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Book Modular product architecture   Fostering or hindering innovation

Download or read book Modular product architecture Fostering or hindering innovation written by Peter Klemmer and published by GRIN Verlag. This book was released on 2007-11-19 with total page 29 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Seminar paper from the year 2007 in the subject Business economics - Supply, Production, Logistics, grade: 2,0, LMU Munich (Innotec - Institut für Innovationsforschung, Technologiemanagement und Entrepreneurship), course: Innovationsmanagement: "Theorie – Empirie – Case Studies“ , language: English, abstract: Industrialization processes in the last decades have resulted in the emergence of immense new industries, which for a great part can be ascribed to comprehensive activities of technological innovation. Driven by dynamic market contexts such as globalization or technological advances leading to growing complexities and evolving consumer demands, firms are however increasingly affronted with the challenge to offer a greater variety of products of improved performance in less time and under lower costs (Momme et al. 2000, p.128; Ulrich/Eppinger 1995, p.5). Technological innovation as the means and ends of new product development therefore plays a significant role. Modular product architecture -with products that made up of a set of independent components, connected only via defined interfaces (Ulrich/Eppinger 1995, p.132)- is predominantly found in technologically intensive industries such as telecommunications, electronics or the automobile sector (Sanchez/Mahoney 1996, p.67; Staudenmayer et al 2005, p.308). Under the light of the challenges affronting firms, this paper examines the effects, modular product architecture has on technological innovation. This paper investigates the effects of modular product architecture with standardized open interfaces assuming many component producers and a central firm controlling the systemic fit of these. From a resource and production point of view, modularity in combination with a coherent process infrastructure enables firms to meet market demands described (Sanchez 2004, p.59). In addition, product-strategic flexibility is significantly improved involving the possibilities of mass-customization through flexible up- & downscaling. The setting described leads to an “outsourcing” of innovation activity to component producers, pursuing autonomous trial & error innovation and to consumers, independently performing mix & match innovation. Furthermore, this may induce changes on the architectural level of products (Baldwin/Clark 1997, p.85; Cusumano/Gawer 2002, p.55). The paper further suggests that technological innovation with modularity applied, leads to a steady evolution of products (Galvin/Morkel 2001, p.34; Langlois/Robertson 1992, p.310). The resulting changes can show sustaining (Christensen 1997, p. xv) character, but equally may disrupt existing knowledge in the event of integrative innovation. The X-Box case powerfully demonstrates key aspects of product modularity and its effects on technological innovation.

Book Innovation in Modular Industries

Download or read book Innovation in Modular Industries written by Dana Alice Sheffer and published by . This book was released on 2011 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Product architectures are becoming increasingly modular, along with the industries that produce them. Instead of a single integrated firm designing and producing an entire product, clusters of firms design and produce individual components that are later integrated. While modularity has often been hailed as a catalyst for innovation, I show that modularity can hinder some kinds of innovation. Within a modular system, innovations that are limited to individual modules without altering interfaces and processes (modular innovations) thrive, while innovations that cross module boundaries and alter interfaces and processes (integral innovations) are stifled. In a study of implementations of twenty three different technologies in one hundred and twelve US buildings, I demonstrate that the odds for integral innovations to be implemented are 84% lower than for modular innovations, even after accounting for technology costs and other factors. The primary underlying mechanism is that integral innovations involve a loss of the embedded coordination that standardization provides. Thus, I investigate supply chain integration as a moderator and a substitute for the lost coordination. I compare high integration (both vertical and horizontal), medium integration (either vertical or horizontal), and low integration (neither vertical nor horizontal). I demonstrate that as integration increases, so does the likelihood of implementing integral innovations. In fact, the odds of implementation of integral innovations increase by 542% in supply chains characterized by high levels of integration. Thus, I shed light on the relationship between an innovation's alignment with existing industry structure and standards and the complex moderating effect of supply chain integration in modular industries. In addition, I develop a comprehensive analytical framework to explain innovation diffusion in the construction industry -- integrating the supply chain learning and coordination issues discussed above with high levels of demand fluctuation, competitive bidding by trade, and broken agency.

Book Product Lifecycle Management  Volume 6

Download or read book Product Lifecycle Management Volume 6 written by John Stark and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on with total page 261 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Book Prefab Architecture

    Book Details:
  • Author : Ryan E. Smith
  • Publisher : John Wiley & Sons
  • Release : 2011-06-03
  • ISBN : 0470880465
  • Pages : 492 pages

Download or read book Prefab Architecture written by Ryan E. Smith and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2011-06-03 with total page 492 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Prefab Architecture . . . is beyond theory, and beyond most of what we think we know about pods, containers, mods, and joints. This book is more than 'Prefabrication 101.' It is the Joy of Cooking writ large for the architecture and construction industries." From the Foreword by James Timberlake, FAIA THE DEFINITIVE REFERENCE ON PREFAB ARCHITECTURE FOR ARCHITECTS AND CONSTRUCTION PROFESSIONALS Written for architects and related design and construction professionals, Prefab Architecture is a guide to off-site construction, presenting the opportunities and challenges associated with designing and building with components, panels, and modules. It presents the drawbacks of building in situ (on-site) and demonstrates why prefabrication is the smarter choice for better integration of products and processes, more efficient delivery, and realizing more value in project life cycles. In addition, Prefab Architecture provides: A selected history of prefabrication from the Industrial Revolution to current computer numerical control, and a theory of production from integrated processes to lean manufacturing Coverage on the tradeoffs of off-site fabrication including scope, schedule, and cost with the associated principles of labor, risk, and quality Up-to-date products featuring examples of prefabricated structure, enclosure, service, and nterior building systems Documentation on the constraints and execution of manufacturing, factory production, transportation, and assembly Dozens of recent examples of prefab projects by contemporary architects and fabricators including KieranTimberlake, SHoP Architects, Office dA, Michelle Kaufmann, and many others In Prefab Architecture, the fresh approaches toward creating buildings that accurately convey ature and expanded green building methodologies make this book an important voice for adopting change in a construction industry entrenched in traditions of the past.

Book The Future of Modular Architecture

Download or read book The Future of Modular Architecture written by David Wallance and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2021-04-07 with total page 348 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Future of Modular Architecture presents an unprecedented proposal for mass-customized mid- and high-rise modular housing that can be manufactured and distributed on a global scale. Advocating for the adoption of open-source design based on a new modular standard, the book shows how the construction industry and architectural practice may soon be radically reshaped. By leveraging the existing intermodal freight transport system, global supply chains can be harnessed to realize the long-held promise that housing will be a well-designed and affordable industrial product. We are on the cusp of a transformative change in the way we design and build our cities. Author David Wallance argues that modular architecture is profoundly intertwined with globalization, equitable urbanism, and sustainable development. His book addresses these timely issues through a specific approach grounded in fundamental concepts. Going beyond the individual modular building, Wallance forecasts the emergence of a new type of design, manufacturing, and construction enterprise. Written in an approachable style with illustrated examples, the book is a must read for professionals in architecture and design, city planning, construction, real estate, as well as the general reader with an interest in these topics.

Book Beyond Productivity

    Book Details:
  • Author : National Research Council
  • Publisher : National Academies Press
  • Release : 2003-04-02
  • ISBN : 0309168171
  • Pages : 268 pages

Download or read book Beyond Productivity written by National Research Council and published by National Academies Press. This book was released on 2003-04-02 with total page 268 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Computer science has drawn from and contributed to many disciplines and practices since it emerged as a field in the middle of the 20th century. Those interactions, in turn, have contributed to the evolution of information technology â€" new forms of computing and communications, and new applications â€" that continue to develop from the creative interactions between computer science and other fields. Beyond Productivity argues that, at the beginning of the 21st century, information technology (IT) is forming a powerful alliance with creative practices in the arts and design to establish the exciting new, domain of information technology and creative practicesâ€"ITCP. There are major benefits to be gained from encouraging, supporting, and strategically investing in this domain.

Book Complexity Management

Download or read book Complexity Management written by Michael Marti and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2007-12-28 with total page 268 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Michael Marti presents a complexity management model that is based on the reasoning that product architecture determines to a considerable extent how external complexity is translated into physical products. The model demonstrates a procedure to optimize a product’s architecture and is applied to several industrial products.

Book The Theory and Future of the Corporate Economy and Society

Download or read book The Theory and Future of the Corporate Economy and Society written by Robin Marris and published by Amsterdam ; New York : North-Holland Publishing Company ; New York : sole distributors for the U.S.A. and Canada, American Elsevier Publishing Company. This book was released on 1979 with total page 172 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Monograph comprising lectures on an economic theory of socio- economic structures of OECD countries, and presenting an economic forecast of industrial concentration trends - discusses business mergers by size of enterprise, impact on the postindustrial society, etc., and deals with counteracting economic policy measures. Graph and references.

Book Democratizing Innovation

Download or read book Democratizing Innovation written by Eric Von Hippel and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2006-02-17 with total page 224 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The process of user-centered innovation: how it can benefit both users and manufacturers and how its emergence will bring changes in business models and in public policy. Innovation is rapidly becoming democratized. Users, aided by improvements in computer and communications technology, increasingly can develop their own new products and services. These innovating users—both individuals and firms—often freely share their innovations with others, creating user-innovation communities and a rich intellectual commons. In Democratizing Innovation, Eric von Hippel looks closely at this emerging system of user-centered innovation. He explains why and when users find it profitable to develop new products and services for themselves, and why it often pays users to reveal their innovations freely for the use of all.The trend toward democratized innovation can be seen in software and information products—most notably in the free and open-source software movement—but also in physical products. Von Hippel's many examples of user innovation in action range from surgical equipment to surfboards to software security features. He shows that product and service development is concentrated among "lead users," who are ahead on marketplace trends and whose innovations are often commercially attractive. Von Hippel argues that manufacturers should redesign their innovation processes and that they should systematically seek out innovations developed by users. He points to businesses—the custom semiconductor industry is one example—that have learned to assist user-innovators by providing them with toolkits for developing new products. User innovation has a positive impact on social welfare, and von Hippel proposes that government policies, including R&D subsidies and tax credits, should be realigned to eliminate biases against it. The goal of a democratized user-centered innovation system, says von Hippel, is well worth striving for. An electronic version of this book is available under a Creative Commons license.

Book Next Generation Supply Chains

Download or read book Next Generation Supply Chains written by Rosanna Fornasiero and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2020-12-31 with total page 298 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This open access book explores supply chains strategies to help companies face challenges such as societal emergency, digitalization, climate changes and scarcity of resources. The book identifies industrial scenarios for the next decade based on the analysis of trends at social, economic, environmental technological and political level, and examines how they may impact on supply chain processes and how to design next generation supply chains to answer these challenges. By mapping enabling technologies for supply chain innovation, the book proposes a roadmap for the full implementation of the supply chain strategies based on the integration of production and logistics processes. Case studies from process industry, discrete manufacturing, distribution and logistics, as well as ICT providers are provided, and policy recommendations are put forward to support companies in this transformative process.

Book Fostering Innovation in the Public Sector

Download or read book Fostering Innovation in the Public Sector written by Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development and published by Organization for Economic Co-Operation & Development. This book was released on 2017 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Public sector innovation does not happen by itself: problems need to be identified, and ideas translated into projects that can be tested, implemented and shared. To do so, public sector organisations must identify the processes and structures that can support and accelerate innovation. This report looks at how governments can create an environment that fosters innovation. It discusses the role of government management in inhibiting or enabling innovation, and the role that specific functions such as human resources management and budgeting can play. It suggests ways to support innovation - including by managing information, data and knowledge - as well as strategies for managing risk. Drawing on country approaches compiled and analysed by the OECD Observatory of Public Sector Innovation, the report presents a framework for collecting and examining data on the ability of central government to foster public sector innovation.

Book Design Rules  Volume 1

Download or read book Design Rules Volume 1 written by Carliss Y. Baldwin and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2000-03-02 with total page 508 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: We live in a dynamic economic and commerical world, surrounded by objects of remarkable complexity and power. In many industries, changes in products and technologies have brought with them new kinds of firms and forms of organization. We are discovering news ways of structuring work, of bringing buyers and sellers together, and of creating and using market information. Although our fast-moving economy often seems to be outside of our influence or control, human beings create the things that create the market forces. Devices, software programs, production processes, contracts, firms, and markets are all the fruit of purposeful action: they are designed. Using the computer industry as an example, Carliss Y. Baldwin and Kim B. Clark develop a powerful theory of design and industrial evolution. They argue that the industry has experienced previously unimaginable levels of innovation and growth because it embraced the concept of modularity, building complex products from smaller subsystems that can be designed independently yet function together as a whole. Modularity freed designers to experiment with different approaches, as long as they obeyed the established design rules. Drawing upon the literatures of industrial organization, real options, and computer architecture, the authors provide insight into the forces of change that drive today's economy.

Book Emotionally Durable Design

Download or read book Emotionally Durable Design written by Jonathan Chapman and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2015-04-10 with total page 224 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Emotionally Durable Design presents counterpoints to our ‘throwaway society’ by developing powerful design tools, methods and frameworks that build resilience into relationships between people and things. The book takes us beyond the sustainable design field’s established focus on energy and materials, to engage the underlying psychological phenomena that shape patterns of consumption and waste. In fluid and accessible writing, the author asks: why do we discard products that still work? He then moves forward to define strategies for the design of products that people want to keep for longer. Along the way we are introduced to over twenty examples of emotional durability in smart phones, shoes, chairs, clocks, teacups, toasters, boats and other material experiences. Emotionally Durable Design transcends the prevailing doom and gloom rhetoric of sustainability discourse, to pioneer a more hopeful, meaningful and resilient form of material culture. This second edition features pull-out quotes, illustrated product examples, a running glossary and comprehensive stand firsts; this book can be read cover to cover, or dipped in-and-out of. It is a daring call to arms for professional designers, educators, researchers and students from in a range of disciplines from product design to architecture; framing an alternative genre of design that reduces the consumption and waste of resources by increasing the durability of relationships between people and things.

Book Living Systems

    Book Details:
  • Author : Liat Margolis
  • Publisher : Springer Science & Business Media
  • Release : 2008-02-01
  • ISBN : 3764377003
  • Pages : 189 pages

Download or read book Living Systems written by Liat Margolis and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2008-02-01 with total page 189 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The use of innovative new materials is an important trend in landscape architecture today. These materials include biodegradable geotextiles, super-absorbent polymers, and plants that react to changing soil conditions. This book presents the available materials and technologies in the context of practical applications.

Book The Business of Systems Integration

Download or read book The Business of Systems Integration written by Andrea Prencipe and published by OUP Oxford. This book was released on 2005-04-14 with total page 398 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Over the past decade or so, systems integration has become a key factor in the operations, strategy and competitive advantage of major corporations in a wide variety of sectors (e.g. computing, automotive, telecommunications, military systems and aerospace). Systems integration is a strategic task that pervades business management not only at the technical level but also at the management and strategic levels. This book shows how and why this new kind of systems integration has evolved into an emerging model of industrial organization whereby firms, and groups of firms, join together different types of knowledge, skill and activity, as well as hardware, software, and human resources to produce new products for the marketplace. This book is the first to systematically explore systems integration from a business and innovation perspective. Contributors delve deeply into the nature, dimensions and dynamics of the new systems integration, deploying research and analytical techniques from a wide variety of disciplines including, the theory of the firm, the history of technology, industrial organization, regional studies, strategic management, and innovation studies. This wealth of research capability provides deep insights into the new model of systems integration and supports this with an abundance of empirical evidence. The book is organized in three main parts. The first part focuses on the history of systems integration. Contributors trace the early history of systems integration using different industrial examples. The second part presents theoretical and analytical aspects of systems integration. Contributions concentrate on the regulatory and cognitive features of systems integration, the relationships between systems integration and regional competitive advantage, and the way in which systems integration supports the competitive advantage of firms. The third part takes industry and firm-level approaches. Contributions focus on different sectors and highlight the specificity of systems integration in various industrial domains, stressing its importance for systems integration in the case of complex capital goods, such as aircraft and telecommunications equipment, as well as consumer goods, such as personal computers and automobiles.

Book Discontinuous Innovation

Download or read book Discontinuous Innovation written by Peter Augsdörfer and published by World Scientific Publishing Company. This book was released on 2013-08-28 with total page 460 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book is based on the findings, issues and questions related to an ongoing decade-old research project named the Innovation Lab (www.innovation-lab.org). The research project focuses on discontinuous innovation in more than thirteen countries, most of which are European, and provides useful insights into its different challenges. It also raises several questions related to the subject, some of which are: how do firms pick up weak signals on emerging — and possibly radically different — innovation? What should firms do when these weak signals hit their “mainstream” process? What are the criteria for allocating resources to a strategic innovation project? What actions should firms take to avoid being left out by the “corporate immune system”? How should firms organize projects that often break existing rules and require new rules to be created? This book attempts to provide answers to the above mentioned questions by gathering information from the research project and also from firms that have tried exploring various ideas, models and insights to tackle discontinuous innovation. Written in a simple and accessible manner, this book will be of interest to both practitioners and academics alike.

Book Product Design and Development

Download or read book Product Design and Development written by Karl T. Ulrich and published by . This book was released on 2003 with total page 366 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Treating such contemporary design and development issues as identifying customer needs, design for manufacturing, prototyping, and industrial design, Product Design and Development, 3/e, by Ulrich and Eppinger presents in a clear and detailed way a set of product development techniques aimed at bringing together the marketing, design, and manufacturing functions of the enterprise. The integrative methods in the book facilitate problem solving and decision making among people with different disciplinary perspectives, reflecting the current industry trend to perform product design and development in cross-functional teams.