Organisational Knowledge Management for Defect Reduction and Sustainable Development in Foundries

Despite many advances in the field of casting technologies the foundry industry still incurs significant lossesdue to the cost of scrap and rework with adverse effects on profitability and the environment. Approachessuch as Six Sigma, DoE, FMEA are used by foundries to address quality issues. However these approacheslack support to manage the heterogeneous knowledge created during process improvement activities. Theproposed revision of ISO9001:2015 quality standard puts emphasis on retaining organisational knowledgeand its continual use in process improvement (ISO, 2014). In this paper a novel framework for creation,storage and reuse of product specific process knowledge is presented. The framework is reviewed taking intoconsideration theoretical perspectives of organisational knowledge management as well as addressing thechallenges concerning its practical implementation. A knowledge repository concept is introduced to demonstratehow organisational knowledge can be effectively stored and reused for achieving continual processimprovement and sustainable development

Designing and managing ERP systems for virtual enterprise strategy:a conceptual framework for innovative strategic thinking

The business environment today is transforming towards a collaborative context compounded by multi-organizational cooperation and related information system infrastructures. This chapter aims to examine Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems development and emerging practices in the management of multi-organizational enterprises and identify the circumstances under which the so-called ‘ERPIII' systems fit into the Virtual Enterprise paradigm; and vice versa. An empirical inductive study was conducted using case studies from successful companies in the UK and China. Data were collected through 48 semi-structured interviews and analyzed using the Grounded-Theory based Methodology (GTM) to derive a set of 29 tentative propositions which were then validated via a questionnaire survey to further propose a novel conceptual framework referred to as the ‘Dynamic Enterprise Reference Grid for ERP (DERG-ERP)'; which can be used for innovative decision-making about how ERP information systems and multi-organizational enterprises – particularly the Virtual Enterprise may be co-developed

Customer Analytics Capabilities in the Big Data Spectrum: A Systematic Approach to Achieve Sustainable Firm Performance

Customer analytics plays a vital role in generating insights from big data to improve service innovation, product development, personalization, and managerial decision-making; yet, no academic study has investigated customer analytics capability through which it is possible to achieve sustainable business growth. To close this gap, this chapter explores the constructs of the customer analytics capability by drawing on a systematic review of the literature in the big data spectrum. The chapter\u27s interpretive framework portrays a definitional aspect of customer analytics, the importance of customer analytics, and customer analytics capability constructs. The study proposes a customer analytics capability model, which consists of four principal constructs and some important sub-constructs. The chapter briefly discusses the challenges and future research direction for developing the customer analytics capability model in the data rich competitive business environment