Abstract
The Finnish chemical forest industry has undergone a profound
structural change over the past two decades. The basic industry
is increasingly focusing its product development investments on
its own products and operations while the development of processes
and process machinery is left to specialised companies. At the same
time the purchases of the pulp and paper industry are becoming larger:
there is a shift from single device purchases to larger functional
units.
This research studies the Finnish process machinery industry
serving the needs of the pulp and paper industry and its product
development environment and strategies, and evaluates the ability
of selected case companies to design integrated process solutions. Particularly
the role of measurement and automation technology in these solutions
is under closer scrutiny. Aspects of product life cycles and technology
management, together with various procedures and operating models
for innovation and product development processes, are discussed
on the basis of the literature. The empirical part of the research
was carried out as a case study with several Finnish companies manufacturing machinery
and equipment for the chemical forest industry.
The results show that the strategies of the studied industry
are still very much dominated by the traditional emphasis on machinery
design and construction. The change in the customers' purchasing
behaviour towards ever larger units and functions is reflected particularly
as increasingly large delivery projects. The units required by the
customers are put together in the project phase, using parts and
components developed in isolation from each other. There is very
little evidence of actual product development, design or producing
of integrated process solutions. In those cases where the design
work has explicitly aimed at an integrated functional unit, the
result has been a process that the customer can easily purchase
and where the supplier's expertise in processes and process control
is already included in the package.
Designing integrated process solutions takes more than technical
expertise and capability: the strategy, organisation, and product
development process of the supplier company must support the integration
of different technologies and expertise areas in the product. Instead
of the traditional serial product development it is imperative that
the questions of process design, process machinery, and process
control are treated and solved simultaneously. The in-house expertise
and networking of research and development must be promoted in such
a way that the capabilities necessary to include the required technologies
and expertise areas in a product project are already available when the
product is being specified and designed.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:oulo.fi/oai:oulu.fi:isbn951-42-5270-5 |
| Date | 25 May 1999 |
| Creators | Kauppinen, S. (Sakari) |
| Publisher | University of Oulu |
| Source Sets | University of Oulu |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | info:eu-repo/semantics/doctoralThesis, info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersion |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Rights | info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess, © University of Oulu, 1999 |
| Relation | info:eu-repo/semantics/altIdentifier/pissn/0355-3213, info:eu-repo/semantics/altIdentifier/eissn/1796-2226 |
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