Concerns about energy supply and climate change have been driving companies towards more sustainable manufacturing while they are looking on the economic side as well. One practicable task to achieve sustainability in manufacturing is choosing more sustainable technologies among available technologies. Combination of two functions of ‘Technology Selection’ and ‘Capacity Planning’ is not usually addressed in the research literature. The importance of integrated decisions on technology selection and capacity planning at such strategic level is therefore essentially important. This is supported by justifications in some selected manufacturing areas particularly concerning economies of the scale and accumulated knowledge. Furthermore, manufacturing firms are working in a global competitive environment that is changing in a continuous way. Strategic design of systems under such circumstances requires a carefully modelled approach to deal with the complexity of uncertainties. The overall project aims are to develop an integrated methodological approach to solving the combined ‘technology selection’ and ‘capacity planning’ problems in manufacturing sector. The approach will also incorporate the multi-perspective concept of sustainability, while taking uncertainties into account. A framework consisting of four modules is proposed. Problem structuring module adopts an Ontology method to map the technology mix combinations and to capture input data. ‘Optimisation for Sustainable Manufacturing’ module addresses the optimisation of technology selection and capacity planning decisions in an integrated way using Goal, Mixed Integer Programming method. The model developed takes the multi-criteria aspect of sustainability development into account. Three criteria, namely a) Environmental (e.g. Energy consumption and Emissions), b) Economics, and c) Technical (e.g. Quality) are involved. ‘Normalisation algorithm by comparison with the best value’ method is adopted in this research in order to facilitate a systematic comparison among various criteria. The economic evaluation is based on ‘Life-Cycle Analysis’ approach. The ‘Present Value (PV)’ method is adopted to address ‘Time Value of Money’, while taking both ‘Inflation’ and ‘Market Return’ into account in order to make the proposed model more realistic. A mathematical model to represent the total PV of each technology investment, including both capital and running costs, is developed. ‘Sensitivity Analysis’ module addresses the uncertainty element of the problem. A controlled set of re-optimisation runs, which is guided by a tool coded in Visual Basic for Applications (VBA), is developed to perform intensive sensitivity analyses. It is aimed to deal with the uncertainty element of the problem. Within ‘Solution Structuring’ module, two knowledge structuring schemes, namely Decision Tree and Interactive Slider Diagram, are proposed to deal with the large size of solution sets generated by the “Sensitivity Analysis” module. An innovative, hybrid, Supervised and Unsupervised Machine Learning algorithm is developed to generate a decision tree that aims to structure the solution set. The unsupervised learning stage is implemented using DBSCAN algorithm, while the supervised learning element adopts C4.5 algorithm. The methodological approach is tested and validated using an exemplar case study on coating processes in an automotive company. The case is characterised by three operations, twelve possible technology mix states, both capital budget and environmental limits, and 243 different sensitivity analysis experiments. The painting systems are evaluated and compared based on their quality, technology life-cycle costs, and their potential VOC (Volatile Organic Compounds) emissions into the air.

In the current global climate of declining fossil fuel reserves and due to the impact of industry on the natural environment, industrial sustainability is becoming ever more important. However, sustainability is quite a vague concept for many, and there are a range of interpretations of the word. If the resource efficiency of a factory is taken as a measure of its sustainability, then the concept becomes better defined and quantifiable. In order to analyse the resource efficiency of a factory and suggest improvements, all flows through the manufacturing system need to be modelled. However the factory is a complex environment, there is a wide variation in the quality levels of energy as well as the composition of material flows in the system. The research presented in this thesis shows how the thermodynamics-based concept of ‘exergy’ can be used to quantify the resource efficiency of a factory. The factory is considered an ‘integrated system’, meaning it is composed of the building and the production processes, both interacting with each other. This is supported by three case studies in different industries that demonstrate the practical application of the approach. A review of literature identified that it was appropriate to develop a novel approach that combined exergy analysis with the integrated view of the factory. Such an approach would allow a ‘holistic’ assessment of resource efficiency for different technology options possibly employable. The development of the approach and its illustration through practical case studies is the main contribution of the work presented. Three case studies, when viewed together, illustrate all aspects of the novel exergy based resource accounting approach. The first case study is that of an engine production line, in which the resource efficiency of this part of the factory is analysed for different energy system options relating to heating ventilation and air conditioning. Firstly, the baseline is compared with the use of a solar photovoltaic array to generate electricity, and then a heat recovery unit is considered. Finally, both of these options were used together, and here it is found that the non-renewable exergy supply and exergy destruction are reduced by 51.6% and 49.2% respectively. The second case study is that of a jaggery (a sugar substitute) production line. The exergy efficiency of the process is calculated based on varying the operating temperature of the jaggery furnace. The case study describes the modelling of al flows through the jaggery process in terms of exergy. Since this is the first example of an exergy analysis of a jaggery process, it can be considered a minor contribution of the work. An imaginary secondary process that could utilize the waste heat from the jaggery process is considered in order to illustrate the application of the approach to industrial symbiosis. The non-renewable exergy supply and exergy destruction are determined for the baseline and the alternative option. The goal of this case study is not to present a thermally optimized design; rather it illustrates how the exergy concept can be used to assess the impact of changes to individual process operations on the overall efficiency in industrial symbiosis. When considering natural resource consumption in manufacturing, accounting for clean water consumption is increasingly important. Therefore, a holistic methodology for resource accounting in factories must be able to account for water efficiency as well. The third case study is that of a food production facility where the water supply and effluent are modelled in terms of exergy. A review of relevant literature shows that previously, the exergy content of only natural water bodies and urban wastewater had been quantified. To the author’s knowledge, this is the first example of applying this methodology of modelling water flows in a manufacturing context. The results show that due to a high amount of organic content in food process effluent, there is significant recoverable exergy in it. Therefore, a hypothetical water treatment process was assumed to estimate the possible savings in exergy consumption. The results show that at least a net 4.1% savings in terms of exergy could be possible if anaerobic digestion water treatment was employed. This result can be significant for the UK since the food sector forms a significant portion of the industry in the country. Towards the end of the thesis, a qualitative study is also presented that aims to evaluate the practical utility of the approach for the industry. A mixed method approach was used to acquire data from experts in the field and analyse their responses. The exergy based resource accounting method developed in this thesis was first presented to them before acquiring the responses. A unanimous view emerged that the developed exergy based factory resource accounting methodology has good potential to benefit industrial sustainability. However, they also agreed that exergy was too complex a concept to be currently widely applied in practice. To this effect, measures that could help overcome this barrier to its practical application were presented which form part of future work.

Une performance soutenable et importante est l'objectif principal du management de toute organisation. La viabilité d'une entreprise dépend de sa capacité à trouver un équilibre entre deux activités très différentes. D’une part elle doit exploiter les certitudes existantes pour garantir la réussite des opérations courantes et d’autre part explorer de nouvelles opportunités pour la mise en œuvre rapide des nouvelles idées qui garantissent l'avenir de l'organisation. Les organisations ambidextres ont une aptitude à poursuivre de manière simultanée ces activités et produisent des innovation radicales et incrémentielles. Notre recherche montre que pour être ambidextre seulement la séparation des activités n’est pas suffisante. Sans une intégration et une combinaison de ces structures et ces processus, l’unité d’exploration sera incapable d’exploiter ses résultats et a plus de chance disparaitre avec le temps comme la structure inefficace. Pour survivre sur le long terme, l’entreprise doit intégrer l’ambidexterité de manière fractale et dynamique. Ce nouveau concept propose une solution à la question de l’équilibre entre les activités et elle se définit comme la capacité organisationnelle à reproduire l’exploration et l’exploitation simultanément à différents niveaux organisationnels et être capable de changer leurs proportions quand cela est nécessaire / The main objective in management of any organization is a successful and sustainable performance. To survive over time, a company should combine two competing activities. On the one hand, it must exploit existing certainties to be effective in the short term, and on the other hand, being capable at the same time to explore new opportunities to be innovative in the future. Ambidextrous organizations have the ability to pursue these activities simultaneously and produce radical and incremental innovation. In our research, we show that to achieve ambidexterity separation of activities is important, but not sufficient. Without integration between business structures and processes, the exploratory activity of the innovation unit is more likely to shrink and disappear with time as unprofitable function. To survive and sustain in the long term, a company should adapt fractal and dynamic ambidexterity. This new concept provides us with a solution to the question of balance and determines the organizational ability to define and set the appropriate proportions of exploration and exploitation simultaneously at multiple organizational levels and re-configure them when it is necessary to meet the change.

Over the past two decades, the literature on Absorptive Capacity (AC) research has been burgeoning with enormous empirical and theoretical contributions to the field. Yet, there is not much advancement in understanding the internal dynamics of AC and the concept remains a black box in a large body of research. This study aims at contributing to this body of knowledge by examining the development of AC throughout the lifecycle of R&D consortia. In particular, it examines the pre-conditions of AC across its three dimensions corresponding with the phases of consortia: exploratory, transformative and exploitative learning, and investigates the role of disciplinary, organisational, and intra-organisational boundaries in the development of AC.Utilising a case study research strategy, the thesis analyses AC in three R&D consortia in the alternative materials, pharmaceuticals, and aerospace industries and embraces qualitative methods with interviews and documents as its main sources of data. The collected data is analysed through template analysis technique assisted by the NVivo 8 software package. The theoretical contributions of the thesis are fourfold. First, findings indicate that AC is not an exclusively organisational or dyadic capability, but a three-level concept unfolding at the consortium, interface (between consortia and organisations), and organisational levels, and in exploratory, transformative and exploitative phases throughout the consortium lifetime. On that basis, a model for AC in R&D consortia is developed and its underlying learning mechanisms and conditions across levels and phases are discussed in detail. Second, the thesis contends that the development of a shared space which provides the opportunities for participation and development of shared meaning across organisational and disciplinary boundaries in R&D consortia serves a critical role in the development of AC. The characteristics of the shared space and the conditions for its development are specified. Third, by integrating adaptation mechanisms to the formulation of AC, the thesis contributes to understanding of AC as a dynamic capability-a higher order capability to change operating routines and processes. This finding feeds into the argument that AC is both path-dependent, by storing knowledge in routines, processes and artefacts through exploitative learning, and path-breaking, by modifying and changing prevailing processes and structures through exploratory and transformative learning. Finally, the thesis argues that understanding learning in R&D consortia necessitates taking into consideration the effects of disciplinary and organisational boundaries simultaneously. It is argued that organisational boundaries can influence the transfer of knowledge even within disciplinary domains, which challenges the excessive focus of practice-based research on disciplinary boundaries in cross-disciplinary collaborations, calling for further exploration of the role of organisational boundaries within a given disciplinary domain. These theoretical contributions are accompanied by a set of managerial implications for the formation and governance of R&D consortia, as well as policy implications for evaluation of policy interventions in collaborative research schemes.

Cultural and creative industries are a growing and profitable sector in the UK. The industry blends historical culture with modern creative design to promote one's culture and to make profits. A cultural feature is the main characteristic of a cultural product; however most of the current cultural products are printed or decorated in a way that lacks any emotional or meaningful cultural link with consumers. Emotional engagement is the key factor when people make their decisions. Therefore, a design toolkit was created to assist designers to enhance an emotional connection between consumers and products. the research approaches involved a literature review to classify categories of cultural features, a questionnaire to measure emotional responses to Chinese cultural products, expert interviews to develop the toolkit, and workshops to validate the toolkit. This research is the first study to highlight emotional aspect of cultural products in order to enrich user experience. The contributions of the research are investigating human emotions of cultural products and developing a novel toolkit to support designers when creating cultural products.

Production Line Systems (PLS) are ubiquitous in today’s manufacturing industry. The need for enhanced efficiencies and higher throughput in such systems has increased their complexity and size that has made performance analysis challenging for practitioners. This thesis introduces a novel approach based on Product Service System (PSS) design and analysis which simplifies Production Line System study and identifies opportunities for performance improvement that can be quantified based on the hardware and maintenance system performance. The approach involves modelling and simulation techniques based on reliability engineering principles and systems thinking. In order to apply the principles of PSS approach to PLS, it is essential to draw a comparison between PLS and PSS, so as to take account of the differences while applying the new approach; a literature review has been carried out on PSS Design and Analysis, that identified the state of the art modelling and simulation techniques in PSS. Additionally, a separate literature review on maintenance system and production line was carried out. This enabled the PSS methodology to be applied to PLS by incorporating the differences. A systems thinking approach has been employed to create the static simulation model of the integrated production line system by means of schematic representations. Key improvement areas, identified from the static simulation model have been modelled dynamically to incorporate the stochastic behaviour of the system. All the dynamic models are developed using a Discrete Event Simulation platform. These models were supported by Monte Carlo Simulation, queuing principles, probabilistical and statistical methods pertinent to reliability engineering. The novel integrated simulation model consists of a production line model and a maintenance system model. The production line model simulates two types of failures in addition to the outages in the system: breakdowns and short stops. The maintenance system model simulates the maintenance actions in the production line by considering the resources availability, repair time, and resources travelling time amongst others. In addition, the maintenance model is capable of optimizing the preventive maintenance interval for maintainable failures for cost, availability and criticality while taking into account the maintenance effectiveness value from the failure data. The simulation model is validated using an industrial case study which consists of a large production line for beer. Sensitivity studies on the simulation model enabled the case study company to focus on strategies for throughput improvement by improving the reliability and maintainability, optimal resources allocation and maintenance interval optimization in targeted areas in the large and complex system. The model developed is generic and can easily be applied to analyse other industrial production line systems. It can also be used as a design tool for new production lines.

The entry of China into the globalized world and onto the stage of the global automarket has presented auto manufacturers with the largest ever market opportunity. While global competitive forces drive firms to develop product innovation through their global supply chains, the approach of global auto manufacturers and their first tier suppliers has been to bring existing technology into China. Only recently has the supply chain in China become integrated into the global product innovation cycle. While innovations generated by supply channel relationships, as opposed to individual partners, are playing an increasingly important role in the success of all supply chain partners, there has been limited research in the literature on how supply chain relationships cultivate the process of such innovation generation, particularly in China. Correspondingly, this study explores how multinational suppliers can develop adaptive product innovation in order to create a sustainable competitive advantage in China and how the protection of their knowledge helps them sustain it. Drawing on the knowledge-based view and transaction cost economics, and integrating those with behavioural governance and the institution-based view this study identifies drivers of product innovation for MNC suppliers in their relationships with Chinese OEMs, investigates the influence of supplier involvement and knowledge protection on supplier product innovation and examines the outcomes in the specific context of the Chinese automotive industry from the first-tier supplier perspective. Survey results of 170 multinational automobile suppliers in China indicate support for most of the hypotheses. Specifically, knowledge protection is found to have an impact on product innovation in the context of the auto industry in China. Supplier involvement in co-design and co-development with an automotive OEM customer has an inverted U-shaped relationship with product innovation. Furthermore, trust and technological uncertainty are found to drive greater product innovation. In addition, the institutional environment moderates the effect of product innovation on performance. Overall, this study enhances the understanding of how MNC suppliers can acquire local knowledge, develop products adapted to the local market requirements and foster product innovation while retaining their knowledge and know-how and minimizing negative effects of spill-overs to the local competition in the automotive industry in China.

The everything as a service concept enables dynamic resource provisions to be seen and delivered as services. Their proliferation nowadays leads to the creation of new value-added services composed of several sub-services in a pre-specified manner, known as service workflows. The use of service workflow appears in various domains, ranging from the basic interactions found in several e-commerce and several online interactions to the complex ones such as Virtual Organizations, Grids, and Cloud Computing. However, the dynamic nature in open environments makes a workflow constantly changing, to be adaptable to the change of new circumstances. How to determine suitable services has becomes a very important challenge. Requirements from both workflow owners and service providers play a significant role in the process of service acquisition, composition, and interoperations. From the workflow owner viewpoint, requirements can specify properties of services to be acquired for tasks in a workflow. On the other hand, requirements from service providers affect trust-based decision in workflow participation. The lack of formal languages to specify these requirements poses difficulties in the success of service collaborations in a workflow. It impedes: (1) workflow scalability that tends to be limited within a certain set of trusted domains; (2) dynamicity when each service acts in an autonomous and unpredictable manner where any change might affect existing requirements; and (3) inconsistency in dealing with the disparate representations of requirements, causing high overhead for compliance checking. This thesis focuses on developing a framework to overcome, or at least alleviate, these problems. It situates in inter-disciplinary areas including logics, workflow modelling, specification languages, trust management, decision support system, and compliance checking. Two core elements are proposed: (1) a formal logic-based requirement specification language, namely Trust Specification (TS), such that the requirements can be formally and uniformly expressed; and (2) compliance checking algorithms to automatically check for the compliance of requirements in service workflows. It is worth noting that this thesis contains some proofs of logic extension, workflow modelling, specification language, and compliance checking algorithms. These might raise a concern to people focusing deep on one particular area such as logics, or workflow modelling who might overlook the essence of the work, for example (1) the application of a formal specification language to the exclusive characteristics of service workflows, and (2) bridging the gap of the high level languages such as trust management down to the lower logic-based ones. The first contribution of the framework is to allow requirements to be independently and consistently expressed by each party where the workflow participation decision and acquisition are subject to the compliance of requirements. To increase scalability in large-scale interoperations, the second contribution centres on automatic compliance checking where TS language and compliance checking algorithms are two key components. The last contribution focuses on dynamicity. The framework allows each party to modify existing requirements and the compliance checking would be automatically activated to check for further compliance. As a result, it is anticipated that the solution will encourage the proliferation of service provisions and consumption over the Internet.

Driven by the highly cyclical nature of their increasingly commoditised product offerings, many capital goods manufacturers are seeing the benefits of delivering services integrated with their core product offerings. Whilst existing research is almost unanimous in advocating the value of a servitization strategy, understanding how these product-service systems (PSSs) can be developed and delivered remains a significant challenge. The closely related PSS field, which has its heritage in the environmental and social science disciplines, is more mature in this area and a number of models have been proposed. The research reported within this thesis contributes to knowledge by investigating whether the approaches to PSS development, reported within the PSS literature, reflects the PSS development practice of servitized manufacturers. More specifically, soft systems methodology was used to explore the delivery of PSSs within the UK railway industry in order to gain an understanding of the implications for developing new PSSs. With this understanding, the existing approaches to PSS development were evaluated with respect to one servitized manufacturer through an in-depth single case study. The findings highlighted a number of significant differences between the practice of the servitized manufacturer and the literature. A survey was used to investigate whether the differences were generalisable to a larger sample of servitized manufacturers. The findings point towards the simplification of the reported phases within PSS development and the inclusion of a number of previously unreported processes and activities. Based on these results a new model of PSS development is proposed to better reflect the practice of servitized manufacturers. The model, consisting of four phases and seventeen processes, was operationalised in the form of a workbook and tested through application. Applying the workbook resulted in the successful creation of a number of new PSS concepts.

This study examines the relationship between organisational culture and TQM implementation barriers to gain a more comprehensive understanding of the factors affecting TQM implementation. For TQM implementation to take root effectively, the critical role of organisational culture is widely recognised. The existence of pitfalls and obstacles (barriers) to implementing TQM is also widely recognized, as is the importance of understanding these TQM implementation barriers. Nevertheless, whilst many TQM implementation models and frameworks have been designed and proposed, no study has been located in the literature that has systematically examined the relationship between organisational culture and TQM implementation barriers. This theoretical lapse in the TQM literature necessitates an investigation of the direction and significance of the relationship which can help in devising more informed TQM implementation models. In this context, a quantitative research methodology was adopted to examine the profiles of organisational culture and of TQM implementation barriers in organisations in Bahrain and to examine the relationship between these variables. Bahrain is presently going through a rapid expansion in quality management system adoption. Accordingly, the research uses four constructs of organisational culture as independent variables and six constructs of TQM implementation barriers identified through the literature as dependent variables. A set of hypotheses was developed describing the expected relationships between these two sets of variables. The study adopted a positivist, deductive approach using an online survey questionnaire to obtain quantitative data for hypothesis testing. The research instrument was assessed for validity and reliability through structured interviews. Responses to the survey were obtained from 325 organisations located in Bahrain. Analysis of Moment Structure (AMOS) version 16.0 was used to test the measurement model using Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA), and to test the structural model using Structural Equation Modelling (SEM). Both models showed a very good fit to the data, with good construct validity and reliability. The findings of the study showed that group culture, which is believed to be an ‘ideal’ culture for TQM implementation helps decrease employee barriers, information barriers and customer related barriers as predicted. However group culture wasn’t found to help decrease top management barriers. Rational culture was found to decrease top management barriers as predicted but it wasn’t found to help decrease employee and customer barriers. The findings confirm the significant impact of hierarchical culture in the Bahrain context in decreasing planning and process management barriers. Developmental culture’s potential to lower employee and customer barriers was observed but was not found to be statistically significant. This research makes several contributions in both academic and practical terms. Theoretically, positioning organisational culture as an antecedent of TQM implementation barriers, this study is the first holistic approach that attempts to empirically investigate which type of organisational culture is related to which TQM implementation barriers. Understanding the nature, strength and direction of these relationships can help to inform and support future TQM implementation attempts. Practically, this research will benefit organisations who have not been able to fully realise TQM, or who are in the process of planning the introduction of TQM. The findings of the study can help Bahraini organisations to realise the long term quality objectives of the Bahrain Centre of Excellence’s Vision 2030 programme. Furthermore, the study has contributed a new empirically tested scale for measuring TQM implementation barriers - a valuable tool on its own, or in conjunction with the organisational culture profile assessment tool - for both practitioners wishing to examine their readiness for TQM or progress in creating a TQM ethos, and for future researchers wishing to extend our understanding of the influence of TQM barriers and/or culture on major organisational improvement interventions. It is expected that replication of this study in other countries and regions with different culture and context may help in developing an improved model of TQM implementation. Implications for managers and future research are advanced.