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NATIONAL INSTITUTE FOR
MANUFACTURING MANAGEMENT

Dr Roger Maull

Fellows
2005

Dr Maull will be hosted by the Tasmanian Chamber of Commerce and Industry, TCCI, on Dec 6, the National Australia Bank in Melbourne on Wed Dec 7 and the NSW Department of State & Regional Development on Dec 8 in Parramatta. Dr Maull will continue his activities in Adelaide from Dec 9 through to Dec 16.

Information on Roger Maull's work in Defence.

For further information please contact christopher.pryor@unisa.edu.au or phone 08 83020325.

Education

BA in Economics and MSc in Management Information System.

Awarded PhD in 1986 for information systems modelling in Computer Integrated Manufacturing

Career

Joined Plymouth Polytechnic in 1987.

Appointed Senior Lecturer in the School of Computing in January 1991.

2002 appointed Senior Lecturer at University of Exeter.

2004 appointed Reader in Operations and Process Management at the University of Exeter.

2004 formed the Exeter Centre for Strategic Processes and Operations (XSPO)

2005 appointed vice-chair Department of Management, University of Exeter.

On this website

Presentation on Business Process Management, July 2004. (PDF file, 26 pages.)

A new presentation on Business Process Management, December 2005 (PDF, 17 pages)

A Systems Approach to Business Processes (PDF, 11 pages)

Recent consultancies

• Business Process Management and its associated methods and techniques including six sigma and activity based costing. This has included: process modelling the repair and overhaul process for GKN, analysing the supply chain for Compaq, modelling the after sales support activities for IBM, and a dynamic model for BAe analysing manning requirements for the MoD’s new aircraft carrier. In 2004-5 he led a joint project between Microsoft, Vodafone and the University of Exeter to test Microsoft’s new software tools within a core Vodafone process. In 2005 he has been heavily involved with TNT Express in developing their process models and measures. His latest project is working for the UK’s Society of British Aerospace Companies (SBAC) on developing a process architecture for the whole Aerospace sector.

• Short courses on Business Process Management. These have been delivered to 15 organisations and over 150 people since 1999. This includes 3 courses in the USA to Fujitsu, CAL-ISO (Californian power supplier) and PC Sprint the network supplier. In the UK customers include: IBM, Scottish Power, GKN, Vodafone, Greene King (Brewers), British Aerospace, Defence Logistics Organisation, Lloyds TSB bank, and Prudential, TNT Express, Reuters News Agency.

• Regular advisory consultancies with Vodafone, TNT Express, Defence Logistics Organisation and a variety of smaller companies throughout the UK.

• Business strategy advice for those in the aerospace sector. This advisory role has been to both large companies such as British Aerospace and a host of smaller companies within the supply chain. In 2005 he was appointed to the SBAC’s Enterprise Excellence Board (the only academic) to oversee the developments of best practice within Aerospace processes.

Research interests

My major research interests are in investigating the results of applying systems thinking within the management of business operations. This intellectually rigorous approach was developed in the Natural Sciences and is likely to provide a sustainable challenge to orthodox Operations Management thinking. The application of the concepts of systems thinking to Operations Management has led to the approach known as Business Process Management.

BPM is a promising alternative perspective to traditional Operations Management. It concentrates on how an organisation delivers its products and services, focusing on the customer perspective and flows of information rather than on the traditional organisational functions and hierarchy.

In the last few years I have extended my interests in systems thinking and have begun research in using the concepts of systems dynamics. This was the basis of an EPSRC funded project with the University of Cambridge. This project completed in December 2001 and resulted in a publication in the US based Journal of Operations Management (JOM). The paper has already been widely cited in major journals and is considered a major contribution in the field of supply chain management.

Research such as this is multi-disciplinary.  It draws ideas from and is a synthesis of Systems Thinking, Engineering, Economics, Operations and Strategic Management and Information Systems. As such it is difficult to pigeon hole my research into any traditional discipline.  It is essentially integrative and requires the researcher to have a broad working knowledge of each underpinning discipline: hence the varied subjects I have studied in each of my three degrees.

Defence interests

Through our research centre XSPO and jointly with a number of Exeter colleagues I have worked on a wide range defence and aerospace related projects in the last 5 years. Examples from three of these are given below.

The largest and most prestigious project was MIDAS, a joint Exeter, Cambridge University project worth £500,000 over 3 years. This project developed a strategic planning tool for Aerospace companies taking a 5 year planning horizon. The results were the development of a set of industry drivers (cost down, life cycle costing, offset etc) and industry responses that informed the development of a strategic planning tool specifically for Aerospace. Academically it also resulted in a paper published in the top ranked American Journal of Operations Management (copies available from the author). This strategic planning tool has been used in a number of multi-national aerospace companies to enable them to identify future markets and to align these with core competencies. Workshops using this approach are available through Smartlink. These can be either a general introduction to the planning methods or a specific one day workshop aimed at developing a strategic plan using data from your own company.

A second project is sponsored by the UK’s Society for British Aerospace Companies (SBAC) a trade association for all the UK’s aerospace companies. SBAC have decided that a strategic priority for all members is to improve the performance of their processes; engineering, commercial, manufacturing etc. To do this they have set up a Board consisting of amongst others, Airbus, Smiths Industries, BAe Systems, Thales, Rolls-Royce. I attend these board meetings. More details can be found at http://www.sbac.co.uk/pages/24596655.asp. The specific piece of work we are commissioned to undertake is to provide a complete model of the processes of the sector and where “best practice” is found, to model that process and show where it links through to other processes. Examples of current pilot projects include supply chain management with Rolls-Royce, smart procurement with BAE Systems and linking engineering and commercial practices with Smiths. Each of these has a model of its processes and is identifying the best way to perform these activities given a specific business context. These projects are live and the is likely to continue throughout 2006. Workshops explaining the methods used and the results obtained can be made available through Smartlink. Again, this can be in the form of a general introduction or in a longer session where a complete process model, (based around the SBAC model) can be developed, tailored for your specific company.

A third project was modelling the “complement” (head count) for the new Aircraft carriers. This project was in collaboration with BAE Systems (eventual winners of the bid) to model the processes of taking, landing and maintenance of the new aircraft carriers and then to simulate a wide range of battle scenarios and their implications for the complement required. Whilst being highly confidential the process of simulation and analysis is one that has now been widely applied throughout defence to calculate resource utilisation and can be provided through Smartlink workshops.

Publications

Refereed Journal Papers