aa How do we futureproof our assets against changing requirements and against shocks? aa What decisions do we need to take to do so? aa What information do we need to make those decisions?
Dr Ajith Kumar Parlikad
Professor Duncan McFarlane
The team is applying the same ‘social media of things’ approach to infrastructure. In that context, a bridge or tunnel could, for example, report that its lining is getting weak so that approaching trains slow down.
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Liquid assets Understanding fluids and their behaviour is key to developing new manufacturing processes and a wide range of applications. Professor Ian Hutchings, Head of the Inkjet Research Centre, and Dr Ronan Daly, Head of the Fluids in Advanced Manufacturing Group, explain how the IfM’s research in this area has evolved over the last ten years – and where they see it heading.
We are surrounded by examples of the importance and spectacular behaviour of fluids in everyday life. We take for granted that our drinking water may contain a certain level of bacteria, dissolved salts and metal ions. We understand that our blood has to have exactly the right fluid properties to travel around our bodies and, with the advent of high-speed imaging, we have become increasingly familiar with slow-motion views of milk splashing into coffee, insects skating across the surface of a pond and other demonstrations of the power of intermolecular forces. At the IfM, we use our knowledge of these phenomena to put important functional materials into fluids and use them in manufacturing. The formation and use of very small droplets of liquids supports many technologies from medical devices such as drug inhalers to fuel injection systems in cars, as well, of course, as inkjet printing, a technique which can be applied in a wide range of contexts and which is
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currently undergoing rapid growth into new areas of manufacturing.
Inkjet printing From newspapers to food packaging, from magazines to junk mail and roadside advertising, we live in a world of printed materials. The size of the global commercial printing market is around $650 billion per year, roughly twice the market for consumer electronics. Most of this material is still printed by traditional methods such as lithography, flexography, gravure and screen printing, which can achieve very high quality at low cost. But these methods start to become cumbersome and relatively expensive for short print runs and it has been here, at least initially, where inkjet printing has made significant inroads into the market. Conventional printing methods share a common feature: the pattern to be printed is reproduced by direct physical contact with a template which has to be altered to
The formation and use of very small droplets of liquids supports many technologies from medical devices such as inhalers to fuel injection systems in cars, as well, of course, as inkjet printing. make any change in the pattern. In inkjet printing, the pattern is formed by tiny drops of ink and the position of each drop is encoded in a digital file. So the printed pattern can be very easily changed, and short runs or even one-off prints become much more feasible. But inkjet is not just about putting ink onto paper. Its techniques make possible completely new areas of application. Any liquid with the right properties can, in principle, be deposited by this method, making it a versatile and scalable digital manufacturing process capable of printing
sensors, microfluidic elements, electronic devices, and being used as an additive process for 3-D printing. As a non-contact printing method, it can be used to print onto delicate or rough surfaces, such as decoration on ceramic tiles or conducting tracks on fragile silicon solar cells.
Inkjet at the IfM Although inkjet printing is a global industry and the leading companies producing printers for the desktop market are based outside the UK, Cambridge lies at the hub of a local cluster of companies involved in the technology of commercial inkjet printing. Many can trace their ancestry to work carried out at Cambridge Consultants in the 1960s and 70s. About 15 years ago, staff at the IfM, including Professor Rick Mitchell who had been Technical Director of Domino Printing Sciences, started discussions with several of these companies, and in 2005 the Inkjet Research Centre was founded, supported by a five-year research grant from the EPSRC and a consortium of
ten companies. These included most of the leading UK manufacturers of inkjet components, printers and inks. The objectives of the project, which involved collaboration with academic colleagues in the Departments of Chemical Engineering and Applied Maths in Cambridge and in the Universities of Aberystwyth, Durham, Leeds and Manchester, were to extend our understanding of the processes by which small drops of ink could be formed and manipulated in inkjet printing – and especially to study the role of the flow properties of the ink. In 2010 the Centre received a five-year EPSRC Programme Grant for further research and collaboration: Innovation in Industrial Inkjet Technology (I4T). These projects and others have brought academic expertise from the IfM and elsewhere to bear on important current issues, and have been greatly enhanced by the willingness of the industrial partners to share their thinking with the researchers.
What is Inkjet Printing? High quality graphical printing uses carefully formulated complex fluid inks, fired out of small nozzles by tailored acoustic waves, triggered by a digital signal. These drops, about 0.01 mm in size, are generated at approximately 10,000 per second from each nozzle, travel directly to the surface at up to 10 m/s and some applications use thousands of nozzles at one time. Even under these challenging conditions, it is important that the technique creates single drops, avoids spray or smaller satellite drops, sends the drops to the right location on the surface and gives a controlled, even coating while delivering the pattern accurately and repeatedly.
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Inkjet Research Centre The Inkjet Research Centre (IRC) was established in March 2005, supported by a group of UK companies, to carry out research into the science that underlies this important technology. The IRC is home to experts in inkjet technology, fluid mechanics, visualisation, analysis and computation to study jet and drop creation, drop flight and drop/surface interaction. The Centre also examines application of inkjet to additive manufacturing, the printing of functional materials and biological components. The IRC also organises six-monthly meetings of the Inkjet Interest Group. For more information, contact Professor Ian Hutchings: imh2@cam.ac.uk
Current research The Fluids in Advanced Manufacturing (FIAM) group, together with the Inkjet Research Centre, is building on over 10 years of research excellence at the IfM. With much of the underpinning science and infrastructure already in place, the two groups are exploring together new processes and applications, always with the aim of achieving useful industrial outcomes. To that end they work very closely with industrial partners and with other academic disciplines. Being part of the IfM – with its inherently multidisciplinary approach to manufacturing – is valuable in this regard. While the Inkjet and FIAM teams address the scientific and technical challenges of developing new manufacturing processes and applications, colleagues specialising in areas such as business model innovation, supply chain configuration or national innovation policies can help identify the market and operational risks of manufacturing a particular technology at a commercial scale. A recent project undertaken with the Centre for International Manufacturing, for example, looked at how inkjet printing can be used throughout the pharmaceutical industry from R&D, through manufacturing to delivery to the patient. The sheer volume of research that has been published on the use of inkjet in this sector and the fact that its focus tends to be narrow – often looking at just one type of application and a limited range of pharmaceuticals – makes it difficult to get a clear picture of what inkjet technologies can offer and what barriers still need to
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and properties when inkjet is used for applications needing high accuracy, as in printed electronics or the pharmaceutical sector. be overcome if those technologies are to realise their potential. As a result of this research the team will be able to direct its attention to those areas where new developments are likely to have the greatest impact. Overall, the Inkjet and FIAM teams’ research can be described as falling into three areas: advancing established industrial printing technologies, developing new or emerging technologies and understanding the underpinning science of drop behaviour.
Improving established industrial technologies While inkjet-based manufacturing technologies have come a long way in recent years there is still work to be done. A major focus of our research is looking at the scientific phenomena that constrain current applications, such as how aerodynamic effects become increasingly important when printing at high speeds. Sensing and microfabrication applications need ultra-precision patterning which cannot always be produced by inkjet alone; we are looking to create a hybrid of existing technologies such as inkjet printing and laser ablation, or to deliver smaller drops using technologies such as electrospray. And we are developing better ways to measure drop speeds, volumes
Developing new applications Inkjet printing has led to a wide range of new applications including environmental sensing, biosensing, drug delivery and biomaterial design, all of which rely on the digital patterning of functional materials. We are working in a number of areas including creating droplets containing bio- and nano-functional materials that self-assemble into structures which are ideal for controlled drug delivery. Examining new approaches to formulation and deposition will allow fabrication of biological scaffolds with hierarchical structures for tissue engineering applications. We are also creating devices using micro-scale 3D printing for the next generation of ‘lab-on-chip’ diagnostics for testing devices which can be used to diagnose patients at the point-ofcare, particularly in countries which lack healthcare infrastructure.
Understanding the science of manufacturing and scale-up As fluids pass through the printing process, they experience a complex and diverse range of forces and conditions. We are investigating how to formulate inks and create printing technologies that enable us to print biological components for sensing or tissue engineering
Inkjet is not just about putting ink onto paper. Its techniques make possible completely new areas of application. Any liquid with the right properties can, in principle, be deposited by this method, making it a versatile and scalable digital manufacturing process capable of printing sensors, microfluidic elements, electronic devices, and being used as an additive process for 3-D printing.
applications, while ensuring they retain their essential level of activity. We are also concerned with what happens to complex, large pharmaceutical molecules throughout the printing process, from storage to travelling through the printer, to drop creation, landing and drying. How can we better control the steps? And how can we overcome the fluid flow, coalescence, diffusion and kinetic challenges so that we can deliver manufacturing-scale reactive inkjet printing? These are just some of the areas we are studying. What they all have in common is a need to advance our understanding of the underlying science so that the digital patterning of functional materials can be made possible at an industrial scale. Inkjet printing has been – and continues to be – a success story but, in many ways, this is only the beginning.
Drop-on-demand industrial piezoelectric printhead. Credit: Xaar
Fluids in Advanced Manufacturing Group The Fluids in Advanced Manufacturing research group examines chemical and physical phenomena of polymeric, biological and nanomaterials when exposed to advanced fluid-based manufacturing techniques. Our goal is to join emerging technologies with novel routes to incorporation into devices in a multidisciplinary and industry-linked agenda. We also consider vital downstream risk factors to allow rapid integration and scale-up of our work into a functioning industrial value chain.
Professor Ian Hutchings
For more information, contact Dr Ronan Daly: rd439@cam.ac.uk Dr Ronan Daly
www.ifm.eng.cam.ac.uk/irc
FIAM is researching inkjet printed colloids for drug delivery applications
www.ifm.eng.cam.ac.uk/fiam
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Roadmapping at BASF How BASF’s experiences are shared by many of the companies taking part in a research project run by the IfM’s Strategic Technology and Innovation Management (STIM) Consortium. BASF is one of the world’s leading chemical companies. It has around 113,000 employees and annual sales in the region of €75 billion. Its products are used by businesses in virtually every country around the globe. Tim Handyside, Global Head of Innovation Processes in BASF’s Construction Chemicals Division, met Clare Farrukh, Senior Research Associate at the IfM’s Centre for Technology Management (CTM)
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to discuss the benefits of roadmapping and some of the challenges companies experience when trying to maintain its momentum within an organisation.
Introducing roadmapping to BASF Construction Chemicals When Tim became head of a new innovation management group for BASF’s Construction Chemicals Division in 2011 he was already an advocate of roadmapping. The creation of the new group reflected the Construction Chemicals Division’s shift from a structure in which regions operated
as more or less autonomous business units to one which took a more global approach to strategic business management. Global business segments were developed with ‘Segment Portfolio’ teams which brought together researchers, product developers, marketing and business development people. From his experience in previous roles, and his contact with the IfM’s CTM over the years, Tim knew that roadmapping was an ideal tool to help these cross-disciplinary teams develop and maintain a successful product and technology pipeline as part of the ongoing strategic planning cycle. This approach
“If a business is dealing with a lot of tactical day-to-day issues worrying about the pipeline is difficult. But that is the name of the game. You have to think tactically and strategically.” had the full approval of both the division’s senior and global business management.
An integrated approach To deliver long-term benefits roadmapping needs to be much more than a one-off exercise. If it was going to underpin the creation and implementation of the Division’s product and technology strategy on a rolling basis, it would need to be become a key part of the planning process and be thoroughly ‘institutionalised’ into the DNA of all those involved. To help make this happen, the IfM was invited to run several training workshops with wideranging cross-functional groups and with some members of Tim’s team learning the facilitators role. From there, the division has continued to run the process itself. Tim is convinced of the merits of what he calls the ‘Cambridge School’ of roadmapping – a fully integrated approach which aligns the market, product and technology requirements with the business strategy while maintaining a large scope for creative inputs. It is distinct from those roadmaps which deal solely with technology and research pathways. He said: “I can’t understand how organisations live without it. A roadmap can add immense value in many different ways, particularly in the integrity and credibility of product and technology plans and directly for the people doing the technical work – it helps them to see, communicate and substantiate their position as to why they are doing what they are doing.” Roadmapping is also a powerful diagnostic
tool. White spaces become very apparent, drawing attention to areas lacking in product and technology plans or other weak areas of business intelligence. One of the most compelling reasons for using roadmapping is its role as a ‘boundary object’. This is a sociological concept used to describe something with which lots of people can interact and which they may even interpret differently but which nonetheless is able to maintain its essential meaning. Tim explained: “To help teamwork and group processes work efficiently and effectively, it is important to have such objects and a plan that give people a context and reference points. This will, if anything, become even more important as industrial behaviours change with, for example, the creation of virtual global teams, as the role of management evolves and as hierarchies become flatter. Road maps act as very useful boundary objects and are sufficiently robust to cope with staff changes or movement.” However, while the organisation is convinced of the benefits of roadmapping and has made significant progress in institutionalising it over the last four years, there have been some challenges along the way. When Tim met Clare they discussed some of these issues and compared them with the experiences reported to Clare by members of CTM’s Strategic Technology and Innovation Management (STIM) consortium (see page 22).
Challenges at BASF – and elsewhere Tim: I find it surprising that there are still some people who don’t ‘get’ roadmapping. Clare: For some people it can be uncomfortable to have transparency, something that represents the state of your thinking. We also see technology people who are worried about being held
Roadmapping The first technology roadmap was published by Motorola in 1987 as a means for aligning technology and product strategy. Since then the method has been adopted (and adapted) by many organisations in different sectors for a range of strategic purposes. Roadmaps provide a structured visual platform for communication between functions and organisations, which can be readily adapted to suit virtually any strategic context. The IfM is a leading centre of research into roadmapping. A survey conducted by CTM highlighted that the greatest roadmapping challenge was not starting up the process but keeping it alive. Recent roadmapping conferences and feedback from companies suggests that a practical approach to ‘embedding’ roadmapping in an organisation would be very useful.
to account for statements that may be inherently uncertain. Roadmapping can make people feel exposed. It is also an ‘emergent strategic process’ which is, by its very nature, essentially democratic – something that does not always sit easily with an organisation’s culture. Tim: Roadmapping is taking longer than I had hoped to fully institutionalise even though there is plenty of organisational support for it. And I think there are some interesting reasons for that. In our portfolio segment teams we have two big face-to-face meetings a year for which people travel in from around the globe. Roadmapping is always on the agenda but so are a lot of other important items so while it has become embedded in our team processes it is a challenge to keep it as a high priority.
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Clare: This is a big question which many organisations face – knowing how most effectively and efficiently to refresh the roadmap. It often doesn’t make sense to run a full-scale, two-day workshop every six months particularly if there hasn’t been any significant change to the internal and external environment. Tim: That is certainly an issue for us. The drivers for change don’t change that fast for us. The counter argument is that potentially things could change faster if we were generating more new ideas which were driving change. Clare: If a business is dealing with a lot of tactical day-to-day issues worrying about the pipeline is difficult. But that is the name of the game. You have to think tactically and strategically. One of the issues that has emerged from our conversations with other companies is the challenge of dealing with the aftermath of a roadmap. Companies can be left with a forest of post-it notes which need to be transcribed and the material structured and presented in a way that is useful. That takes time and effort. Tim: We certainly recognise that challenge. We spend a lot of time putting it all into Excel and then work on the quality of the visualisation material. Although it does take quite a lot of effort, it is worth doing well. Another challenge we have is around timescales and scope. As part of the preworkshop preparations – particularly if we are running workshops outside of the core process – we ask people how far ahead they want to think, how deep they want to go and which business they want to focus on. These different dimensions of setting up the workshop can be difficult. Clare: This is something else we see. When people are roadmapping a new area they
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can trip over because the focus is too narrow or too wide. Tim: We also struggle with going from the ‘landscape’ to the ‘landmark’. We have got to the point where people are happy to produce a landscape within the workshops but we have had less success to date in taking ideas down to the topic level within the workshops. This is partly due to available time. Clare: In fact, we have developed a light-weighted toolkit approach to do exactly that. It incorporates both focused roadmapping templates and a simple portfolio planning tool that can help dig down into good opportunities. Tim: Another area we have considered is bringing customers or other external stakeholders into the process as early as possible. Clare: We have seen that used very successfully across supply chains in sectors such as aerospace and automotive where there are lots of tier 1 and 2 suppliers. It is definitely worth thinking about.
“I can’t understand how organisations live without it. A roadmap can add immense value in many different ways particularly in the integrity and credibility of product and technology plans and directly for the people doing the technical work – it helps them to see, communicate and substantiate their position as to why they are doing what they are doing.” Observations from IfM research Many of the challenges encountered by BASF’s Construction Chemicals Division resonate with those experienced by members of the IfM’s STIM Consortium. The benefits of roadmapping are clear but how can those people charged with institutionalising it make sure those benefits are fully realised? The preliminary results of Clare’s research project suggest a number of ways in which organisations can address some of these challenges.
Keeping roadmapping alive: research findings To start a new management approach in any organisation takes a significant amount of effort. When introducing roadmapping, organisations need to set out clear, consistent aims and demonstrate value at each stage of the roll out. The process needs to be owned, preferably by more than one champion and preferably not just from a technical function. Senior management support is critical throughout the lifecycle of implementation. These factors ensure that everyone is clear as to why roadmapping is needed.
Tim Handyside first encountered roadmapping back in the 1990s when he was working for Courtaulds and a member of the European Industrial Research Managers Association. This was where he came across David Probert, Rob Phaal and Clare Farrukh at the IfM’s Centre for Technology Management, which at the time was just starting to explore roadmapping research. Further exposure to the IfM’s approach to roadmapping came when he moved to Vantico (now Huntsman Advanced Materials) just outside Cambridge. At the time the IfM was looking for companies to trial the ‘Faststart’ approach to technology roadmapping and Tim Handyside, Global Head of Tim signed up.
Innovation Processes, Construction Chemicals Division, BASF
To keep going the best approach seems to be to integrate roadmapping into the organisations’s ongoing financial planning cycle in order to give it sufficient meaning, urgency and staying power. This suggests that timing issues are critical, so that the roadmapping process delivers the right information at the right time for budget decisions to be made. Linking roadmapping to existing tools, techniques and processes is also important so that roadmapping is seen to have ongoing value and impact. A roadmapping workshop for BASF’s Construction Chemicals Division
Take part in the STIM research project Clare Farrukh is a Senior Research Associate in the IfM’s Centre for Technology Management. She is leading a research project on ‘Roadmapping – embedding the process’ as part of the IfM’s Strategic Technology and Innovation Management (STIM) Consortium, a practice-oriented research and networking collaboration between industrial member companies and the Centre for Technology Management. The objective of the STIM project during 2016 is to identify key issues, share good practice and work towards developing a maturity model for roadmapping. As part of this, she is looking for companies interested in helping to develop a roadmapping maturity model as a structured and flexible framework to capture challenges and good practice solutions. STIM companies will be encouraged to provide ongoing feedback on their roadmapping work, to host pilot workshops, contribute to and comment on emerging guidance and to take part in open events. Organisations that are not current STIM members will be invited to these open events so that ideas can be exchanged with a wider range of companies.
Clare Farrukh
To find out more about this research, to become a STIM member or to participate in the ‘Embedding the process’ open forums, contact Clare Farrukh: cjp22@cam.ac.uk
www.ifm.eng.cam.ac.uk/roadmapping
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Bridging the gap Dr Imoh Ilevbare, Product Manager for IfM Education and Consultancy Services, describes the IfM’s approach to developing business tools and processes from cutting-edge research.
www.ifm.eng.cam.ac.uk/services
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Is management research useful for people working in industry? Can it create new capabilities, influence decisions or inform actions? These somewhat fundamental questions are currently the subject of intense academic debate.
by Dr Ken Platts in the 1990s has been particularly crucial to this. Now being applied more widely beyond the IfM and University of Cambridge, this approach provides a rigorous methodology for the creation of business processes through research and for re-shaping existing research output into practical tools.
Whichever side of the argument you come down on, the reality facing academics is that their work is increasingly being measured on its relevance to, and impact on, the world beyond academia. Being able to bridge the gap between management research and practice is, arguably, becoming more important than ever before. It is also a topic of profound interest to the IfM which was conceived as a place where research meets practice – and where industrial collaboration continues to underpin everything we do. With nearly 20 years’ experience of transferring knowledge behind us, now seemed a good time to share our methods with a wider audience.
Having spent nearly two decades applying Ken Platts’ approach, the IfM has now written a more detailed guide to developing tools and processes from research. A framework and methodology for developing business improvement tools provides an understanding of the various types of tools that might be created from a piece of research and a methodology for tool or process development.
Why might a research-practice gap – or the perception of one – exist? Some of the reasons may relate to career structures within research institutions which often fail to incentivise ‘real world’ engagement. Barriers such as these can be difficult to overcome but others are easier to address. Researchers and practitioners tend not to ‘talk the same language’ and to represent information in completely different ways. Much of the research-practice challenge can be summed up in two phrases: ‘knowledge production’ and ‘knowledge transfer’. Knowledge production becomes a problem when the research is simply not relevant to the issues faced by industry professionals. This can be solved by scholars and practitioners working closely together to define and develop research agendas. The knowledge transfer problem can be solved by turning the research output into formats that can be readily understood and applied by practitioners. At the IfM, we recognise both of these issues. Researchers here are encouraged to define their research and frame their questions to resonate with problems faced by industry. Particular attention is given to turning research outputs into practical processes and tools for application by industry professionals. The ‘procedural action research’ approach pioneered
When defining a business tool or process to solve a particular management problem, we need to be clear about three things: what are the key activities involved in the business problem, what stage (or stages) of the business improvement cycle – assessment, planning, capability
With nearly 20 years’ experience of transferring knowledge behind us, now seemed a good time to share our methods with a wider audience. building or execution – does it address and, finally, what is the maturity of the business. Large companies are likely to need tools that are more advanced, more cutting edge to match the complexity of their businesses. Smaller businesses and start-ups, with fewer resources and less complex organisations, may need tools that are lighter touch.
industry problems. Business tool and process development is only one part of our efforts to ensure knowledge is transferred from research to practice. Through IfM Education and Consultancy Services, we develop and deliver executive education and capability development programmes, provide consultancy and facilitation services and publish workbooks and reports aimed at practitioners. Maintaining an outward-facing stance puts us in a stronger position to identify research opportunities that are relevant to industry. The tools and processes generated from such research deliver the type of direct impact presently expected of management research from worldleading universities. A framework and methodology for developing business improvement tools and processes by Imoh Ilevbare, Bernhard Dusch and Peter Templeton will be available for download at www.ifm.eng. cam.ac.uk from May 2016. You can register your interest in the guide at www.ifm.eng.cam.ac.uk/ resources/workbooks/a-framework-andmethodology-for-developing-businessimprovement-tools and we will email you a copy on publication.
Dr Imoh Ilevbare
The guide provides a step-by-step approach to the design and testing of the business tool or process. Testing is vital. After the initial design phase, a new tool needs to go through rigorous, repeated in-company testing and revisions until it is fit for purpose. The Guide also includes recommendations for tracking the impact of the tool or process on organisations that apply it. The IfM has been successful at bridging the research-practice gap because it has made it a priority. All our researchers are expected to engage with and solve
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The Cambridge Value Mapping Tool Is your business getting the full benefit of the value you create for your customers and other stakeholders? Could your current business model be actively destroying value for others, potentially compromising the firm’s ability to capture value in the long term?
Thinking about value aa aa aa aa aa aa
Value captured: I give and get a return. Value missed: I give but don’t get a return. Value destroyed: I give but you don’t want. Value surplus: I give or have too much. Value absence: You want but I don’t give. Value opportunity: I discover new value.
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2. Who are the stakeholders for the unit of analysis?
4. What is the current value captured? 5. What is the value missed and/or destroyed? 6. What is the value surplus and/or absence?
Mastering how value is created in a business is essential to the long-term success of any company. A business model expresses how a company creates, delivers and captures value. Being able to recognise where value is being captured and where it is not, therefore, plays an important part in business model innovation.
The tool gives practitioners a new way to gain a deeper understanding of value and
1. What is the unit of analysis eg product, service, company, industry?
3. What is the purpose of the unit of analysis?
Do you understand the tangible and intangible value exchanges that take place with you customers, partners and stakeholders?
The Cambridge Value Mapping Tool has been developed and refined over the last five years. It uses a structured and visual approach to identify ‘value uncaptured’ in the form of failed value exchanges: value missed, destroyed, surplus, and absence. The exchange of value is analysed through the lens of each stakeholder in the business network, with the natural environment and society each being given its own voice and stake in the business.
The Cambridge Value Mapping Tool takes you in a guided step-by-step process through the following questions:
7. What are the new value opportunities? The Cambridge Value Mapping Tool was developed at the IfM’s Centre for Industrial Sustainability by a research team led by Professor Steve Evans. Originating from the EU FP7 SustainValue project, the tool since has gone through multiple conceptual and visual iterations. Acknowledgements for their contributions go to Dr Padmakshi Rana, Dr Samuel Short, Dr Nancy Bocken, Dr Dai Morgan, Dr Miying Yang, Lloyd Fernando, Dr Doroteya Vladimirova, Dr Curie Park, Fenna Blomsma and Dr Maria Holgado. Particular thanks to all industry collaborators who took part in the development, testing and refinement of the tool.
create new economic, social, and environmental benefits for their business. It has been widely used in industry both through group workshops and bespoke in-house workshops. The tool is also used as teaching material at the University of Cambridge and other academic institutions.
For more information contact Dr Doroteya Vladimirova: dkv21@cam.ac.uk
www. industrialsustainability. org/tools/valuemapping
The alumni interviews
Manufacturing leaders Roger Connor is President, Global Manufacturing & Supply at GSK. He met Judith Shawcross, Head of Professional and Executive Development at the IfM, to talk about the time he spent in Cambridge on the Manufacturing Leaders’ Programme (MLP) – and how it remains relevant to the challenges he faces today.
Roger Connor, President, Global Manufacturing and Supply at GSK
Judith: How did you find yourself on MLP? Roger: I’m an engineer by background and after university I trained as an accountant with PWC. But I always knew that I wanted to work in pharmaceuticals and, ultimately, in manufacturing and leadership. My first job after PWC was in finance with AstraZeneca. When an opportunity to join Glaxo Wellcome came up, working in respiratory products, I jumped at it. I was still in finance but I loved being on a manufacturing site. I joined my first leadership team looking after a value stream, overseeing the supply and development of product and the continuous improvement associated with that. When Glaxo Wellcome merged with SmithKline Beecham I moved to a central role, working on the network design that would bring the two manufacturing operations together. After that I moved to Cork, to be the finance director of our facility there. At that stage I was still hoping to move into
manufacturing strategy but I didn’t know when or how. Then my boss told me that GSK used the MLP to give some emerging talents a different experience and to accelerate their careers and he suggested that it might be right for me. It was exactly the right intervention at exactly the right time. It gave me both the content and confidence that I could make the transition from financial to organisational and strategic leadership. The minute I met the other people in the cohort I knew it was going to be great. The breadth of knowledge and experience in the room was very impressive. What do you think are the most important things you took away from MLP? When I look back at the course and think about what really made a difference, it was that blend of very practical knowledge of manufacturing combined with thinking about your own leadership style and approach. It was also very
practical and relevant. Every project we worked on I was able to take back and apply in the factory. Perhaps the most important thing it taught me was that everyone has the same issues as you and therefore someone will probably have already come up with the answers. You didn’t always have to re-invent the wheel. I often ask today’s emerging talent what ‘learn before’ they have done. By this I mean have they researched the problem, seen how other people have tried to solve it or have they dived straight in with a big-company mindset, thinking that it has to be ‘invented here’? The other big takeaway was that you have got to ‘go see’. Where did you ‘go see’ on MLP? China. In 2005 we visited some incredibly large facilities, some that were very small, some that were fully state-owned and some which were partially state-owned. Seeing first-hand
The Manufacturing Leaders Programme ran between 1997 and 2007. It comprised four three-week modules run over a two-year period, culminating in a dissertation and the award of a Masters in Manufacturing Leadership. It was aimed at talented mid-career engineers and technologists who had the potential to move into more strategic roles in industry. If you are interested in developing your manufacturing leaders today, contact Judith Shawcross, Head, Executive and Professional Development.
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Oral care production at GSK Maidenhead, UK
the rate of growth, the scale of it and some of the challenges of operating in China was eye-opening. I was blown away both by the calibre of the people we met – incredibly articulate, highly professional people with US MBAs – and by the scale of the operations. It seemed to me that if you were in China for low cost you were in China for the wrong reasons. You had to be there for the commercial opportunity. We also visited a lot of UK factories. We learned to make an assessment of a facility quite quickly, using the things we were learning in the modules but also the experience of the other students. Automotive people, for example, looked at things like safety performance while pharma people were concerned with the quality system. Combining these different perspectives meant the companies we visited
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received really useful input from us and we benefited enormously from seeing the differences in how we all worked. I introduced a production system at GSK based on much of the content that we talked about in Cambridge. One of our core tools is what the Japanese call Gemba – ‘go see’ – and my first experience of applying that approach was on those factory visits. Then there was the leadership stuff. This introduced me to the idea of ‘leadership muscles’, the elements in your leadership style that you should apply each day: how to motivate, analyse and develop people and how to create energy. The calibre of people brought in to talk on the programme was exceptional. Some of the subject matter experts were truly leaders in their field. For
example, we learnt about the theory of constraints from Alex Knight from the Goldratt Foundation. It was Alex who said to me: “If you are using your calculator then you are not thinking strategically, you are working at too great a level of detail. You have to get it right ‘up here’, then sense check it and only then work on the details.” Another big learning I had was the strategic importance of manufacturing. Until that point I thought about manufacturing as the process of creating an output. But I was challenged to think about how you can you use manufacturing competence to differentiate yourself from the competition through strategic offerings such as quality, agility and cost competitiveness. These are all elements of manufacturing strategy where you have to make balanced decisions. A big part of the programme
“It gave me both the content and confidence that I could make the transition from financial to organisational and strategic leadership.”
“I was challenged to think about how you can you use manufacturing competence to differentiate yourself from the competition through strategic offerings such as quality, agility and cost competitiveness.”
GSK’s continuous tableting capabilities – a close collaboration between manufacturing and R&D
was thinking about these trade-offs and I still apply that learning today when setting our strategic goals. How much does the manufacturing strategy connect across broader functional areas within GSK? You have to be more connected now, particularly in the new product introduction space. You can’t have any waste in your system. You need to take your commercial opportunity through to new product launch as quickly and efficiently as you can. Within the pharmaceutical sector there are certain challenges you have to overcome and manage – getting a product that is absolutely safe, that has been proven through clinical trials, that meets regulators’ expectations – all these are critical. But I also run our consumer manufacturing which has a faster innovation cycle. You need aligned commercial and supply teams and you also need geographic co-location to ensure that the idea sparked at the coffee machine can become a proposal and then
reality in as short a time as possible. We have worked very hard to get exactly that synergy, to have a production person, a procurement person, a commercial person, a regulatory person, all sitting together thinking about the same product rather than dipping in through different processes at different times. In our facilities in Ireland, the UK and Singapore we have co-located R&D and manufacturing to work together. We run some models where a product is developed in R&D and the chemists and engineers who have worked on it move with it through industrialisation and scale. I believe this approach lowers the risks associated with technical transfer, scale up and launch. The organisational lines have to be drawn somewhere: you have to have something called R&D and you have to have something called manufacturing. How you operate at that boundary determines the competitiveness of your organisation.
Another area we worked on in MLP was technology roadmapping with Rob Phaal. In pharmaceuticals we still have some way to go to make medicines more affordable and more accessible across the world. We used a technology roadmap to set a vision of how we want to take pharmaceutical manufacturing to another level. The beauty of the technology roadmap is alignment. There is no point in this being a single team’s goal. It has to be the organisation’s vision. You need the people who run the facilities, the people who develop your products, the people who procure your materials, the technical people who maintain your product always thinking about the goal together. Some people think of a roadmap as just a communication tool but I see it as a strategic intervention. It surfaces alignment. It forces people to ask themselves what they are trying to achieve. If you were doing the course now – a decade further on with all the changes we see in
the manufacturing landscape – what differences do you think would need to be made? On the strategic side I would focus as much on the implementation as on the strategic development. Great strategies are only great when they have been implemented. In the real world 10,000 other things in the day job distract from the implementation. So I would want to think about what is the right operating model to drive execution? How do you ensure that what you say is the strategy is actually what’s happening on the ground? How do you check and adjust? MLP covered some of this but I think that we – and by ‘we’ I mean manufacturing as a whole – need to be better at doing what we say we are going to do. The other thing is that not all strategy can be written three years in advance. That it’s ok for strategy to emerge is a big insight for many people. They feel that if they are not executing what’s on the milestone plan they are not doing their job.
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Particularly in this changing environment, you’ve got to have a strategic direction but you’ve got to be able to flex. In the real world, real things happen so how do you make sure that organisations are properly prioritised and resourced? I would love to discuss how teams prioritise and stay focused on the mission and their critical goals. The other big issue that wasn’t part of the course is the digital age and its impact on manufacturing. That is the big topic coming at us from all directions. What does it mean for technology in the future? What does it mean for customer insight? What does it mean for the factory now? And we have to learn this.
New industries and also new, different models of value creation and capture. Is there a future in which you will be connected to the end-consumer as well as the doctors? And where bespoke prescriptions can be ‘printed’ on site at the pharmacy? New manufacturing techniques will change the way the whole healthcare sector operates. Anyone who wants to lead in this environment now needs a new set of skills. You have to get that inspiration from the next generation and from new industries that didn’t exist ten years ago. If you try to solve it yourself it will take you too long.
the time, the programme was exactly right for me. It had been so well thought through – the operational aspects of manufacturing, the strategic aspects and the leadership – and then going out to see it in practice. There were only 12 of us on the course so we did get to know each other really well. We still talk to each other and look to share best practice. I can’t help smiling when I think back because although we worked incredibly hard it was such great fun.
Those are some of the things I would want to see in MLP if I were doing it now. But at
GSK’s new generation of respiratory devices in production at Zebulon, NC, USA
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“You have to have something called R&D and you have to have something called manufacturing. How you operate at that boundary determines the competitiveness of your organisation.”
COURSES AT THE IfM IfM runs a series of courses and workshops throughout the year. For more information go to: www.ifm.eng.cam.ac.uk/events aa
Developing successful manufacturing and operations strategies Create an effective operations strategy that will deliver your business objectives
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Evaluating and selecting technology-based projects How to evaluate and choose the right projects in conditions of uncertainty when detailed factual information is scarce.
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Global supply chains Achieve competitive advantage through network design.
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Making the shift to services New approaches that will help transform your organisation from a product-based business to one that can also provide its customers with services and solutions.
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Manufacturing analytics: aligning KPIs and strategy in an era of big data Use the new analytics to improve the way you measure performance.
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New tools for sustainable businesses Learn to analyse how value is created in your business and how to use that knowledge to enhance your competitive advantage.
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Product design to transform your business Learn to design (or re-design) the products and services your customers really want.
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Realising the potential of early-stage technologies How to encourage innovation, spot the ideas with the most potential, choose the right business models to exploit them, identify and manage risks and protect your intellectual property.
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Strategic roadmapping A step-by-step guide to using this powerful tool for planning technology capabilities that support your strategic goals.
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Technology and innovation management Learn how to manage and exploit technology investments and opportunities.
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Technology intelligence How to find out about new technologies quickly and understand the threats and opportunities they present for your business.
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Visual approaches for strategy and innovation management Explore and apply the fundamental principles of visual design for presenting management information.
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The Cambridge Tribology Course: friction, wear and lubrication Intensive three-day programme presenting an overview of the field of tribology.
Most of these courses can also be run in-house, tailored to your organisation’s needs. To find out more, contact Judith Shawcross: jks45@cam.ac.uk
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INSTITUTE FOR MANUFACTURING: IfM With a focus on manufacturing industries, the IfM creates, develops and deploys new insights into management, technology and policy. We strive to be the partner of choice for businesses and policymakers, as they enhance manufacturing processes, systems and supply chains to deliver sustainable economic growth through productivity and innovation. IfM EDUCATION & CONSULTANCY SERVICES LIMITED: IfM ECS IfM ECS is owned by the University of Cambridge. It transfers to industry the new ideas and approaches developed by researchers at the IfM. Its profits are gifted to the University to fund future research activities.
Institute for Manufacturing, 17 Charles Babbage Road, Cambridge, CB3 0FS, UK +44 (0)1223 766141 | ifm-enquiries@eng.cam.ac.uk | www.ifm.eng.cam.ac.uk | Twitter @IfMCambridge | youtube.com/ifmcambridge