Andamios

In was discussed in the Context chapter, that there is an opportunity to provide support that is widely accessible and targeted at the whole manufacturing industry. In 2009, there were 303,245 manufacturing enterprises [20]. Therefore there are a significant number of companies that this work is aiming to be able to potentially provide support to.

Defining such a large scope has its limitations however. The aim of this research is to provide support to all the different types of manufacturing companies. These differences include aspects such as size and industry type (sub-sectors). Therefore the support provided will be of a generic nature in order to be relevant to all companies.

5.4.1 Resources available

The scope of this research is wide in terms of who the support is targeted at. However, there are limited resources available, particularly on-going resources to support such a tool. Therefore an assumption has been made that there will be limited or no on-going funding past the completion of this research.

The support however must be able to be provided beyond the timeline of this research. It is unlikely that the time scale of this work would be able to cater for the potential number of

attract companies to use it. Therefore to make an impact on the manufacturing industry, a sustainable tool is required. Sustainability refers to the ability of the tool to operate on limited resources whilst continuing to provide support. Given that the definition of excellence was found to be dynamic, there must also be a low resource mechanism for updating the content of the support provided, in order to ensure it remains relevant.

There are options to enable the on-going resources to be increased. These include charging for the support or finding other resources such as grants. However, the ethos of the support is for it to be accessible to any company. Charging a fee for use is in opposition to this vision as any cost may be a barrier for some companies to use the tool. Grants are accompanied by their own limitations such as restricted time frame for expenditure. Therefore the support must be able to be provided without the need for significant on-going resources in order to ensure access can remain free of charge and to enable the support to be available for a long period of time.

In summary, the limited on-going resources mean that the support must be provided via a low resource mechanism and in order for it to be accessible; it must also be free of charge for companies to use.

5.4.2 Dissemination of best practice

At the core of the support this research aims to provide is the dissemination of best practice. Jarrar and Zairi compiled a framework of best practice transfer based on successful case studies from literature [69]. This framework encompasses six key stages which are summarised below:

5. Reviewing: Ensuring the practices achieved the targeted benefits

6. Routinising: Embedding the best practice in the culture of the company

[69]

This research is primarily concerned with stage one of the framework, supporting companies to find and understand best practice. Stages two to six are focused on what a company should do internally once these best practices have been identified. This does not mean that stages two to six should be ignored. Once companies are aware of best practices, they will then need to continue to evaluate, validate and transfer these best practices into their own business context. Therefore whilst this work is primarily concerned with the first stage, there must be consideration of the subsequent stages required to make changes. Without such consideration there is limited scope for companies to adopt and adapt any of the best practices and therefore it would be unlikely any improvement would be made.

The consideration of the stages beyond the initial searching is particularly pertinent given the concern raised earlier regarding the generic nature of the support provided. There is an opportunity for the process to help with the evaluation and validation stages. This can be achieved through helping companies to understand where they might benefit from best practice and where the key areas for improvement might lie. Therefore there must be a balance between providing support that is applicable to all companies and helping companies to translate this data into meaningful information for their own business circumstances.

5.4.3 Benchmarking

The aim of this work is to provide an approach that manufacturing companies can use to understand what manufacturing excellence and best practice is. This can be considered as a type of benchmarking. The Oxford English Dictionary (OED) defines benchmarking as:

[54]

This definition cites that comparisons occur between two different businesses. However there are many definitions of benchmarking across the literature and these encompass comparisons made internally [70] and with external companies ([71], [72], [73], [74]). There are many classifications of benchmarking. Fong conducted a review and summarised the key classifications. As shown in Figure 5-1, there are three main groups of classifications. These are concerned with who the benchmark is with, what is being benchmarked and the purpose of the benchmarking. More details regarding the classification are given in Appendix 6.

Figure 5-1 Classifications of benchmarking, Fong et al [1]

From the detailed classifications in Appendix 6, this research work can be defined as benchmarking against generic best practices (as defined by the Manufacturing Excellence

WHO

other(s)

WHY

benchmarking

WHAT

result of this process, companies will then go on to implement changes to make improvements.