The global financial crisis has significantly impacted the automotive industry with reduced supply of credit to industry exposing their process inefficiencies and reduced credit to consumers reducing sales. Firms are restructuring, with some seeking government financial support, but the industry...

Build to Order [BTO] refers to a demand driven production approach where the majority of products and components are scheduled and built in response to a confirmed order received for it from a final customer. This paper develops an Engineering Systems approach to strategic adoption of a BTO...

Vehicle manufacturers build the majority of vehicles to a sales forecast and links between production and final customer orders are tenuous. A greater percentage of build to order (BTO) vehicle production may offer the European automotive industry a competitive edge. The EU and industry funded...

Faced with shorter product lifecycles and increased cost of capital, companies can no longer afford the capital outlay for new facilities which may become underutilised as processes improve over the first few years of operation. Outsourcing production capacity can remove this uncertainty....

Governments around the world, but especially in Europe, have increasingly used private sector involvement in developing, financing and providing public health infrastructure and service delivery through public-private partnerships (PPPs). Reasons for this uptake are manifold ranging from rising...

Processes of servitization will lead providers to change their service delivery structures but they also need to transform broader organisational attributes including contractual and relational capabilities. Based on case studies in the European healthcare sector, we investigate the influence of...

Responsible supply chain management (RSCM) can help protect a firm's corporate reputation by shielding it from negative media attention and consumer boycotts. RSCM can also enhance a firm's corporate reputation, which allows firms to secure business contracts and penetrate new market segments...