1,720,992 research outputs found
Manufacturing Execution System in Industry 4.0 Era: From Implementation to Impacts on Job Design
No full textThe spread of Industry 4.0 in recent years has been remarkable in Europe, mainly due to the investments and incentives provided to upgrade manufacturing companies' production processes. This study focuses on the application of the Manufacturing Execution System (MES), often identified as an enabler of Industry 4.0. The first objective of the study is to explore the actual deployment of MES technology in manufacturing organizations and identify any links to the adoption of 4.0 enabling technologies. Second, the research aims to understand the potential impacts of MES on job design and outcomes considering the manufacturing workforce. To achieve these goals, the research is based on a mixed method that can combine the advantages of the quantitative approach with those of the qualitative one. The results of the study show how the implementation of a new technology, in the Indusrty 4.0 context, can have significant effects on the autonomy, variety and relevance of work and consequently how it can improve performance, motivation and satisfaction of workers. Where digitalization is often seen as a threat, our paper instead shows its positive side, while highlighting under what conditions this “good” dimension prevails
How do industry 4.0 technologies influence organisational change? An empirical analysis of Italian SMEs
No full textPurpose: This article aims to investigate the organisational implications of adopting Industry 4.0 (I4.0) technologies, giving specific attention to operations. The paper addresses these implications in two directions: organisational prerequisites for, and consequences of, I4.0 technologies. Design/methodology/approach: The research is based on a multiple case study of Italian small and medium enterprises (SMEs) in manufacturing. Ten case studies have been developed through interviews, company visits and secondary data collection. Findings: The multiple case study results show that: (1) a lean organisational structure supports effective adoption of I4.0 technologies; (2) introducing such technologies is linked to developing a new kind of job profile (i.e. the “Autonomous Operative Job Profile”); and (3) higher levels of technology adoption create a higher need for non-technical competences. Research limitations/implications: A limitation of this research relates to the highly heterogeneous maturity levels of the sampled companies, due to the relative newness of the I4.0 paradigm. Future research could, therefore, longitudinally analyse the technology integration process within organisations. Practical implications: This research provides preliminary evidence about how organisations and technologies co-evolve, thus suggesting that managers should co-design these areas. It also demonstrates the extreme importance of designing a structured process and a clear set of human resource management tools to favour SME organisational development. Originality/value: The study is built upon a conceptual framework derived from the sociotechnical perspective that analyses the interconnections between technology implementation and organisational change. From the results, three research propositions are derived to be tested on a larger scale
Post-pandemic reconfiguration from global to domestic and regional value chains: The role of industrial policies
Full text linkThe COVID-19 pandemic is expected to trigger a reconfiguration of global value chains according to four alternative trajectories: reshoring, regionalization, replication and diversification. This paper focuses on the first two scenarios. On the basis of a review of the extant reshoring literature and policies implemented in several major developed and emerging economies, we present a comprehensive framework to classify and analyse the evolution of such policies before and after the pandemic. The paper develops some policy recommendations suggesting that reshoring policies need to be supported by and combined with industrial policies enforcing the competitiveness and sustainability of production systems
Post-pandemic reconfiguration from global to domestic and regional value chains: The role of industrial policies
Full text linkThe COVID-19 pandemic is expected to trigger a reconfiguration of global value chains according to four alternative trajectories: reshoring, regionalization, replication and diversification. This paper focuses on the first two scenarios. On the basis of a review of the extant reshoring literature and policies implemented in several major developed and emerging economies, we present a comprehensive framework to classify and analyse the evolution of such policies before and after the pandemic. The paper develops some policy recommendations suggesting that reshoring policies need to be supported by and combined with industrial policies enforcing the competitiveness and sustainability of production systems
Navigating the socio-technical impacts of purchasing digitalisation: A multiple-case study
No full textThe wave of digitalisation is impacting companies at multiple levels. Beside the most researched impacts on manufacturing, also other business functions are subjected to the change. Among them, purchasing is expected to greatly benefit from digitalisation, if properly managed. This research analyses the digitalisation of the purchasing process, in terms of how and why it happens, and the co-evolution which is triggered on the social dimension. A multiple-case study approach is adopted, analysing eight companies from industries characterized by different digital intensity levels but all at a relatively advanced stage of digitalisation of the purchasing department. The results show how different technological innovation approaches (i.e., automation and/or augmentation) impact the evolution of the purchasing department's social dimension in terms of autonomy, job enlargement, competences, internal and external collaboration. A new framework describing how automation and augmentation impact on purchasing social dimension, as well as purchasing efficiency and effectiveness, is proposed as main theoretical contribution. The study combines the socio-technical systems perspective with the automation-augmentation paradox and describe the strong relationship between purchasing departments' social and technical dimensions, offering managers insights on handling a purchasing digitalisation process, simultaneously managing the technical and social dimensions impacted along the process
A case survey of offshoring–backshoring cases: The influence of contingency factors
No full textThis study aims at investigating the influence of contingency factors on the drivers of offshoring and backshoring decision processes. A case survey of existing case studies on backshoring was performed with qualitative comparative analysis (QCA). In total, 43 cases from 16 research papers were analyzed. The results showed that many factors act as contingencies for the backshoring decision, namely, company size, industry, home region, host region, and governance modes for off- and backshoring. In addition, there are connections between the backshoring decision and the previous offshoring decision. The study revealed three main patterns, such that the offshoring decision can be linked to the following backshoring, in the sense that offshoring for specific purposes leads to backshoring because of other specific reasons. In the end, 15 different configurations, including clusters of offshoring drivers, as well as significant contingency factors, were identified to explain offshoring – backshoring patterns. Thus, this study provides the first attempt to shed light on the causality between offshoring and subsequent backshoring decisions and highlights the importance of researchers building on each other's efforts to make empirical evidence comparable and advance the knowledge within this emerging field
How does Industry 4.0 affect international exposure? The interplay between firm innovation and home-country policies in post-offshoring relocation decisions
Full text linkThis paper investigates whether and how Industry 4.0 innovation intensity, which is developed through patenting and which provides a firm-specific ownership advantage, relates to “relocation of second degree” (RSD) of manufacturing activities, i.e. the movement of previously offshored activities to either the home country (RHC) or a third country (RTC), thus representing a reconfiguration of the firm's extant international exposure. Moreover, we analyse the role of Industry 4.0 policies adopted in the home country, which offers a location advantage that can possibly moderate this relationship. Our findings, based on a sample of 118 RSDs implemented by European companies, reveal that both Industry 4.0 innovation intensity (at the firm level) and policies (at home-country level) have an impact, with the former pushing firms towards RTC, unless the latter are in place at the home country, thus showing the pivotal role of Industry 4.0 policies in re-attracting Industry 4.0 innovative companies in their country of origin
Which governance structures drive economic, environmental, and social upgrading? A quantitative analysis in the assembly industries
No full textAs industries are becoming increasingly global, researchers and practitioners are compelled to look at supply chains (SCs) from a global perspective. In this respect, the Global Value Chain (GVC) framework is particularly useful in understanding global dynamics because it relates the nature of relationships between firms (governance) to the possibilities for firms to move toward higher value-added activities (upgrading). Whereas the literature to date has explored these issues via qualitative approaches, this paper explores the effect that different forms of governance with suppliers and customers have on economic (product, process, functional), environmental and social upgrading based on an analysis of the International Manufacturing Strategy Survey (IMSS) data. The results show that participating to GVCs supports only some forms of upgrading and only under specific governance structures
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Full text linkThe present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
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