Development of technology maturity framework in managing manufacturing improvement for innovation providers

Readiness measurement frameworks have been used in different sectors of industry for many years. Many companies described them as essential when considering product development processes. Unfortunately, most of these frameworks cannot be directly applied in research centre environment for two reasons: too complicated, and not relevant to research centres‟ nature of work (Gove and Uzdzinski, 2013; Lind et al., 2013; Mankinsab, 2009). In addition, innovation providers have to consider global megatrends and the way they influence the community especially the manufacturing sector. For example, an increasing demand for customised nano- and macro- technologies has been observed and this trend has created a great impact on technological innovations and directions that research projects will follow in the coming years. This study focuses on manufacturing sector as this sector is mostly affected by the megatrends (Hajkowicz, 2015; Korn Ferry Hay Group, 2016; Ernest & Young, 2015). As existing industrial frameworks are not applicable at research centres, there is a need for developing new framework that would help not only with monitoring technology development processes, but also with decision-making processes. In fact, the majority of research centres in the UK often use road-mapping to evaluate and decide what would be their next actions. However, road-mapping was sometimes described as unreliable and hard to validate (Kostoff & Schaller, 2001). Anew framework would therefore be a better alternative. Preliminary studies suggested that there is a need for a new research centre-oriented framework, hence called technology maturity (Dombrowski et al., 2016; Gove & Uzdzinski, 2013). Moreover, given the importance of megatrends to the manufacturing sector, technology maturity, is found crucial when developing new technological solutions and considering so-called "valley of death", i.e. the transition from the innovation stage to the competitive manufacturing stage. Therefore, the main goal of this paper is to develop a conceptual maturity framework and support research centres to enter Industry 4.0 by overcoming some of the modern engineering issues such as "valley of death"

Three dimensions of maturity required to achieve future state, technology-enabled manufacturing supply chains

The particular challenges associated with supply chain application of emerging manufacturing technologies are increasingly recognised in industry, academia and government. The problem is often described in terms of Technology Readiness Levels (TRLs), with the particular challenge relating to the stages between proof of concept and initial adoption in the factory environment. In the UK the government has established the High Value Manufacturing Catapult, a network of manufacturing innovation centres brought together with the objective of addressing the so called ‘valley of death’ between traditional academic research and industrial needs across a broad spectrum of manufacturing process technology. This is achieved through demonstrating manufacturing technology at full scale, in factory representative environments in terms of equipment, process control and operation. This provision helps to address the key gap of full scale pre-production capability demonstration and can be seen to de-risk investment in new manufacturing technology. This paper argues that addressing this particular gap is entirely necessary but not sufficient to drive exploitation of the full potential that is available from the latest manufacturing technologies. A three dimensional maturity based framework is proposed which, in addition to considerations of technology demonstration, also allows the position of the target product application in its product lifecycle, and the readiness of the supply chain to receive the technology to be taken into account as success factors in the potential for industrialisation. Case study examples, both current and historical, are used to illustrate the need for such an approach in achieving future technology enabled supply chains. In combination this analysis introduces the basis of a more complete ‘long valley of death’ description which articulates the needs of research networks to establish a level of foundational capability ahead of specific client readiness projects in order to maximise overall pace and achieve a level of agility of delivery which is consistent with future views on digitalisation of manufacture

Managing capabilities for research centers in the UK's manufacturing sector : from literature review to a conceptual framework

This study uncovers the knowledge gaps regarding the capability management of research centers in the UK manufacturing sector. The paper presents some key findings from systematic literature review and introduces a novel framework that will improve the decision making process related to capability development and strategy building which are the two main challenges for the UK manufacturing research centers. The findings presented in this paper highlight the need for and the key elements of such a framework and the benefits that it will bring to a research center's capability management, e.g. more effective evaluation of capabilities and comprehensive understanding of development of those capabilities. It also identified knowledge gap related to management of technology capability from a research centre perspective. At the moment there is a lack of standardized framework (or approach) that is easy to use and applicable to research centres in the manufacturing sector. The paper presents findings from systematic literature review and introduces a novel framework that will improve the decision making process related to capability development and strategy building in the manufacturing research centers

Capability management of manufacturing research centres : challenges and opportunities

This paper is the first to investigate capability management of manufacturing research centres within the High Value Manufacturing Catapult (HVMC). The HVMC was established to address the valley of death by bridging the gap between industry and academia in order to drive the UK's economic and technological growth. However, the current literature does not fully recognise capability management of manufacturing research centres, and hence overlook its link with operations management and strategic management within research centres' environment. Regarding technology capabilities, manufacturing companies usually adopt their own measurements or assessment tools such as Technology Readiness Levels (TRL) or Manufacturing Readiness Levels (MRL) to track their technological progression. These tools, however, are not sufficient to devise important capability management practices due to research centres' unique operating characteristics. It is evident that standardising such practices within the HVMC is vital, and this drives the need of developing a new capability management framework