NATIONAL INSTITUTE FOR
MANUFACTURING MANAGEMENT
Dr Roger Maull: Defence interests
Fellows
2005
From Roger Maull, late 2005:
Through our research centre XSPO and jointly with a number of Exeter colleagues I have worked on a wide range of 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 on 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.
Business Process Management (BPM)
Roger’s 2005 presentations in some cases will follow on from his visit in 2004. BPM will again be presented from a very practical perspective. Roger has an understanding learned from his 2004 visit that will assist him to use his illustrations from a variety of UK and US companies to highlight specific cost and service benefits they achieved. The aim is to model whole business processes rather than small incremental type changes.
The plan is to cover the basic principles of process modelling with the following key themes:
· Introduction to concept of business process management
· The strategic role of BPM
· Use of business process modelling
· Methods for analysing business process models
Dr Maull can present BPM as a workshop (either full day or half day) for managers, policy makers, sector managers supporting business development and consultants and as round tables for senior managers and directors across all sectors in manufacturing.