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Frugal innovation is a term that has been used to describe the low-cost products and services, as well as the systems and processes adopted by organizations to develop them. The purpose of this paper is to examine the experience of multi-national companies (MNCs) in India as they adopt the philosophy of frugal innovation to develop products that are high in technology but low in terms of cost to meet the requirements of the market conditions in India, and similar low-income economies.

The case study methodology was adopted to understand the experiences of the Indian subsidiaries of two MNCs, Bosch India and 3M India. Data were acquired through interviews with key decision makers, documents, and publicly available information.

The two MNCs have increased research and development (R&D) in India and adopted the philosophy of frugal innovation which combines high technology with low costs. Based on the analysis, some propositions are presented indicating that MNCs will shift R&D to India if there are market opportunities; they will adopt the philosophy of frugal innovation to produce high technology products that are lost cost and low cost over product lifetime and will also expand to new-to-the-world innovation and finally contribute to global innovation.

The study is based on only two case studies and a large sample study may be required before the findings can be generalized.

Other MNCs can learn from Bosch India and 3M India in terms of adopting frugal innovation practices to be successful in low-income economies.

The field of frugal innovation is quite new and largely based on anecdotal accounts of successful low-cost innovation. This paper provides a more detailed account of the experiences of two well-known organizations to present propositions that may be used to conduct a large sample study.

The purpose of this paper is to examine developments in the use of events by places from a predominantly place branding role based on image and economic impacts towards a broader placemaking approach aimed at holistic improvements in place quality.

The research is based on a single case study approach, with the Dutch city of ‘s-Hertogenbosch (Den Bosch) as the focus. Data sources include resident surveys, depth interviews and analysis of policy documents.

The Den Bosch case illustrates the emergence of a more holistic approach to the use of events as a placemaking tool. The city shifted from an ad hoc events policy to the development of a multi-annual programme designed to produce economic, image, social cultural and network effects. This approach seems to have been successful in stimulating visitation, increasing visitor spend and raising the international profile of the city. At the same time, the city has developed many activities designed to mobilise local stakeholder groups and increase social cohesion, which provide essential support for the necessary investment.

There are indications that sustaining such a programme over the longer term is difficult in the face of political and economic change. Adoption of a holistic approach also requires the mobilisation of a wide range of stakeholders.

Critical success factors for placemaking are identified.

The Den Bosch programme helped to increase social cohesion in the city by involving residents and local cultural groups in different projects. However, this required a differentiated approach based on the needs of each group.

This study presents a placemaking model that can help to identify the different elements required in a successful placemaking programme. This is developed from a practice approach, which has the value of paying attention to how event programmes can be initiated and sustained by a group of actors.

Today, most organisations are using packaged software for their key business processes. Enterprise resource planning, supply chain management, customer relationship management and electronic commerce systems enable organisations to improve their focus of using information systems to support their operational and financial goals. This article argues that the need to integrate these packaged software applications with each other as well as with existing or legacy business applications drives the need for a standardised integration architecture to more flexibly implement new business processes across different organisations and applications. To illustrate the components of such an architecture, a case study undertaken at the Robert Bosch Group provided necessary empirical evidence. The Robert Bosch Group has evaluated different enterprise application integration (EAI) systems to achieve a standardised integration architecture. The article describes a reference architecture and criteria for the classification of EAI systems which are derived from different integration approaches.

The automobile industry in India is one of the sunrise industries and is poised to enhance its contribution from 5 percent of GDP in 2006 to 10 percent by 2016. The auto component industry in India has grown hand in hand with the industry and is in the process of transforming itself from being a “Job order fulfiller” to being an “Integrated organization”. With the liberalization process having started in 1991, most auto component manufacturers in India have chosen the easy path of attempting to progress on operational or manufacturing capabilities. For advancing on technology capability dimension, they mostly relied on international collaborations. The purpose of this paper is to study the strategic technology management (STM) practices in select case organizations in the auto component industry in India.

The methodology employed for this study is a combination of literature survey, expert opinion, comparative case study and a flexible systems methodology, situation‐actor‐process‐learning‐action‐performance analysis. Longitudinal studies of technology development at the two case organizations have been done and the case analysis and synthesis has been developed based on valuable inputs and insights shared by key personnel in the case organizations.

The study finds that two different organizations have adopted different technology strategies. While both case organizations have strong linkage between business and technology strategy, the approach has been reasonably different for technology acquisition and development. The findings suggest that an effective STM can contribute to faster technology absorption and overall business performance. Organizations in India need to develop the in‐house capabilities along with suitable technology acquisitions, wherever required.

The two cases provide valuable insights into STM practices in two organizations and highlight the methodology adopted by the companies in their evolutions toward becoming world‐class integrated organizations. The learning can provide the way forward for capable firms in the auto component industry in India.

The purpose of this paper is to create an online enterprise community for all logistics employees of Bosch Car Multimedia division in the Bosch Group, for an internal collaboration of the entire Bosch Group based on an IBM Connections platform: Bosch Connect. An additional concern, collected throughout the project, was to bring employees to join the platform, making it a tool of your daily work. The final objective is to implement and promote a tool to foster internal and external integration of the Bosch logistics community.

A case study is presented to illustrate the use of a Design for Six Sigma (DFSS) methodology to support all the process creation of a collaborative community. There are several variants of the methodology DFSS. For the context of this project, will be used the define, measure, analyze, design and verify (DMADV) methodology, that is appropriated to design services processes and it addresses specifically to the remodeling processes.

The use of DMADV methodology allows establish, systematically, a model which was in accordance with the target population needs.

Since this is a case study, it is not possible to generalize the results. Furthermore, this project was developed in a limit time (about four months). Thus, was not possible to obtain a large community.

The case study brings some evidence of how a systematic approach to the design of a online enterprise community can support designers to meet user’s needs.

A new approach is proposed to meet an online enterprise community user’s needs.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, there is no evidence the use of this methodology to support a construction of an online enterprise community.

The Industrial Equipment division of Robert Bosch has revised its sales and marketing policy by appointing systems integrators throughout the Federal Republic of Germany and now in the UK. Brian Rooks recently visited the Stuttgart plant to hear of its plans and to see the new Bosch SCARA‐type robot.

This paper aims to describe how Bosch Management Support helps the Bosch Group to reclaim the knowledge and experience of its former employees, by enabling them to come back to work for the company on short‐term assignments.

Details the origins and workings of the scheme, and the successes it has achieved.

Demonstrates how the scheme provides access to flexible support that can be mobilized at short notice. This skilled workforce does not require familiarization or coaching, which is a major advantage over employing consultants from outside the company.

Reveals that the scheme enables Bosch divisions and business units to manage workloads more smoothly, avoiding bottlenecks when too much work has built up.

Highlights an innovative way of meeting skill shortages and the challenges of an ageing population.

This paper describes the developments in the control of spot welding from Bosch Rexroth with particular reference to body‐in‐white applications. The Bosch Rexroth MF system uses 1 kHz rather than conventional 50 Hz in the control of spot welding and DC current rather than AC at the weld gun. The several benefits of this arrangement are discussed including lower power and energy losses, lighter cabling and a more compact weld transformer. Also described is a new ultrasonic adaptive control system developed by Bosch Rexroth which enables the growth of the weld nugget to be monitored and recorded for traceability.

Business model innovation (BMI) provides enormous opportunities to multinational corporations (MNCs). Consequently, some MNCs have created dedicated BMI units. Yet, research only provides limited guidance and lacks empirical evidence on the implementation of BMI processes in a corporate environment through dedicated units. Accordingly, the main goal of the research is to shed light on understanding the role (s) of a dedicated BMI unit and how it interacts with the existing businesses to help them identify, evaluate or implement new business models.

This work adopts a case study approach as a research design (Yin, 2015). In particular, the study is set up as a single in-depth case study in a holistic design (Yin, 2013). The data consists of a total of nine extensive interviews with employees of Bosch’s BMI unit, as well as project team members the unit has worked with. Of the nine interviewees, six are working within the BMI unit (internal perspective) and three are members of two project teams, i.e. customers of the BMI unit (external perspective). Archival records serve as an additional source of evidence aimed at enhancing internal validity.

This research is the first work to determine the explicit roles of an MNC’s dedicated BMI unit throughout the BMI process. Through derivation of roles from the tasks and responsibilities of Bosch’s BMI unit in each process phase, six overarching roles have been identified, namely, process owner, executor, enabler, challenger, networker and connector. Simultaneously, this work has suggested the existence of process-independent roles, namely, knowledge intermediary and trainer.

The case study approach underlying this work allowed an in-depth investigation of the BMI process and the BMI unit of Bosch but the results are still based on a single case study. In this regard, limitations that occur for qualitative case study approaches are also relevant for this study, i.e. although careful analysis to reveal the stage-gate such as the design of BMI processes or the roles of a dedicated BMI unit was performed, a certain degree of subjectivity remains.

The results underline that a dedicated BMI unit within an MNC constitutes a way to allow for managing the cross-functional and complex tasks of BMI by giving projects the necessary flexibility to develop while remaining aligned and benefitting from the organizational setting. This paper further observes that a dedicated BMI unit expresses an opportunity to define responsibilities for corporate BMI processes that are described in the literature (Geissdoerfer et al., 2017; Tesch, 2019; Wirtz and Daiser, 2018). Thus, the results may be used by practitioners working in MNCs to understand some of the issues related to the implementation of BMI processes in a corporate context, i.e. how to organize and structure BMI (Geissdoerfer et al., 2017; Winterhalter et al., 2017) or where to locate and how to interlink BMI with existing corporate functions (Chesbrough and Rosenbloom, 2002; Cortimiglia et al., 2016).

The outcomes of this work are twofold. First, building on existing literature, a process model for BMI through dedicated BMI units is proposed. Second, based on findings from the in-depth case study, eight overarching roles a BMI unit can hold have been identified. Thereby, this work constitutes a starting point for intensified research on the value and the implications of dedicated BMI units in the context of BMI and BMI processes.

The purpose of the paper is to highlight the considerations and lessons learned from a re-layout project in an assembly area for productivity improvement. The case study took place in Bosch Rexroth Oil Control Nonantola (Italy) with satisfactory results. The paper suggests how to approach reorganization projects with focus on productivity improvements following defined targets.

After an analysis of the initial status, the authors examine several plausible layout alternatives: the main comparison criteria and their weights are defined. Then a scoring/measuring procedure follows for the criteria of each alternative, and the alternatives are compared using principal parameters analysis (PPA).

The paper lists common considerations and lessons learned in the re-layout process. Using the PPA, the authors validate the best solution for the company.

This paper shares a valuable experience that is general enough to be shared with many other assembly systems. A unique experience combining re-layout planning, MTM and use of PPA is shared with the readers.