M.Phil. / Competition in the bus industry is very fierce. To gain competitive advantage bus manufacturing companies have resorted to various strategies such as intensive marketing, advertising, product innovation, and creation of a wider range of products. These are not sufficient to remain competitive. Another strategy is improving service quality to their customers. A study by Oskrowski et al (1993) showed that the airline companies were able to acquire and retain customers‟ loyalty by continuing to provide perceived high quality services. Bus building companies operating in the transportation industry (which is the same as airline companies); see improvement of the service quality being a major pillar in acquiring new customers and also in retaining existing customers. Thus, providing superior service quality by implementing stringent “Service Performance Logistics Metrics” should be the main agenda for all bus building companies in order to remain competitive. Many empirical studies had tried to measure different dimensions of service quality of the bus building companies. Gourdin (1999) categorized the bus building industry‟s quality into three aspects: (a) price; (b) safety; and (c) timeless. Gilbert and Wong (2003) have revised and adapted the three-aspects of service quality to include: (a) reliability; (b) tangibility; (c) responsiveness; and (d) assurance. This research thesis have re-looked at the service quality metrics, and categorized them in eight (8) broad measures; namely: (a) reliability and availability; (b) parts and parts delivery; (c) repairs selection factors; (d) products design aspects & environmental; (e) product support and warranty; (f) cost and cost service; (g) technical resolution, information, & technical data/software; and (h) facilities characteristics and manpower. Gilbert and Wong (2003), empirical study focused on the airline industry service quality metrics. These are not quite adaptable to the bus building companies; hence this research was focused on the eight (8) broader aspects. The research was conducted by three sets of questionnaires: (a) one for customers for the bus building industry; (b) the second one for employees of the bus building companies; and (c) questionnaire for the customers for bus dealerships networks. These questionnaires are attached as annexure 3 to 5 of this thesis. Focus Groups Interviews (as per Annexure 2 of this thesis) were also held to guide the process of compiling the questionnaires, and also deciding which questions/aspects needed to be included on the final questionnaires. The sorting, analyses, and interpretation of data were primarily done by: - (a) Excel; (b) SPSS – Statistical Analysis Software; and (c) PowerPoint. Data was organized in the form of: Metrics; Graphs (e.g. bar, pie charts); and spreadsheets (with comments and explanatory notes). In general, the study was motivated by the following reasons: - (a) seasonality nature of the manufacturing volumes of buses in South Africa; (b) fragmentation nature of the bus building industry; (c) lack of available uniform performance measures of services provided by bus building companies; (d) lack of government manufacturing support program (i.e. almost the same as those that exist for car manufacturing in South Africa – MIDP). The re-focus of government transportation activities, moving peoples away from personal cars to buses; rail; and taxis - made the study even more important. The study will also serve as a benchmark measure of their services as they are at the moment. It will also help those bus manufacturing companies that are not well geared towards competiveness. It further contribute to the body of knowledge as there are limited studies (of this nature) being done in South Africa. Thus, for investors who wish to enter the bus building industry in South Africa; the study will prove to be very helpful in terms of the service status quo provided by bus building companies.

The dynamic changes in the manufacturing sector have increased the competition between the industries. To sustain these disruptive changes and maintain competitiveness in the global market, companies need to continually improve their production performance, successfully developing and implementing innovative production practices, and producing high-quality products in shorter lead times at optimum costs. The variations and fluctuations in customer demands can be satisfied by introducing new technologies into manufacturing systems, which brings in varying flexibility and agility character into production. Introduction of robots in manufacturing system have increased the productivity and quality of the processes. Effective and efficient programming helps achieve flexibility in the production process because the robot programming aids the robot to perform various tasks and motion. ABB RobotStudio is one type of offline programming and simulation software that helps in stimulating the robot using a Virtual Robot controller. The simulation tool lets users recreate the production environment and program a robot and calculate the cycle time without a real robot.   This case study's objective is used to evaluate the aspect of simulation to be integrated into the case company's production development process and the use of simulation in optimizing the robot cell. Therefore, a case study was conducted at LEAX Group AB, a manufacturing industry. ABB RobotStudio was a tool used in this case study to simulate the existing production system.    The empirical findings have shown the mapping of flow and process mapping of the robot cell in LEAX Group. The empirical part highlights the building of the existing simulation model of the robot cell. The challenges faced while simulating the model are also discussed. The analysis part highlights the optimization of the robot cell and the integration of the simulation model into the production development process. Finally, a conclusion has been drawn by answering two research questions, and a recommendation is given. The conclusion highlights the integration of simulation in the production development process and the process of optimizing the robot cell.

This study was designed to determine the effective internal communication methods and media for knowledge transfer in the manufacturing industry. The research involved the collection of quantitative data through non-probability, convenience sampling. The data was collected using survey questionnaires at three companies in the manufacturing industry namely; Exxaro FerroAlloys, Tubatse Chrome and Amalgamated Beverage Industries. The data was analysed using descriptive and univariate statistical techniques. The study showed that push communication methods and high-media rich communication is preferred for transferring information/explicit knowledge in the manufacturing industry. The most preferred communication methods (top three) for information/explicit knowledge transfer were email followed by newsletters and compulsory meetings. The importance of media richness in transferring tacit knowledge was shown. The study found that High-media rich communication, especially face-to-face, was preferred to transfer and share tacit knowledge. These findings were discussed in the context of existing literature and a number of recommendations were made. Copyright / Dissertation (MBA)--University of Pretoria, 2010. / Gordon Institute of Business Science (GIBS) / unrestricted

Nowadays, there is a growing need to consider crisis management in organizations due to an increased occurrence of crises in our society. Manufacturing organizations are often affected by crises due to their supply chain reliance and many small-medium sized enterprises (SMEs) do not have the resources to work with crisis management. There is an identified lack of research regarding how manufacturing SMEs work with crisis management and how the particularities of the manufacturing industry and the specific characteristics and reliance of resources of SMEs can affect crisis management. The purpose of this thesis is to increase the understanding of strategic crisis management in manufacturing SMEs. The thesis outlines different strategic crisis management models which includes the crisis processes of detection, occurrence, and recovery. To understand the practices of manufacturing SMEs, a qualitative study was conducted through 8 eight semi-structured interviews with respondents from Sweden and Switzerland. The thesis discuss the findings of the crisis management carried out by the manufacturing SMEs and existing crisis management models for SMEs and Chinese large- and medium-sized manufacturing enterprises (CLMMEs). The paper concludes that manufacturing SMEs are affected economically by the Covid-19 pandemic crisis. The most common impacts include a decrease in orders and delivery delays. Furthermore, the research provides a contribution to the understanding of how manufacturing SMEs deal and work with crises. The most identified practices were market diversification, active communication with stakeholders, cost reduction and crisis recap.Findings also showed that manufacturing SMEs worked with pre-event planning as an essential part of their crisis management. The paper further proposes a strategic crisis management model for manufacturing SMEs.

Motivated by the environment of their country, Colombia, the co-authors present in this paper a research and analysis about the Manufacturing Industry (MI) and its relation to the growth of the economy in the different sectors of their country. Industrial innovation is key to competitiveness and development of economies; therefore, Corporate Entrepreneurship (CE) is seen by the co-authors as an answer for the Manufacturing Industry in order to keep on bringing value to the society and its related sectors. To have an approach to this CE analysis, theoretical framework used in the research is based in the Four Models of CE presented by Wolcott and Lippitz (Wolcott, 2010). Within the paper, it will be introduced the Opportunist, Enable, Advocate and Producer Model as conceived by them. No surprises were found when looking to the actual state of the companies in the MI, those with more budgets are the ones that invest more in innovation and the small ones are more conservatives in the topic. As part of the response to the research question, the co-authors established the path for the different company types in order for them to have an easy way to build CE.

Thesis advisor: Sarah Babb / How does the “World Factory” mediate between the rising labor cost and the intensive order fluctuation to maintain its production? While previous studies have focused on the politics of production at workplace and types of flexible employment to explain the effective control of workers and labor cost, this study argues that more attention needs to be paid to the intermediating power of labor market agencies, which has become the organizational forces for establishing informal and nonstandard employment relations. Based on two-month fieldwork at two labor staffing agencies in Shanghai and a yearlong track of changing labor prices in one of the agencies, this study finds that a flexible hiring system based on seasonal production has been established to maximize the adaptability of the manufacturing industry. This recruiting practice, through adjusting economic incentives and obscuring labor contracts, enables the market to relocate workers into different factories as production requires, thereby redistributing the total workforce under labor shortage. While workers consent to these arrangements because of high economic rewards, they also highlight doing temporary jobs as exercising control over their labor power, a strategic tool to detach themselves from the rigorous factory regime. / Thesis (MA) — Boston College, 2020. / Submitted to: Boston College. Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: Sociology.

El texto completo de este trabajo no está disponible en el Repositorio Académico UPC por restricciones de la casa editorial donde ha sido publicado. / Even though there is a high demand for clothing articles in the market, they do not meet quality standards. This can be appreciated after the clothes are washed and dried and the study revealed that over 20% of the items were returned each month. This occurs when the acquisition of raw materials is focused exclusively on the price. Thus, there are no requirements for compliance with any technical specifications that would enable the production process to be equipped with quality raw materials. Additionally, the absence of control over the quantity of consumables based on demand generates reprocessed inventory, thus damaging the fabric. Therefore, the proposed model was made through the Lean Six Sigma method to reduce waste and meet client requirements. The results were a decrease in returns by over 16.5% and an increase in productivity by 28.5%.

Purpose – The purpose of this study is to enhance the understanding about the barriers to electrifying the truck industry in Southeast Asia. It is also to identify the main barriers of the electrification of the truck market in Southeast Asia and how they can be managed.  Method – The study uses an exploratory single-case study approach, the research relied on the collection of qualitative data from semi-structured interviews conducted with 18 participants. The data collected was analyzed with an abductive analysis approach by using a thematic analysis where codes, sub-themes and themes were identified.  Findings – The findings of the study were mainly that there is a need to work with public affairs to get the government to invest in ‘charging infrastructure’ and get financial support such as subsidies or carbon taxes. The organizations in the industry must also collaborate to create a driving force to make the transition possible by sharing knowledge and investing in new technology. We also concluded that there is a need to create awareness about the importance of sustainability and why electric trucks are a needed product. There is also a need to spread knowledge about the product itself to reduce the ‘operational reliability’ that exists among the people in the markets.  Research limitation/implications - The case study was a single case study and was conducted on a specific truck manufacturing company and its stakeholders in a particular region. This may have limited the study, as the challenges may vary for different companies. The study contributes to the electrification of trucks and challenges of sustainable innovations literature with enhanced knowledge about how to manage the barriers to enable the transition to electric trucks in Southeast Asia. It also provides barrier management guidance for truck manufacturing companies that operate in the region.    Originality/value - The study contributes an increased understanding of the barriers to the electrification of trucks in Southeast Asia and how they can be managed to speed up the transition.

The purpose of this study is to examine how the company work to prevent alienationamong the employees. One very important part of this is how the leadership works in theexamined company and we have studied the leadership as a tool to prevent alienation.When we went through previous research on the subject, we found that the companypractice transformative leadership and we included that theory to our work. Furthermore,we investigate to what extent the various leaders practice transformative leadership howthis is connected to alienation. Finally, whether the company's high-performance teamscan be seen as successful and whether the success is linked to transformative leadership.The empirical data was collected by interviewing twelve people in the company, sevenmanagers and five co-workers. The analysis was made in two steps. First we examinedhow the company’s leadership model work and if it’s connected to the high-performanceteams. (Forslund, 2022). Second, how this effects the alienation at the company. Theresult was that transformative leadership indeed is included in the company’s leadershipmodel. Furthermore, we could conclude that the leaders in the company did practisetransformative leadership, even though the level varied a little between the individualleaders. The transformative leadership is effective in preventing alienation and weconclude that it is the most important tool in the process of preventing that. Finally, wesee that the company’s model, and practise of leadership is successful.

Diss. Göteborg : Univ., 2002.