Productization as Enabler of Modular Costing: Towards Understanding Plant Productization
Jantunen, Erkki (2017)
Jantunen, Erkki
2017
Tuotantotalous
Talouden ja rakentamisen tiedekunta - Faculty of Business and Built Environment
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Hyväksymispäivämäärä
2017-06-07
Julkaisun pysyvä osoite on
https://urn.fi/URN:NBN:fi:tty-201705261526
https://urn.fi/URN:NBN:fi:tty-201705261526
Tiivistelmä
Companies offering industrial plants battle with the complexity of their product and with defining and delivering the right solution for the customer. These Engineering-to-Order companies are facing constantly increasing competition and they are searching ways to reduce the complexity of their offering, and to be more efficient in selling and delivering industrial plants, and therefore gain competitive advantage. In the field of industrial plants, the productization of plant products in practice is witnessed. However, in the literature of productization there is lack of research associated with engineering dominated fields of business and productization in practice.
This study was conducted to fill the gap in the literature of productization around engineering dominated fields and introduce the practice of productization in industrial plant context. For this purpose, the objective of this thesis was to define a concept of plant productization and to analyze its key characteristics. This study was based on a project where a company, delivering large process equipment and industrial plants, investigated the possibilities of modular costing to improve its ability to create cost estimates for proposals.
To address the objective of this thesis, a theoretical review of the literature of productization and the related fields of research was conducted. Based on the literature review, a framework for analyzing plant productization was designed. The data on plant productization was based on semi-structured theme interviews of practitioners of plant productization and documents related to the plant productization activities.
The important findings of this thesis were the following: Plant productization is understood as product development and it is governed with product development process. It demands knowledge from several plant related engineering disciplines. Plant productization is a market driven activity with objective to define standard plant product but with scalability and optionality. The outputs of plant production are technical and sales related documentation. This documentation is the concretized output of plant productization. These outputs enable the creation of cost estimation tools that can be used for deterministic cost estimations. Plant productization created value for the customer when the engineering work of the predefined plant product shortens the delivery schedule. The case company experienced value in its more efficient sales process when cost estimates and proposals were created with increased accuracy in a shorter time. Plant productization also improved the credibility of the company as a provider of industrial plants in the eyes of the customer.
This study was conducted to fill the gap in the literature of productization around engineering dominated fields and introduce the practice of productization in industrial plant context. For this purpose, the objective of this thesis was to define a concept of plant productization and to analyze its key characteristics. This study was based on a project where a company, delivering large process equipment and industrial plants, investigated the possibilities of modular costing to improve its ability to create cost estimates for proposals.
To address the objective of this thesis, a theoretical review of the literature of productization and the related fields of research was conducted. Based on the literature review, a framework for analyzing plant productization was designed. The data on plant productization was based on semi-structured theme interviews of practitioners of plant productization and documents related to the plant productization activities.
The important findings of this thesis were the following: Plant productization is understood as product development and it is governed with product development process. It demands knowledge from several plant related engineering disciplines. Plant productization is a market driven activity with objective to define standard plant product but with scalability and optionality. The outputs of plant production are technical and sales related documentation. This documentation is the concretized output of plant productization. These outputs enable the creation of cost estimation tools that can be used for deterministic cost estimations. Plant productization created value for the customer when the engineering work of the predefined plant product shortens the delivery schedule. The case company experienced value in its more efficient sales process when cost estimates and proposals were created with increased accuracy in a shorter time. Plant productization also improved the credibility of the company as a provider of industrial plants in the eyes of the customer.