While interest in the open innovation model is still growing, limitations in its scope and application are starting to become evident. The findings of the study present a nuanced and tempered view of open innovation at the project level. The study indicates that, at the project level, the benefits of an open innovation strategy can be maximised and its limitations can be overcome by focusing on the three dimensions of ‘openness’ (breadth, exploration and depth), and by implementing the strategy following the principles of contingency theory. The study’s main theoretical contribution rests on the development of a contingency theory of inbound open innovation at the project level. A first set of empirical results, based on a survey of 205 new product development (NPD) projects in the manufacturing sector in the UK, suggests that the type of innovation (incremental and radical innovation) and the strength of the appropriability regime are key contingencies, which influence an open innovation strategy at the project level. A second set of empirical results, obtained from a case study at Jaguar (UK), illustrates that further contingencies occur in the course of radical innovation projects. The decision to adopt an open or closed innovation strategy is influenced by the interaction between three key contingencies: the stages of the new product development process, the strength of the appropriability regime and the informal appropriation instrument (secrecy).

In today's business environment, firms increasingly think in the context of a supply chain rather than a single factory and operate globally rather than in a single nation. At the same time, we have also witnessed increasing breadth in product ranges and accelerating rates of new product introduction in the marketplace. While there are potentially strong interrelationships between product variety and international supply chain management, the issues have been addressed separately in the research literature. Owing to this shortfall, this study investigates the issue of product variety in the context of international supply networks. More specifically, the study seeks to gain insights on different types of co-ordination and configuration of international supply network and to more deeply understand the impact of, and the interrelationships between, product variety, supply lead-time and demand uncertainty on the performance of an international supply chain. Empirical and simulation studies have been conducted to fulfil the above objectives. The empirical study involves eleven manufacturing companies in Indonesia, belonging to both Multinational Corporations (MNC) and contract manufacturers, and one company in the UK operating internationally that owns manufacturing units as well as contracting out. The empirical study generated findings on configuration structures, co-ordination policies, and product variety impact and management. Based on their configuration and coordination strategies, MNC supply networks involved in the empirical study can be classified as supply networks that have regional autonomous subsidiaries, regional clusters of subsidiaries and purely global supply network. Contract manufacturers' configurations may change from one selling period to another. More co-ordination efforts are found to be necessary in MNC supply networks compared to contract manufacturer supply networks. Although companies face different challenges with respect to product variety and uncertainties in demand and supply, the evidence shows that product variety principally affects the procurement of materials, as various products require different materials and parts. Product variety also affects production due to the need to conduct set-up activities. To obtain a deeper understanding of the impacts of product variety, supply lead time and demand uncertainty on supply chain performance, a simulation study has been conducted. A simulation model was developed based on the insights obtained from the empirical study. The model represents a three-stage MNC supply network producing consumer goods in discrete manufacturing processes. Product variety is represented in the model by the use of different types of material required at different stages of the production process. An extensive set of simulation experiments concentrated on flow time and inventory performance. Results from the simulation experiments show that increases in product variety extend the average flow time due to the need to conduct set-up activities. The impact of product variety on flow time depends on the severity of set-up and the stage at which variety occurs in the production processes. Variety occurring early in the production process and generating long set-up times has a more pernicious impact on average flow time compared to variety occurring later and requiring shorter set-ups. Supply and demand uncertainty may affect the supply chain performance as it may delay the manufacturing processes. When supply lead-time is subject to uncertainty, materials may not be available at the right time for production. Similarly, demand uncertainty may lead to a situation where the available materials may not be adequate to meet the production requirements. The simulation results show that producing high variety when material delivery time is subject to uncertainty has a damaging impact on the two supply chain performance metrics - flow time and inventory level. The supply chain performance worsens with increasing level of supply uncertainty. Producing high variety when either aggregate-level or product-level demand is subject to uncertainty results in a higher level of inventory and longer average flow time. The worst performance in terms of average flow time and average inventory is evident when the supply chain produces maximum variety and both supply and demand are subject to uncertainty. The simulation study provides a guide to the magnitude of the impact in each case. Findings from the empirical and simulation study are synthesised into a framework for understanding and managing product variety in international supply chains. The framework can be used to understand interrelationships between key factors in managing product variety in international supply networks and to identify potential strategies to mitigate the negative impact of those factors on performance.

The power and influence of the individual techniques of Lean Production (L.P.) and Six Sigma (S.S.) are well recognised as successful manufacturing Continuous Improvement (C.I.) and Change Management (C.M.) methodologies. Both techniques are able to be successfully introduced and applied in the manufacturing companies of the UK with both techniques having a history of successful performance improvement. The hypothesis the research attempts to test is founded upon the limitations of the independent adoption of the techniques in contrast to the development of a more powerful Lean Sigma synergy, blending both techniques in a combined approach. The tools used individually limit the potential and pace of the manufacturing business development with both improvement systems having hard limits and constraining boundaries that the fundamentalist supporters are unable or unwilling to question. This research aims to prove that the cocktail of the techniques known as Lean Sigma (L.S.) can significantly improve the ability of the manufacturing business to accelerate the C.I. process whilst maintaining a more structured and disciplined roll out process that combines the creative waste reduction of L.P. and the statistical improvement and management techniques of S.S. Breaking down the constraints and hard limits of the individual techniques by harnessing the most powerful and influential elements of the two systems to produce a significantly more holistic C.I. programme that delivers the penetration and flexibility of Lean combined with the structure and rigour of Six Sigma. This research follows the migration from the C.I. methodology of Total Quality Management (T.Q.M.) to the acceptance of Lean Sigma in a UK manufacturing case study and is supported by three satellite UK longitudinal manufacturing case studies. The resultant case study analysis attempts to uncover evidence to defend the criticism that the two techniques are mutually exclusive and furthermore that they have a significant combined and complementary impact on the case study businesses that have accepted the dual attack strategy of Lean Sigma. By the process of becoming partial embedded in each of the case studies the researcher has experienced the longitudinal change process first hand and plotted the nuances in each of the studies, comparing and contrasting the differing approaches to the adoption of the methodologies and the roll out strategies. The findings of the research highlight the increased impact of the combined approach in areas as diverse as workforce commitment, floor space utilisation, machine up time, reduced labour requirements reduced tooling costs, component quality improvements, health and safety advances, process efficiency and cost reduction activity.

Since the introduction of ISO 9000 in 1987 there has been a tremendous growth in the number of companies seeking registration and certification, both in developed and developing countries. Although there is a wealth of literature on ISO 9000 implementation in developed countries and in some developing countries, it was found that there is relatively little materials related to recent study on the factors that influence ISO 9000 implementation in Saudi manufacturing industry. This topic has not received enough attention and certainly there is lack of these studies in the Middle East countries. Therefore, the aim of this research is to investigate, identify and analyse the factors that influence implementation of ISO 9000 in Saudi manufacturing industries. Both questionnaires and pairwise comparison interviews were employed to achieve the study objectives. The questionnaire aimed to investigate the ISO 9000 implementation factors in Saudi manufacturing industry, while pairwise comparison interviews aimed to rank the priorities of the most important factors. In terms of data analysis, a variety of analytical tools were used to deal with qualitative/quantitative and objective/subjective nature of the study. The tools used include multiple regression analysis, hypothesis testing and Analytical hierarchy process (AHP), Data analysis is contribution of this research to enhance a body of knowledge concerning ISO 9000 in relation to manufacturing organizations in Saudi Arabia. The findings revealed that top management support, work system and quality guidelines are the most important factors influencing the successful implementation of ISO 9000 in the manufacturing industry. Additionally, AHP result shows that Saudi manufacturing organisations should be aware of three main factors in order to successfully implement ISO 9000. These factors are; top management commitment, customer satisfaction and training and education. This research will fill the gaps in the existing literature. Moreover, the result of the findings from this industrial survey is also applicable to some extent to ISO implementation in the other Arab countries.

This thesis will deal with algorithms and imaging techniques for use in automated industrial inspection. The work falls into two main areas, the first dealing with general problems relating to typical inspection tasks, the second with specific applications including the analysis of seals on plastic packets. The requirements of a general object location and inspection system will be discussed initially in relation to algorithms supplied with commercial systems, which often seem ad-hoc. This will be followed up with detailed analyses of several corner and small hole detection algorithms. The features looked for in a useful algorithm are: (1) a high execution speed when implemented on a general purpose microcomputer, (2) good accuracy in locating the desired features, (3) robustness when faced with poor quality, noisy or cluttered images and (4) the ability to distinguish between genuine features and others that appear, superficially, to be similar. A program using these feature detectors to locate partially occluded machine parts in typical images will be presented. The second main area of investigation is that of the detection of faults in heat sealed food packets and is one which has hitherto largely been overlooked. The main problem with these packets is that the cellophane wrapper is highly reflective, giving rise to large areas of glare in any off-camera image. Experience has shown that careful lighting arrangement alone will never totally remove this problem. However, a simple arrangement of switched light beams, along with computer processing, can almost totally eliminate the glare. This approach has been used in the inspection of packets where faults are revealed by parts of the product inside showing through holes in the wrapper. Alternatively, by careful alignment of the light sources, the surface structure of the sealed part of a packet may be revealed. This can reveal defects either through the absence of a regular pattern, or by the presence of wrinkles running across the seal. Algorithms have been developed demonstrating each of these inspection tasks. Overall the work presented in this thesis has spanned several traditional areas of interest, and has also developed the techniques required for packet inspection and other situations where glare is a problem.

Design is one of the significant intellectual activities of human beings and is therefore inevitably influenced by culture, which as Hofstede describes, influences ‘all aspects of human life’. Product design, which emerged in the middle of the last century and is developing under the background of globalization, is a relatively young domain in the design area and also unavoidably a topic of interest in the field of culture study. This thesis brings forth a perspective on the need for an examination of product design in a cross-cultural context. Product design in this research was decomposed into two main components: the design outcome and design process. Two empirical studies were conducted to investigate the cultural differences from the perspective of design outcome. The technique of repertory grid analysis, applied in interviews with participants from the UK and China, found distinctive attributes of designs created by student designers. The designs from the UK students tended to have rounded shapes, simple structures, fewer functions and less creativity; whereas the designs from the Chinese student designers tended to have squarer shapes, more complex structures, more functions and greater creativity. Notable differences were also found in the criteria of design evaluation: people from the UK and China had different emphases on aesthetics, ergonomics and creativity. The differences in design evaluation were validated with a larger sample size using an online survey. Differences in design process were also revealed by two empirical studies that investigated the design activities of designers from the two cultures. A study using a post-hoc reflective method was conducted to analyse submissions from design students, supplemented with an ethnographic observation of daily design activities in a studio. Differences were found in the patterns of design process as well as in the design cognitions revealed through the design representations. UK students were found to sketch more and used sketching as a means of recording, presenting and generating ideas, whereas Chinese students tended to sketch less and used sketching more as a tool for recording and presenting ideas. Chinese students also showed an obvious tendency towards considering a design task in a relational-contextual way, i.e. they tended to consider the relationships between different themes. The differences were confirmed in a protocol study with design practitioners, in which experienced designers were asked to design a condiment stand and subsequently explain their process. UK designers were found to be design-attributes oriented, whereas Chinese designers were more use-environment oriented. Also, compared to their UK counterparts, the design processes of the Chinese designers tended to be more simplified. The differences found in the perspectives of design process and design outcome can be attributed to cultural differences addressed by cultural models such as those from Hofstede. The literature on the cognitive differences between the UK and China also suggested deep-rooted reasons for the relevant differences, such as the analytic cognitive style of UK people and the holistic style of Chinese people, which make them have different focus on interpreting things. The findings of this research offer valuable information in guiding product design activities taking place in the UK / China or any other similar cultures in two ways: 1) the differences in design evaluation criteria offer valuable references to design practice in the relevant markets, i.e. different emphases on the aspects of aesthetics, ergonomics and creativity should be taken when designing for the relevant market; 2) the differences found in design cognition and patterns in design process also provide valuable information: a) for design education, it suggests that Chinese design students should be encouraged to use sketching as a tool for thinking and generating ideas and also to present more of their cognitive process, so as to develop more structured thinking processes to facilitate design; b) for collaborative design practice in a multi-cultural environment, which is typical of today’s product industry, it suggests an integration of different views of designers during early design stage to make more thorough investigation of the design problem, and also a more flexible management in the idea developing stage to fit with the different cognitive styles of the designers.

Currently, European small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) are experiencing increasing pressure to provide high quality goods with customised features while at the same time remain cost effective and competitive in the global market. In the future, manufacturing systems need to be able to cope with constantly changing market requirements. Consequently, there is a need to develop the research foundations for a new generation of manufacturing systems composed of intelligent autonomous entities which are able to reconfigure themselves and to adapt their performance as a result of product and environmental changes. The research described in this thesis addresses the issue by developing three distinctive elements of an adaptation framework for next-generation manufacturing systems. The first element is a capability-based data model for the representation of manufacturing resources to enable self-awareness. The model captures the resources’ life cycle and performance indicators to provide information about the resources’ condition. The second element is a multi-agent architecture for plug and produce and the reconfiguration of manufacturing systems. The resource data model is utilised by the agent society, which is able to instantiate a model to represent a physical resource in the virtual agent society. The shift to the virtual environment enables a communication infrastructure for heterogeneous resources and the application of the digital twin concept. The agent architecture applies negotiation techniques to establish a plan for system adaptation. The third element is a methodology for automated experience-based manufacturing system adaptation. The adaptation methodology is based on previous runtime experience instances to generate adaptation knowledge. The information generated is applied to the current context and part of the agent negotiation which is dynamically executed in case of a disturbance. Collectively, these three elements significantly increase the flexibility and reconfigurability of a manufacturing system reducing the time required for integration and maintenance of complex systems on demand, improving their effectiveness. The developed framework is implemented and evaluated experimentally on a physical, industrial standard demonstrator and using a virtual simulation model. The experimental results confirm a significant step towards new solutions for the deployment of self-adaptable intelligent manufacturing systems.

The conventional life cycle of dies and moulds is not eco-efficient, which shows great potential for the application of remanufacturing. It is of great importance to establish life evaluation technology for remanufacturers to predict the remaining service life of dies and moulds. The main contribution of this thesis is the development of key technologies for life evaluation of dies and moulds after remanufacturing through a thorough review of remanufacture related activities within the die and mould industry. It is proposed that evaluation of remaining service life of dies and moulds after remanufacturing is carried out using finite element modelling. It involves determination of residual stresses induced by repair welding, working conditions for the future operation and life model of die material. Specifically, the thesis is firstly focused on the design of representative die geometry. The geometry is optimized based on the effect of thermal loading and the effect of residual stress due to laser welding. Secondly, fatigue life model was established by conducting thermal fatigue tests and finite element modelling as well. Induction heating based test method was adopted for its capacity of achieving similar thermal shock effects. An energy based life model was derived by taking into account test period. The laser weld characteristics were studied using a sequential experimental design combining orthogonal method and uniform design. Radial Basis Function neutral networks were used to obtain regression models of weld performances for enabling process optimization. Heat source models were also calibrated by achieving sufficient agreement between numerical and experimental weld profiles. Lastly, the effect of residual stress on the fatigue life model was identified and the life model was updated. With close agreement between corresponding coefficients from two curve fittings, the corrected model is proved to be reliable for evaluating remaining useful life of remanufactured dies/moulds.

The central belief in lean systems (LS) is that the implementation of lean practices will reduce different type of wastes. However, LS implemented without an evaluation of organisational readiness may lead to failure. In this study, a measurement framework to evaluate the lean readiness (LR) and LS within Kuwaiti small and medium-sized manufacturing industries (K-SMMIs) has been developed. This measurement framework encompasses the quality and management practices related to LS (processes; planning and control; human resources (HR); top management and leadership; customer relations; and supplier relations) to assess the practices in K-SMMIs and determine whether they have the foundation to implement LS. Mixed methods are adopted in this study, including quantitative approaches (questionnaire administered to 50 K SMMIs and structured observation conducted in 27 K-SMMIs), and qualitative approaches (two case studies (observation and semi-structured interviews with staff of various levels), and semi-structured interviews with 27 managers of K-SMMIs and 26 experts). In addition, a comprehensive literature review has been carried out. The findings indicate that current quality and management practices within K-SMMIs are not very supportive towards LS. Many factors are revealed, both external and internal, that affect K-SMMIs with respect to LS readiness, including language barriers, and deficiencies in aspects including quality workers in terms of education and skills; technology; government attention; know-how regarding LS; market competitiveness; and urgency for adopting LS. This LS and LR measurement framework relating to K-SMMIs provides a unique effort in the area of lean system, and the study’s findings can be used as an internal checklist prior to and during LS implementation. However, this research study contains some obvious limitations, such as very limited information being available on LS and quality initiatives in Kuwait, and small sample size. Further, the LR framework should be tested in small and medium-sized manufacturing industries that have successfully used LS, in order to provide a benchmark.

Many companies are exploring opportunities for improving Home Health Care (HHC) provision, at a time when the demand for well-designed home healthcare products (HHCPs) and associated services is rapidly growing. Research into their approaches found that innovation strategies and techniques adopted by many HHCP suppliers have not matured to realise the best innovative solutions. This practice-based PhD thesis presents the research journey which investigated the strengths and weaknesses of product innovation approaches of small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs) which dominate the HHC field. It considers how to improve HHC product innovation by using more robust New Product Development (NPD) processes that aim at enabling more effective team working; improving information management; and establishing a better understanding the needs of all stakeholders, particularly end-users, in the design and development process. Working collaboratively with companies in the sector innovation shortcomings are identified at the fuzzy front-end (FFE) of a project cycle. The majority of these issues are related to poor practices in creating and applying the design brief. The study found that few SMEs engage in structured approaches to the development of the HHCP brief, which leads to numerous (often very costly) design modifications as the product life develops. As a solution an original toolkit for improving the design brief development process is presented. It is focussed on managing innovation within the FFE of NPD. It takes the form of a new and novel online web service that guides and supports SMEs in writing a multi-stakeholder design brief.