How has Japan become a major economic power, a world leader in the automotive and electronics industries? What is the secret of their success? The consensus has been that, though the Japanese are not particularly innovative, they are exceptionally skilful at imitation, at improving products that already exist. But now two leading Japanese business experts, Ikujiro Nonaka and Hiro Takeuchi, turn this conventional wisdom on its head: Japanese firms are successful, they contend, precisely because they are innovative, because they create new knowledge and use it to produce successful products and technologies. Examining case studies drawn from such firms as Honda, Canon, Matsushita, NEC, 3M, GE, and the U.S. Marines, this book reveals how Japanese companies translate tacit to explicit knowledge and use it to produce new processes, products, and services.

The knowledge-creating company : how Japanese companies create the dynamics of innovation

This article examines the function of documents as a data source in qualitative research and discusses document analysis procedure in the context of actual research experiences. Targeted to research novices, the article takes a nuts‐and‐bolts approach to document analysis. It describes the nature and forms of documents, outlines the advantages and limitations of document analysis, and offers specific examples of the use of documents in the research process. The application of document analysis to a grounded theory study is illustrated.

Document Analysis as a Qualitative Research Method

Social Network Analysis

The circular economy concept has gained momentum both among scholars and practitioners. However, critics claim that it means many different things to different people. This paper provides further evidence for these critics. The aim of this paper is to create transparency regarding the current understandings of the circular economy concept. For this purpose, we have gathered 114 circular economy definitions which were coded on 17 dimensions. Our findings indicate that the circular economy is most frequently depicted as a combination of reduce, reuse and recycle activities, whereas it is oftentimes not highlighted that CE necessitates a systemic shift. We further find that the definitions show few explicit linkages of the circular economy concept to sustainable development. The main aim of the circular economy is considered to be economic prosperity, followed by environmental quality; its impact on social equity and future generations is barely mentioned. Furthermore, neither business models nor consumers are frequently outlined as enablers of the circular economy. We critically discuss the various circular economy conceptualizations throughout this paper. Overall, we hope to contribute via this study towards the coherence of the circular economy concept; we presume that significantly varying circular economy definitions may eventually result in the collapse of the concept.

Conceptualizing the circular economy: An analysis of 114 definitions

This paper is based on the premises that the purpose of engineering education is to graduate engineers who can design, and that design thinking is complex. The paper begins by briefly reviewing the history and role of design in the engineering curriculum. Several dimensions of design thinking are then detailed, explaining why design is hard to learn and harder still to teach, and outlining the research available on how well design thinking skills are learned. The currently most-favored pedagogical model for teaching design, project-based learning (PBL), is explored next, along with available assessment data on its success. Two contexts for PBL are emphasized: first-year cornerstone courses and globally dispersed PBL courses. Finally, the paper lists some of the open research questions that must be answered to identify the best pedagogical practices of improving design learning, after which it closes by making recommendations for research aimed at enhancing design learning.

Engineering Design Thinking, Teaching, and Learning

In this paper we consider the problem of the lack of industry uptake of eco-design and eco-innovation tools. We take a change management perspective on this problem and focus on eco-innovation tool selection and implementation activities. We introduce a systematic process for these activities which emphasises the development of contextual tool criteria and the adaptation of the tool to meet both company and design-team requirements. The process is tested by applying it to the 9-Windows Operator tool with six manufacturers of electrical or electronic equipment. The preliminary results suggest that the proposed process is effective in producing successful tool adaptations but that further evidence is required to validate the process. We conclude that: the development of contextual tool criteria is effective in gaining design team "buy-in"; the design team can be a useful source of ideas for tool adaptation ideas; eco-innovation tools, more so than other types of design tool, must be easy to learn and use; and that eco-innovation tool adaptations must take into account the business need that the tool fulfils, and the language preferences and knowledge of the design team

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Adapting Eco-Innovation Tools to the Needs of the Company: A Case Study

The manufacture of primary structural wing components from high-performance composite materials is a relatively new technique. GKN Aerospace faces the challenge of manufacturing complex large-scale aero-structures by the ‘Automated Fibre Placement’ (AFP) process whilst transitioning from the ‘new product introduction environment’ to meet contractual production rates. This paper reports on the adoption of the Lean philosophy within a ‘value stream’ by capturing staff perceptions to gain an understanding of the success levels and areas of concern. The research is of particular importance since the ‘barriers of resistance’ in manufacturing environments can be high if Lean is not introduced in a fashion production staff can relate to. Therefore, the research conducted offers GKN the opportunity to focus on the specific areas to realise continuous improvement through the adoption of Lean. The research investigation consisted of a questionnaire employed to gauge staff perceptions from the end of operations at Year 1. At the end of Year 2, the questionnaire was repeated to broaden the cross-sectional study over a longitudinal time horizon. The results were subject to statistical significance testing which showed the differences in staff perceptions were evident. These differences were attributed to the overall level of Lean understanding and appreciation within the facility. The novelty of this research is manifested in how well Lean practice has been adopted in a large-scale aerospace manufacturing facility transitioning from the NPI environment to serial production. Other Lean practitioners and academics will be able to apply the approach in their work, especially those looking to incorporate a Lean philosophy in a NPI environment.

The Application of a Lean Philosophy During Manufacture of Advanced Airframe Structures in a New Product Introduction (NPI) Environment

Guest editorial: Special issue on integrated design and manufacture in mechanical engineering

Web-based approaches are increasingly being used for carrying out surveys, for example in research or to obtain user feedback in product and systems development. However, the drawbacks of web surveying are often overlooked. Errors in web surveys can be related to sampling, coverage, measurement, and non-response issues. Low response rates and non-response bias are particularly important for web-based surveys. This paper reports on a web-based survey in an international engineering consultancy, aimed at eliciting feedback on the development of systems to support sustainable engineering, that produced a low response rate. To investigate the reasons for this, a follow-up survey was conducted by telephone. The majority of those questioned were unaware of the original survey. The telephone survey showed that reasons for non-completion by those who were aware may be categorized as resources issues, relevance, and fatigue. Differences between those who were aware of the original survey and those who were not are explored and a gap is found between action and intention, i.e. good intentions to complete a survey are very unlikely to translate into action and completed surveys. The paper concludes with practical guidance for administering web-based surveys and observations on the merits of telephone surveys.Copyright © 2010 by ASME

Chris McMahon

Papers

Adapting Eco-Innovation Tools to the Needs of the Company: A Case Study

The Application of a Lean Philosophy During Manufacture of Advanced Airframe Structures in a New Product Introduction (NPI) Environment

Guest editorial: Special issue on integrated design and manufacture in mechanical engineering

Addressing data collection problems in web-mediated surveys

Key Characteristics - Driven Rough-Cut Process Planning