Improving the Management of Global Manufacturing Ramp-ups
Isosaari, Lauri (2012)
2012
Konetekniikan koulutusohjelma
Automaatio-, kone- ja materiaalitekniikan tiedekunta - Faculty of Automation, Mechanical and Materials Engineering
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Hyväksymispäivämäärä
2012-04-04
Julkaisun pysyvä osoite on
https://urn.fi/URN:NBN:fi:tty-201205151114
https://urn.fi/URN:NBN:fi:tty-201205151114
Tiivistelmä
All trade becomes more international and the business environment is under constant change. The rapid global ramp-up of new products is becoming a more important success factor from the point of view of the entire product life cycle. The target of this study is to offer methods to improve a case company’s global ramp-up procedures and to develop new practices to solve the most typical challenges in those projects.
The literature review presents the relevant theory concerning local and global ramp-ups. The main source of the theoretical information was literature covering the areas of new product introduction, project management and multi-cultural leadership. The field of study concerning the ramp-ups is relatively young, but offers a moderate amount of practices and examples. The field of global ramp-ups on the other hand cannot yet afford much, but is under growing interest of researchers.
This is a case study whose research subject is a multinational corporation of electrical engineering. The ramp-up practices and procedures used by the company have been studied using interviews, internal documents and a questionnaire sent to the employees with ramp-up experience. The objective was to find methods to develop the company’s current global ramp-up model with the help of own observations and solutions offered by the literature.
The disturbances and challenges mentioned in the literature review correspond well with the observations concerning the company’s earlier projects. Only the mutual weighting is different. Meanwhile the theoretical solutions cannot be seen to be perfectly suitable for the company. This is due to the industry specific suggestions, special characteristics of the factories and major benefits resulting from local adaptation. It was detected that during a global ramp-up there is a strong need for transferring knowledge and information between the different factories. The literature concerning global manufacturing ramp-ups should underline the observed management related aspects much better.
The recommendations for the case company focus on solutions to improve cooperation between the projects, methods to improve international relationships and a suggestion to develop a standardized start-up process for the international projects.
The literature review presents the relevant theory concerning local and global ramp-ups. The main source of the theoretical information was literature covering the areas of new product introduction, project management and multi-cultural leadership. The field of study concerning the ramp-ups is relatively young, but offers a moderate amount of practices and examples. The field of global ramp-ups on the other hand cannot yet afford much, but is under growing interest of researchers.
This is a case study whose research subject is a multinational corporation of electrical engineering. The ramp-up practices and procedures used by the company have been studied using interviews, internal documents and a questionnaire sent to the employees with ramp-up experience. The objective was to find methods to develop the company’s current global ramp-up model with the help of own observations and solutions offered by the literature.
The disturbances and challenges mentioned in the literature review correspond well with the observations concerning the company’s earlier projects. Only the mutual weighting is different. Meanwhile the theoretical solutions cannot be seen to be perfectly suitable for the company. This is due to the industry specific suggestions, special characteristics of the factories and major benefits resulting from local adaptation. It was detected that during a global ramp-up there is a strong need for transferring knowledge and information between the different factories. The literature concerning global manufacturing ramp-ups should underline the observed management related aspects much better.
The recommendations for the case company focus on solutions to improve cooperation between the projects, methods to improve international relationships and a suggestion to develop a standardized start-up process for the international projects.