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The purpose of this paper is to recognise the key manufacturing challenges currently facing UK manufacturing industry and to further identify the Key Developmental Areas (KDAs) (which includes technologies, systems and paradigms) which need to be developed and employed in order to ensure manufacturing firms in the UK become economically sustainable and are able to operate effectively in a global competitive market. The aim of the paper is to provide a benchmark for UK manufacturing industry to work from, after which future measuring instruments could be employed to track whether companies are meeting these challenges.

A survey into 100 UK manufacturing companies provides the basis for the identification of the challenges and KDAs. The findings from the survey are analysed against information obtained from existing strategy reports and foresight papers/studies to reach a point where the authors identify a balanced set of challenges and developmental areas obtained from this mixed research approach.

Through a comprehensive academic and industrial study, the authors identify and propose nine key manufacturing challenges for UK manufacturing industry to consider. Furthermore, the authors also identify a number of the KDAs which could be used to assist companies in meeting these challenges. The KDAs are not meant to be exhaustive but aimed to provide the underpinning support to the challenges proposed.

The paper proposes a set of key manufacturing challenges for UK manufacturing businesses to consider and apply appropriate technologies and systems to achieve business resilience. This paper will therefore be of benefit to the academic community in that it distils a wide range of academic theory and industrial practice in order to create a coherent body of knowledge. As with any survey work, the accuracy of information depends largely on the size of the survey. Whilst 100 companies were surveyed, a further extension to this number would always help to strengthen future research.

The identification of these key manufacturing challenges and their corresponding technologies, systems and paradigms is aimed at providing a new manufacturing perspective to both academics and industrialists. The challenges and developmental areas proposed provide the basis for a new and advanced manufacturing strategy to be developed for UK companies which aims to create economically sustainable manufacturing organisations.

A literature review within the manufacturing strategy (MS) discipline with a focus on thematic developments is provided. Based on recent studies, a set of challenges posed to manufacturing enterprise of the future are summarized, and thematic areas are analyzed in relation to meeting those challenges. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

Based on a select set of 506 articles published in top-ranked refereed international journals in the discipline of operations management, major and subthemes are identified and the publication trends in these themes are provided with time and across geographical regions, namely: North America, Europe, and other parts of the world.

MS literature is predominantly focussed on the economic objectives of firms without a due focus on the social and environmental perspectives. MS literature covers 11 major thematic areas, namely: MS components and paradigms, manufacturing capabilities (MCs), strategic choices (SCs), best practices (BPs), the strategy process (SP), supply-chain management (SCM), performance measurement, transnational comparisons, global manufacturing, environmental/green manufacturing, and literature reviews. The research in two areas – SCs, and MCs – has been in decline, while the research in BPs, the SP, and transnational comparisons is growing (in absolute figures). Various research opportunities for future studies are identified.

The literature review is limited in its selection of articles and journals, however, the identified trends clarify the state of research by the MS research community at large.

For researchers, multiple new research directions are identified in order to advance knowledge in the field of MS. The publication trends also highlight thematic areas where most of the MS body of knowledge is currently available and can be utilized by practitioners.

The paper’s novelty comes from: first, a broader and deeper review of thematic areas that has not been researched before, second, trends in thematic areas by time, across geographical regions, and including time-region dyads, and third, coverage provided by MS literature in meeting challenges posed to manufacturing enterprise of the future.

This paper aims to investigate the extent to which traditional manufacturers are equipped and interested in participating in a hybrid manufacturing system which integrates traditional processes such as machining and grinding with additive manufacturing (AM) processes.

A survey was conducted among traditional metal manufacturers to collect data and evaluate the ability of these manufacturers to provide hybrid – AM post-processing services in addition to their standard product offering (e.g. mass production).

The original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) surveyed have machine availability and an interest in adopting hybrid manufacturing to additionally offer post-processing services. Low volume parts which would be suitable for hybrid manufacturing are generally more profitable. Access to metal AM, process engineering time, tooling requirements and the need for quality control tools were equally identified as the major challenges for OEM participation in this evolving supply chain.

OEMs can use this research to determine if hybrid manufacturing is a possible fit for their industry using existing machine tools.

Survey data offer an unique insight into the readiness of metal manufacturers who play an integral role in the evolving hybrid supply chain ecosystem required for post-processing of AM metal parts. This study also suggests that establishing metal AM centers around OEMs as a shared resource to produce near-net AM parts would be beneficial.

The challenges facing industrial enterprises include coping with an increased distribution of activities and the related need to deal with task interdependencies, as well as coping with uncertainty and complexity. This opens for a discussion of current thinking and practices of manufacturing and its strategic role. The aim of the paper is to explore future changes in strategic roles of manufacturing.

A review of the literature on manufacturing strategy has focused on different ways of positioning manufacturing as a means for identifying and defining the strategic roles of manufacturing in an industrial company. To understand how industrial companies have dealt with some of the global challenges and have changed their strategic roles of manufacturing over a period of 3‐7 years, interviews are carried out in six small and medium‐sized companies, representing different industries, such as textile, mechanical and electronic industries. The case stories form a basis for identifying issues for future manufacturing strategic roles in the form of research propositions and implications.

The literature review has resulted in a grouping of the strategic roles of manufacturing. The first group of contributions relates directly to the extent and selected objectives of manufacturing contribution to competitive advantage. The second group positions a company in a value chain or a supply chain. The third way of classifying strategic roles focuses on the mutual interplay between functions leading to a primary role and four supporting roles. The fourth classification identifies different roles that a plant can play in a network of manufacturing plants of a company. To a large extent, the groups are mutually exclusive which suggests that an industrial company may use several classifications to find a configuration of strategic manufacturing roles that is in line with the environmental challenges and internal strength. The empirical findings form a basis for developing research propositions about the roles of manufacturing in the future: an important issue for an industrial firm will be to combine the various typologies into a configuration of strategic manufacturing roles; the strategic roles of manufacturing supporting other functions will become increasingly important, emphasizing the importance of strengthening the interplay with other functions and development of holistic competencies and knowledge sharing across functions and disciplines; a company's development over the next years may be seen as a sequence of moves similar to a game of chess, suggesting a capability to develop scenarios for the next series of moves.

The paper suggests that management of industrial companies: develops a combination of classifications of manufacturing roles appropriate for the company's specific situation; identifies supportive strategic roles of manufacturing leading to explicit focus on the interplay with other functions and strengthening of holistic competencies and knowledge sharing across functions and disciplines; views the pursuit of a global manufacturing strategy as a series of adaptive moves, instead of a once‐for‐all decision.

The findings open for a discussion of current thinking and practice of manufacturing and its strategic roles pointing to a new perception of manufacturing and to future challenges and development patterns.

The purpose of this study is to understand how manufacturers (both discrete and process) are managing disruptions amid the COVID-19 pandemic outbreak, using UAE as an empirical context.

This research uses a multiple case study approach and undertakes 36 semi-structured interviews with senior management of four discrete and four process manufacturing firms that outsource products/components from overseas and domestic suppliers.

Results reveal that manufacturing firms are using six distinct actions to mitigate the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic. For instance, they are relying on the automation process, transferring new and updated knowledge to the current and new suppliers, managing workforce diversity, understanding the impact of demand’s disruption, managing the ecosystem and finally using digital technologies to mitigate the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic.

This study has some limitations. Firstly, the results of this study cannot be generalized to a broader population as it attempts to build an initial theory in manufacturing supply chains within the context of a pandemic outbreak. Second, the study uses a cross-sectional approach to explore the actions used by manufacturing firms to mitigate the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Manufacturing firms can replicate the actions proposed in this study to lessen the effect of the COVID-19 pandemic and emerge stronger in the post-COVID-era.

This study contributes to the manufacturing supply chain literature within the context of pandemic outbreaks by exploring the steps taken by manufacturing firms to minimize the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic. Particularly, it explores such steps by considering both the discrete and process manufacturing industries within the United Arab Emirates.

The purpose of this paper is to address the gap between definition and practical aspects of production efficiency in mass customization (MC). The paper summarizes all major issues impacting efficiency in MC. Also, the paper reviews metrics, relationship between various parameters and provides a best practices benchmark toolkit to achieve higher machine efficiencies.

The paper identified and categorized multiple challenges impacting machine efficiency in MC through a literature review spanning over three decades, and also ranked the identified issue-based parameters. Top issues were found varying across different types of industries identified through the review. Metrics pertaining to efficiency and degree of MC are reviewed in the paper. A chronological review of issues is presented, and a chain diagram is built in the paper. Toolkit of best practices created with solution strategies and tools are summarized through the review.

The paper found that MC reasonably impacts machine efficiency which needs to be addressed. Major issues through literature review-based ranking are uncovered, and worldwide research trend and comparison are presented. Active research in this area is observed to be at its peak since 2010. The extensive use of strategies and benchmark toolkit for improving efficiency are summarized.

Ranking of issues has been done through a literature review; hence, there can be skewness depending on the frequency of issues researched by various authors in various areas of industries.

This paper is useful for manufacturing managers and companies willing to increase the size of their product portfolio and choices within their available resources without compromising machine efficiencies and, thereby, the cost. The identified issues help in providing a comprehensive issue list to the academia.

This paper describes what is believed to be the first study that explicitly examines the issues faced in achieving machine efficiency while manufacturing in an MC environment.

Based on both the observations of case studies during the last few years and on action research work on the global manufacturing strategy development, this paper introduces another type of evolutionary process that looks at the internationalisation of manufacturing systems. The paper seeks to explore the new driving forces and responses of manufacturing systems in terms of their static architectures, dynamic mechanisms, and strategic capabilities in the evolutionary process. Reviews those internationalization models developed during the last 25 years, as well as reviewing manufacturing globalisation over the last 15 years, to gain a comprehensive picture about the international manufacturing system (IMS). Based on the empirical observations of industrial issues and the difficulties faced, a new research framework is proposed that will tackle the wider issues in international manufacturing, covering the manufacturing value creation process, internationalisation process, and inter‐firm collaboration formation process. Argues that it is important for future research to develop the strategy process to synthesise the three dimensions of the IMS.

Recent technological and social changes have challenged manufacturing firms to remain competitive in increasingly dynamic markets. A way of facing these challenges is to foster organizational structures that encourage creativity. Although the general importance of organizational creativity for market success is undeniable, few studies on manufacturing firms have provided a nuanced view of how this relationship is affected by firm-external factors (e.g. different levels of market dynamism) and whether and how this leads to greater market success.

This research uses survey data from 255 chief executive officers (CEOs) and top managers of manufacturing firms in Germany. The authors performed different regression analyses to test for direct, mediation, moderation and moderated mediation effects.

The findings show that, in highly dynamic markets, organizational support for creativity indeed helps manufacturing firms to remain competitive by positively influencing firms' innovation performance, which subsequently results in improved market performance. By contrast, in markets with low dynamism, organizational support for creativity has no impact on firms' innovation and market performance.

From a theoretical perspective, this study introduces market dynamism as a novel, so-far underexplored firm-external factor that moderates the relationship between organizational support for creativity and innovation and market performance. This research thus enhances the understanding of the dynamics of organizational creativity and its effects on innovation and market performance in an organizational context of manufacturing firms.

In general, this research emphasizes the importance of establishing a creativity-supporting environment to enhance innovation and market performance. Most importantly, this relationship depends on whether firms are active in highly dynamic or stable markets. Managers should thus consider the level of (future) market dynamism when making decisions about creativity-supporting work environments.

This research provides novel insights into how organizational support for creativity influences innovation and market performance in the manufacturing industry and introduces market dynamism as an important moderating factor.

This paper aims to examine the potentials of using automated guided vehicle (AGV) technology in modular integrated construction (MiC) to realise logistics automation in module manufacturing and transport.

This paper adopts a scenario approach through three phases (i.e. scenario preparation, development and transfer), with six steps performed iteratively. The scenarios were systematically developed using a six-aspect socio-technical framework. Data were collected through a comprehensive literature review, site visits and interviews with relevant stakeholders and professionals. Implications regarding strength, weakness, opportunities and challenges and future research directions are provided.

The developed scenarios of “smart manufacturing” and “last-mile delivery” demonstrated how AGVs could be used to enhance efficiency and productivity in module manufacturing and transport. The synergies between AGVs and emerging information technologies should pave a good foundation for realising logistics automation in MiC. Future research should address: how to define the tasks of AGVs, how will the use of AGVs impact MiC practices, how to design AGV-integrated module manufacturing/transport systems and how to integrate people factors into the use of AGVs in MiC.

This paper reveals the socio-technical benefits and challenges of using AGVs in MiC.

This study extends the understanding of using logistics automation in MiC as emerging research directions, with the intention of directing scholars’ and practitioners’ interest into future exploration. It is the first attempt in its kind. Its findings could be extended to constitute a comprehensive development roadmap and prospects of automation in modular construction.

Manufactured artefacts will always be needed to satisfy human needs, but the business of manufacturing faces a range of challenges in the emerging knowledge economy. Six main areas are identified where manufacturing must develop and excel: concurrency, integrating human and technological resources, the conversion of information to knowledge, environmental compatibility, developing reconfigurable enterprises and innovative processes. There are many emerging technologies which can assist, but if Europe is to remain a force in manufacturing it needs to take positive action to enhance its strengths and alleviate its weaknesses – and nowhere more so than in the field of research.