Technology transfer within MNEs: An investigation of inter-subsidiary competition and cooperation

Much theory and research that seeks to explain why and how technology transfers occur within multinational enterprises (MNEs) actually addresses the question of how these transfers occur among cooperative subsidiaries, and relies on the assumption of inter-subsidiary cooperation. However, subsidiaries do not always cooperate. We suggest that the success of technology transfer among subsidiaries depends on the extent to which the relationships among an MNE's subsidiaries (i.e. inter-subsidiary) are competitive or cooperative. Inter-subsidiary cooperation is determined by the MNE's international strategy, organizational structure, and the social relationships among subsidiaries. Both hierarchical and social relational factors drive the potential for inter-subsidiary multimarket competition that originates from the overlap on the subsidiaries' products, technologies, and market portfolios.technology transfer, subsidiaries, competition and cooperation, international strategy

Culture and e-commerce: An exploration of the perceptions and attitudes of Egyptian internet users

This paper examines the perceptions and attitudes that Egyptian users hold towards electronic shopping sites. Internet sites are globally available, opening up huge potential markets for online retailers. However, it remains unclear whether sites designed for the US or European markets will be acceptable in other cultures. This paper describes an exploratory card sorting study conducted with Egyptian consumers. The study was designed to examine the e-commerce interface features that are most salient to this user group and to explore how these relate to user intentions to engage in internet shopping. The results support the role of site familiarity in predicting purchase intentions within this cultural setting

New Product development in a platform-driven organization : Towards platform lifecycle management

Platform product development is now widely used to tackle the cost-variety dilemma. In this work, we questioned the planning hypothesis underlying most of the research on platform design. Using an inductive methodology, we analyzed the first phase of a product development belonging to the second generation of a product based on an existing platform. This led to three results. We pointed out the existence of platform design principles. We also brought up how a design based on an existing platform modifies the traditional V-model, which structures the design process organization. Eventually we outlined the question of the platform renewal and its impact on platform's architecture and flexibility.gestion projet;Conception;Gestion des plateformes;Industrie automobile

모듈러 제품군 운영을 위한 다양성 관리 방법론

학위논문 (박사) -- 서울대학교 대학원 : 공과대학 산업공학과, 2021. 2. 홍유석.글로벌 제조업체들은 다양한 제품을 출시하기 위해 모듈러 디자인 전략을 제품개발에 적용해왔다. 모듈러 디자인 전략은 제품을 모듈 단위로 구분한 후, 여러 종류의 모듈을 조합하여 새로운 제품을 만드는 전략이다. 모듈러 디자인은 제조업체가 제품다양성을 달성할 수 있도록 하였지만, 제공하는 제품의 수가 무수히 많아지면서 제품다양성으로 인한 안 좋은 영향들이 설계 영역뿐만 아니라, 시장, 생산 영역에서 지속적으로 발생하고 있는 실정이다. 따라서, 본 논문에서는 제품다양성의 안 좋은 영향을 줄일 수 있도록 이를 체계적으로 개발하고 운영하는 다양성 관리(variety management) 방법론을 제안한다. 다양성 관리를 성공적으로 수행하기 위해서는 교차영역 관점과 변종 수준 관점의 접근이 필요하다. 교차영역 관점은 제품다양성이 영향을 미치는 시장, 설계, 생산 영역의 요소들의 연결관계를 정립하는 메커니즘을 제공하며, 변종 수준 관점은 일반적인 요소(elements) 수준에서 한 단계 내려가 다양성 관리에 실제 문제가 되는 각 요소들의 변종들(variants)을 체계적으로 관리할 수 있도록 한다. 이 두 가지 관점에서, 본 논문은 다양성 관리에서 중요하게 다루어야 할 세 가지 과제–예상치 못한 변종의 발생 방지, 설계 복잡성 감축, 시장 점유율과 복잡성 비용 사이의 균형 잡기–를 해결하기 위한 방법론을 제안한다. 첫 번째 주제에서는, 아키텍처 기반의 접근법을 활용한 변종 관리 아키텍처(VA, variation architecture)를 도입하여 예상치 못한 변종의 발생을 방지하고자 한다. 개발 아키텍처는 모듈러 제품군을 개발할 때 사용하는 일종의 참조 아키텍처로, 시장 속성, 설계 모듈, 생산 설비의 연결관계를 정의하는 교차영역 연결 메커니즘을 제공한다. 변종 관리 아키텍처에서는 일반 수준의 계획과 변종 수준의 계획을 함께 세울 수 있다. 일반 수준에서는 요소 간 연결관계의 종류를 정의하여 제품군의 다양성 수준을 결정하고, 변종 수준에서는 변종들 간의 조합 규칙을 설정하여 불필요한 변종의 발생을 최소화한다. 또한, 본 연구에서는 제조업체가 변종 관리 아키텍처를 활용할 수 있도록 아키텍처 구축 프레임워크를 제안한다. 사례 연구에서는 자동차 프론트섀시 제품군을 통해 제품 및 변종의 수를 상당히 줄일 수 있음을 보여 줌으로써 프레임워크의 실용성을 검증한다. 다음으로, 인터페이스 표준화 개념을 적용하여 변종들 간의 복잡한 관계로부터 발생하는 설계 복잡성을 줄이는 연구를 수행한다. 본 연구에서 제안하는 인터페이스 설계 방법론은 하나가 아닌 다수의 표준 인터페이스를 사용하도록 허용한다. 모듈 변종들을 연결하기 위해 다수의 인터페이스를 도입하면, 인터페이스의 수와 적용범위에 따라 모듈러 제품군의 전체 구조가 달라지고 설계 복잡성 또한 다양한 양상으로 발생한다. 이를 측정하기 위해, 본 연구에서는 인터페이스의 선택에 영향을 받는 두 가지 복잡성 지표를–인터페이스 표준화 복잡성과 통합 복잡성을–정의한다. 인터페이스 표준화 복잡성은 표준 인터페이스를 설계할 때, 모듈 변종 설계자 간의 조율에 필요한 맨아워(person-hour)를 계산하고, 통합 복잡성은 각각의 모듈 변종과 인터페이스를 통합된 제품으로 설계하는데 필요로 하는 노력의 양으로, 위상적 복잡성(topological complexity) 지표를 기반으로 측정한다. 본 연구에서는 두 가지 복잡성을 최소화하는 인터페이스 설계 대안을 찾기 위한 프레임워크를 제공한다. 사례 연구에서 이의 적용성을 보여주기 위해 프론트섀시 제품군에 맞는 최적의 인터페이스 수와 제품군 구조를 도출한다. 마지막 주제에서는, 시장 점유율과 복잡성 비용의 균형을 맞추는 최적 제품 종수를 찾기 위한 최적화 모델을 개발한다. 최적화 모델은 제품을 구성하는 모듈 변종을 기반으로 모델링되고, 제품 및 모듈 종수가 증가함에 따라 시장 점유율의 증가분이 줄어들고, 반대로 복잡성 비용의 증가분은 늘어나는 특성을 반영한다. 시장 점유율을 구하기 위해 네스티드 로짓 모델(nested logit model)을 기반으로 하는 수요 모델을 개발한다. 네스티드 로짓 모델에서는 동일 제품군 내 제품들의 유사성을 고려하여 시장 점유율의 증가분이 줄어드는 특성을 반영한다. 다음으로, 제로베이스 원가계산 접근법(zero-based costing approach)을 활용한 복잡성 비용 모델을 도입한다. 이 접근법에서는 제품 혹은 모듈의 종수가 한 단위씩 늘어날 때 발생하는 비용을 단계적으로 계산하는 방법을 사용한다. 마지막으로, 수요 모델과 복잡성 비용 모델을 합친 최적화 모델(optimization model)을 모델링하여 최적 제품 종수와 제품의 모듈 구성을 도출하는 연구를 수행한다. 사례 연구에서는 민감도 분석을 수행하여 각 상황별 최적해가 어떻게 달라지는 지 보여주어 연구에서 제안하는 모델들의 효과를 검증한다.Global manufacturing companies have been achieving product variety by implementing a modular design strategy in which product variants are created by combining, adding, or substituting modules. Providing a high variety of products, however, causes negative effects not only on design but also on market and production. Variety management that defines the right range of variants is one of the most critical issues for most of the manufacturing companies. This thesis aims to propose methodologies that enable companies to systematically reduce negative effects of variety. In order to achieve successful variety management, this study approaches the issue from two viewpoints: cross-domain and variant-level viewpoints. A cross-domain viewpoint supports establishing relationships between elements in market, design, and production domain that are affected by product variety, and a variant-level viewpoint enables to explicitly manage variants of elements that are the main source of negative effects. In these viewpoints, this thesis focuses on dealing with three important challenges in variety management: to prevent unexpected variants, to reduce design complexity, and to balance market share and complexity cost. In the first theme, an architecture-based approach named variation architecture is introduced to prevent unexpected variants. Variation architecture (VA) is defined as a reference architecture for a modular product family providing the scheme by which variants in market, design, and production domain are arranged by cross-domain mapping mechanisms. The VA consists of generic-level and variant-level plans. At the generic-level, mapping types between domain elements are determined, and at the variant-level, combination rules between variants are set to reduce unexpected variants. Then, a framework is proposed to increase the practicality of the VA so that its compositions are well defined. In the case study, the framework is applied to an automobile front chassis family. The result shows that the number of module variants is significantly reduced compared to the current number of variants in operation. Secondly, the concept of interface standardization is introduced to manage design complexity caused by complicated combinations between module variants. This theme proposes an interface design methodology that addresses multiple standard interfaces in a modular product family. A product family structure is changed by implementing multiple standard interfaces, generating design complexity. This study defines two complexities resulting from the introduction of multiple standard interfaces: standardization effort and integration effort. Standardization effort is estimated as a required person-hours for coordinating module variants to design a standard interface, and integration effort is measured as an effort to integrate all design elements based on the concept of topological complexity. A framework is proposed to identify an optimal product family structure that minimizes the two complexities. In the case study, the proposed framework identifies an optimal structure and the number of standard interfaces for the front chassis family. Then, the study conducts a sensitivity analysis to demonstrate the methodologys applicability in interface management. In the last theme, an optimization model is developed to identify an optimal product variety to balance market share and complexity cost. The model focuses on module variants, not just product variants, because a modular product family creates product variants by combining module variants. The model reflects the trends of concave increase in market share and convex increase in complexity cost as the number of variety increases. A demand model is developed by the nested logit model that shows the concavity of market share based on the similarity of product variants in the same family, and a complexity cost model is constructed by the zero-based costing approach that an incremental cost is estimated as a variant is added. Combining the models, an optimization model is formulated to find an optimal variety and configurations of product variants. The case study demonstrates the models effectiveness by analyzing optimal solutions in various situations.Abstract i Contents iv List of Tables viii List of Figures ix Chapter 1 Introduction 1 1.1 Variety Management 1 1.2 Variety Management Challenges 5 1.3 Research Proposal: How to Deal with the Challenges? 7 1.4 Structure of Thesis 10 Chapter 2 Literature Review 11 2.1 Variety Management Methodologies 11 2.1.1 Modular product family design 11 2.1.2 Product family architecture 13 2.1.3 Classification of the contributions 15 2.2 Modular Design and Complexity 17 2.2.1 Modular design 17 2.2.2 Interface design 19 2.2.3 Design complexity 20 2.3 Product Family Design and Variety 22 2.3.1 Product family design 22 2.3.2 Variety optimization 25 Chapter 3 Variation Architecture for Reducing the Generation of Unexpected Variants 29 3.1 Introduction 29 3.1.1 Generation of unexpected variants 29 3.1.2 Needs for a systematic approach 31 3.2 Variation Architecture (VA) 33 3.2.1 Generic-level planning 34 3.2.2 Variant-level planning 41 3.3 Framework for Planning Product Variety 46 3.4 Application 47 3.4.1 Case description 47 3.4.2 Construction of variation architecture (VA) 49 3.4.3 Result and discussion 53 3.5 Summary 57 Chapter 4 Variant-level Interface Design for Reducing Design Complexity 59 4.1 Introduction 59 4.2 Variant-level Interface Design 61 4.3 Interface Design Complexity 64 4.3.1 Standardization effort 66 4.3.2 Integration effort 71 4.4 Framework for Variant-level Interface Design 76 4.5 Case Study 79 4.5.1 Application of the framework 79 4.5.2 Analysis and discussion 84 4.6 Summary 88 Chapter 5 Optimizing Product Variety for Balancing Market Share and Complexity Cost 91 5.1 Introduction 91 5.2 Evidence of the impact of variety on market share 94 5.3 Planning of Product Configurations 96 5.3.1 Product family architecture 96 5.3.2 Product configuration 98 5.4 Variety Optimization Model 100 5.4.1 Demand model 100 5.4.2 Complexity cost model 104 5.4.3 Optimization model 108 5.5 Case Study 110 5.5.1 Case description 110 5.5.2 Data source 112 5.5.3 Optimization setting 113 5.5.4 Result 115 5.5.5 Discussion 118 5.6 Summary 122 Chapter 6 Conclusion 125 6.1 Summary of Contributions 125 6.2 Limitations and Future Research Directions 127 Bibliography 129 Appendix A Variant-level Plan of a Front Chassis Family 147 Appendix B Adjacency and Combination Matrices of a Front Chassis Family 151 국문초록 155Docto

Comparative study of design: application to Engineering Design

A recent exploratory study examines design processes across domains and compares them. This is achieved through a series of interdisciplinary, participative workshops. A systematic framework is used to collect data from expert witnesses who are practising designers across domains from engineering through architecture to product design and fashion, including film production, pharmaceutical drugs, food, packaging, graphics and multimedia and software. Similarities and differences across domains are described which indicate the types of comparative analysis we have been able to do from our data. The paper goes further and speculates on possible lessons for selected areas of engineering design which can be drawn from comparison with processes in other domains. As such this comparative design study offers the potential for improving engineering design processes. More generally it is a first step in creating a discipline of comparative design which aims to provide a new rich picture of design processes

Cross-case analysis

Prior to the development of low-cost computing and the ease of completing statistical analysis, case studies played a significant role in the development of the social sciences. However, since the mid-1990s statistical modelling and empirically driven work has come to dominate academic literature; yet there remain epistemological similarities between some forms of case study work and statistical modelling. Nonetheless, issues of the qualitative versus quantitative divide and the purported role of value judgments made by the researchers have in part muddied the waters until quite recently, when the researchers using statistical methods started to adopt the use of the first person in their writing and began to recognise that the choice of a given statistical technique is just as surely a value judgment or exercise of experience and expertise as is any interpretation of text by a qualitative researcher. Similarly, qualitative researchers have become increasingly familiar with textual analysis using software programmes based on neural network theory, and a new generation of researchers have become comfortable with a mixed method mode of analysis

Managing design variety, process variety and engineering change: a case study of two capital good firms

Many capital good firms deliver products that are not strictly one-off, but instead share a certain degree of similarity with other deliveries. In the delivery of the product, they aim to balance stability and variety in their product design and processes. The issue of engineering change plays an important in how they manage to do so. Our aim is to gain more understanding into how capital good firms manage engineering change, design variety and process variety, and into the role of the product delivery strategies they thereby use. Product delivery strategies are defined as the type of engineering work that is done independent of an order and the specification freedom the customer has in the remaining part of the design. Based on the within-case and cross-case analysis of two capital good firms several mechanisms for managing engineering change, design variety and process variety are distilled. It was found that there exist different ways of (1) managing generic design information, (2) isolating large engineering changes, (3) managing process variety, (4) designing and executing engineering change processes. Together with different product delivery strategies these mechanisms can be placed within an archetypes framework of engineering change management. On one side of the spectrum capital good firms operate according to open product delivery strategies, have some practices in place to investigate design reuse potential, isolate discontinuous engineering changes into the first deliveries of the product, employ ‘probe and learn’ process management principles in order to allow evolving insights to be accurately executed and have informal engineering change processes. On the other side of the spectrum capital good firms operate according to a closed product delivery strategy, focus on prevention of engineering changes based on design standards, need no isolation mechanisms for discontinuous engineering changes, have formal process management practices in place and make use of closed and formal engineering change procedures. The framework should help managers to (1) analyze existing configurations of product delivery strategies, product and process designs and engineering change management and (2) reconfigure any of these elements according to a ‘misfit’ derived from the framework. Since this is one of the few in-depth empirical studies into engineering change management in the capital good sector, our work adds to the understanding on the various ways in which engineering change can be dealt with

Set-based approach to passenger aircraft family design

Presented is a method for the design of passenger aircraft families. Existing point-based methods found in the literature employ sequential approaches in which a single design solution is selected early and is then iteratively modified until all requirements are satisfied. The challenge with such approaches is that the design is driven toward a solution that, although promising to the optimizer, may be infeasible due to factors not considered by the models. The proposed method generates multiple solutions at the outset. Then, the infeasible solutions are discarded gradually through constraint satisfaction and set intersection. The method has been evaluated through a notional example of a three-member aircraft family design. The conclusion is that point-based design is still seen as preferable for incremental (conventional) designs based on a wealth of validated empirical methods, whereas the proposed approach, although resource-intensive, is seen as more suited to innovative designs

Remodelling the third sector: advancing collaboration or competition in community-based initiatives?

In the last decade, UK public agencies have increasingly been required to collaborate with non-state providers to deliver welfare services. Third sector organisations are now providers of services from early years to old age, taking a growing role in children and young people's services in socially deprived neighbourhoods. National policy has recognised third sector expertise in working with marginal groups of people. However, changing relationships with the state have drawn community organisations into new, often uncomfortable, organisational arrangements, affecting their work and their roles in relation to service users and community stakeholders. This article examines recent changes from a third sector perspective, drawing on data from a study of community-based organisations providing children and young people's services in deprived localities. It considers the changing environment of ‘new localism’ affecting these organisations, focusing on recent plans for local area commissioning of services. The article identifies some progress in supporting community services in deprived areas but illustrates how the continuing emphasis on competitive contracts and centrally driven frameworks undermines collaborative work and community trust. It argues that such mechanisms may serve short-term state interests but devalue the very community-level work, which is increasingly being promoted to address challenging social problems

Modular product platform design

Modular product platforms, sets of common modules that are shared among a product family, can bring cost savings and enable introduction of multiple product variants quicker than without platforms. This thesis describes the current state of modular platform design and identifies gaps in the current state. The gaps were identified through application of three existing methods and by testing their usability and reliability on engineers and engineering students. Existing platform or modular design methods either are meant for (a) single products, (b) identify only module "cores" leaving the final module boundary definition to the designer, and (c) use only a limited set of evaluation criteria. I introduce a clustering algorithm for common module identification that takes into account possible degrees of commonality. This new algorithm can be applied both at physical and functional domains and at any, and even mixed, levels of hierarchy. Furthermore, the algorithm is not limited to a single measure for commonality analysis. To select the candidate modules for the algorithm, a key discriminator is how difficult the interfaces become. I developed an interface complexity metric based on minimizing redesign in case of a design change. The metric is based on multiple expert interviews during two case studies. The new approach was to look at the interface complexity as described by the material, energy, and information flows flowing through the interface. Finally, I introduce a multi criteria platform scorecard for improved evaluation of modular platforms. It helps a company focus on their strategy and benchmark one's own platform to the competitors'. These tools add to the modular platform development process by filling in the gaps identified. The tools are described in the context of the entire platform design process, and the validity of the methods and applicability to platform design is shown through industrial case studies and examples.reviewe