Smart Manufacturing Capability Maturity Model: Connotation, Feature And Trend

In March 2015, the Chinese government unveiled InternetPlus, an action plan expected to push forward the Chinese economy. The plan aims to integrate mobile Internet, cloud computing, big data, and the Internet of Things (IoT) with traditional industries to promote economic restructuring, improve people’s livelihoods, and even transform government and enterprises functions. However for the enterprises, how to evaluate the capability is still an unsolved issue. In this study, considering capability maturity theory and model existed, we summarized the concepts of smart manufacturing and relative research field, combined with the development trend of smart manufacturing and characteristics of the enterprise\u27s competition, a smart manufacturing capability maturity initial model with five levels and seven dimensions was defined. With this model, the connotation of smart manufacturing capability was unveiled and the model also provides reference for enterprises to assess and improve smart manufacturing capability

Business-IT alignment from operational level: empirical evidence from the Bank of Qingdao, China

Business-IT Alignment (BITA) has long been a significant topic for scholars as well as enterprise managers especially in the Internet era. Although numerous studies have identified the factors influencing the aligning process and relationships between them and organization successes from strategic perspective, few consider the impact of these elements on employees’s performances from an operational level. To fill this gap, this thesis first discusses the state-of-art and the challenges of BITA in China’s city commercial banks (CCBs) and further develops a theoretical framework to empirically evaluate the BITA in China banking industry. Finally, some recommendations for improving the level of BITA in China’s CCBs are provided. Taking the Bank of Qingdao (BQD) as a sample, this thesis empirically examines BITA maturity model with the results that five factors including communication, IT competency/value measurement, IT governance, partnership, and IT skills are positively related to the BITA while IT scope and architecture are not significant. In addition, the moderating effect of service quality between BITA and employee’s working performance is also supported by the survey. This study also develops a new theoretical model namely, business-IT punctuated equilibrium alignment model (BIPEAM), based on life cycle theory and punctuated equilibrium theory to describe the alternately leading roles between business and IT strategies. This model may contribute towards the better understanding of the mechanism of business-IT strategic alignment process from a longitudinal perspective within an enterprise.O alinhamento entre o negócio e as Tecnologias de Informação (TI) ou alinhamento business-IT (BITA) tem sido desde há muito um tópico significativo para académicos bem como para gestores de empresas, especialmente na era da Internet. Embora numerosas investigações tenham identificado os fatores que influenciam o processo de alinhamento e as relações entre eles e os sucessos da organização do ponto de vista estratégico, poucas consideram o impacto destes elementos no desempenho dos empregados a partir de um nível operacional. Para preencher esta lacuna, esta tese começa por discutir o estado da arte e os desafios do BITA nos bancos comerciais das cidades da China (CCBs) e desenvolve um quadro teórico para avaliar empiricamente o BITA na indústria bancária Chinesa. Por último, são fornecidas algumas recomendações para melhorar o nível de BITA nos CCBs da China. Tomando o Banco de Qingdao (BQD) como amostra, esta tese examina empiricamente o modelo de maturidade do BITA com os resultados de que cinco fatores, incluindo comunicação, competência/avaliação de TI, governação de TI, parceria, e competências de TI estão positivamente relacionados com o BITA enquanto que o âmbito e a arquitetura de TI não são significativos. Além disso, o efeito moderador da qualidade do serviço entre a BITA e o desempenho de trabalho do empregado é também apoiado pelo inquérito realizado. Este estudo também desenvolve um novo modelo teórico, nomeadamente o modelo de alinhamento de equilíbrio pontuado de business-IT (BIPEAM) baseado na teoria do ciclo de vida e na teoria do equilíbrio pontuado para descrever os papéis alternadamente de liderança entre as estratégias empresariais e de TI. Este modelo pode contribuir para uma melhor compreensão do mecanismo do processo de alinhamento estratégico entre empresas e as TI, a partir de uma perspetiva longitudinal dentro de uma empresa

Research on Construction and Application of Individual Knowledge Management Maturity Evaluation Model

Individual knowledge management is basic component of organizational knowledge management, and the maturity of individual knowledge management has a significant impact on organizational knowledge management. This research introduces scientific idea of capability maturity model into individual knowledge management, building corresponding assessment criteria combined with features of individual knowledge management, and constructing an individual knowledge management maturity model with gray comprehensive evaluation method. In the fourth part of this paper, the validity of the model has been verified by applying the model on an instance. This research is made in order to provide references and suggestions on improving the level of individual knowledge management in knowledge-based organizations.</p

A conceptual framework for capability sourcing modeling

Companies need to acquire the right capabilities from the right source, and the right shore, at the right cost to improve their competitive position. Capability sourcing is an organizing process to gain access to best-in-class capabilities for all activities in a firm's value chain to ensure long-term competitive advantage. Capability sourcing modeling is a technique that helps investigating sourcing alternative solutions to facilitate strategic sourcing decision making. Our position is applying conceptual models as intermediate artifacts which are schematic descriptions of sourcing alternatives based on organization's capabilities. The contribution of this paper is introducing a conceptual framework in the form of five views (to organize all perspectives) and a conceptualisation (to formulate a language) for capability sourcing modelling

The creation of business architecture heat maps to support strategy-aligned organizational decisions

The realization of strategic alignment within the business architecture has become increasingly important for companies. Indeed, it facilitates business-IT alignment as a well-designed business architecture helps both to identify the appropriate requirements for IT systems and to discover new business opportunities that can be realized by IT. However, there is a lack of alignment techniques that support organizational (re) design decisions during the operation phase as the actual performance of business architecture elements is neglected. Capability heat maps provide a useful starting point in this respect as they focus on the creation of a hierarchy of prioritized capabilities, which are characterized by a performance measure. In this paper, these techniques will be extended to support strategy-aligned decisions within the business architecture. The identification of the relevant business architecture elements is based on state-of-the-art enterprise modelling languages, which enable the development of enterprise models on distinct layers of the business architecture. Strategic alignment between these elements will be realized by using prioritization according to the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP), while performance measurement will enable the creation of a proper decision support system. Afterwards, the proposed heat map will be applied on a case example to illustrate its potential use. This results in the completion of a first build-and-evaluate loop within the Design Science methodology