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The purpose of this paper is to assess the quality practices of European pharmaceutical manufacturers to determine the level of readiness of this industrial sector to implement and/or sustain lean manufacturing (LM).

An assessment framework developed by Al-Najem et al. (2013) was adapted to evaluate how ready European pharmaceutical manufacturers are to implement and/or sustain LM. Therefore, the lean readiness (LR) level of these organisations was assessed through six quality practices related to LM. These included: processes, planning and control, human resources, top management and leadership, customer relations, and supplier relations. One research question and three hypotheses were formulated and tested using a combination of descriptive statistics and non-parametric Mann-Whitney tests. Data were collected through a survey questionnaire distributed to 310 European pharmaceutical manufacturers and responded by 37 of these organisations.

Overall, the results of this study indicate an inadequate level of LR for the participating firms. Simultaneously, it was concluded that factors such as company size, type of relationships with suppliers and ISO 9000 certification do not have an effect on the quality practices, and hence LR level, of European pharmaceutical manufacturing organisations.

This study provides crucial information regarding the LR level of European pharmaceutical manufacturers, which can now be aware of the areas in their practices that require further improvement towards a successful lean journey. Simultaneously, organisations in the pharmaceutical sector that intend to implement LM can consider the results of this study and evaluate their readiness level. Managers can, therefore, refer to this research and use it as a platform to take better decisions regarding what quality aspects of their operations need to be enhanced to successfully deploy or sustain a lean strategy.

This research is one of the very few studies that have focussed on evaluating whether the European pharmaceutical manufacturing industry is ready to successfully implement or sustain LM. Therefore, this research expands the limited existent body of knowledge of LM in this industry.

The purpose of this study is to explore the required changes, outline business potential and envisage the key steps that a networked manufacturing industry needs to take to reach more sustainably performing manufacturing in the future.

The paper utilises a visionary road-mapping approach to study the required changes and the business potential related to sustainable development in the manufacturing industry.

The results were summarised in three sub-roadmaps empowerment of stakeholders, increase efficiency and creation of new performance criteria. On the basis of the summary of the sub-roadmaps, the framework was configured to describe the opportunities and challenges of sustainable business development in the European manufacturing industry.

A clear implication of this study is that a more system-oriented approach, new models for collaboration between network actors and transparently shared network-level KPIs are required before further steps towards a sustainable manufacturing industry can be taken. In addition, sustainability-driven business models are required to specify these changes concretely.

The presented sub-roadmaps and framework summarising them could provide new insights to business practitioners exploring business potential of sustainability.

Understanding about the road-mapping process as tool that enables interaction and envisioning between different stakeholders could also have social implications supporting shared industry-level learning processes.

Studies of sustainability within the manufacturing industry have focused mainly on green issues in supply-chain management or corporation-level governance models and reporting practices. The paper presents a broader view of sustainable development and recognises networked business as part of the solution.

Reports on research into the relationship between European defence manufacturing firms and their experience of cross‐border strategic alliances. The research takes in 135 cross‐border strategic alliances involving UK and European defence manufacturing firms, ranging from firms heavily dependent on defence contracts to firms whose defence interests make up less than 10 per cent of overall business. These firms manufacture telecommunications, transport, information, lethal platforms and components for the operation of these platforms for military organisations. A main aim is to ascertain the extent of participation in strategic alliances, the types of alliances being used and the major problems experienced by the partners.

“It should also be noted that the objective of convergence and equal distribution, including across under-performing areas, can hinder efforts to generate growth. Contrariwise, the objective of competitiveness can exacerbate regional and social inequalities, by targeting efforts on zones of excellence where projects achieve greater returns (dynamic major cities, higher levels of general education, the most advanced projects, infrastructures with the heaviest traffic, and so on). If cohesion policy and the Lisbon Strategy come into conflict, it must be borne in mind that the former, for the moment, is founded on a rather more solid legal foundation than the latter” European Commission (2005, p. 9)Adaptation of Cohesion Policy to the Enlarged Europe and the Lisbon and Gothenburg Objectives.

As the level of implementation of Industry 4.0 increases, misalignments between adopted technologies and organizational factors may result in benefits below expected. This paper aims to analyze how organizational factors can contribute to a higher level of adoption of Industry 4.0 technologies. The paper uses a sociotechnical perspective lens to achieve this aim.

Using a sample of 231 manufacturing companies in Denmark, a leading country in Industry 4.0 readiness, the paper analyzes through cluster analysis and logistic regression whether the development of four sociotechnical dimensions – that is, Social, Technical, Work Organization and Environmental factors – in these companies can benefit the achievement of higher levels of Industry 4.0 technology adoption.

The results show that companies focused on the development of sociotechnical aspects generally present higher Industry 4.0 adoption levels. However, some sociotechnical factors are less supportive than others.

Based on these results, practitioners can plan the adoption of advanced technologies, using a systemic organizational view. This study provides evidence on a growing field with few empirical studies available. The paper contributes by providing an analysis of a leading country in Industry 4.0 implementation, presenting a systemic view on technology adoption in the Industry 4.0 context.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the challenges facing European manufacturing industry in an age of increasing global competitiveness and to explore models for survival.

The paper reflects on trends in global manufacturing and examines the issues faced by European manufacturers.

Manufacturing still has an important role to play in ensuring community welfare; and there are ways in which European manufacturing industry can establish a secure future.

The paper suggests ways in which industry, supported by government, might change to become more competitive in an era of global competition.

The paper presents a useful exploration of the issues and challenges facing modern manufacturing organisations in Europe.

The paper aims to explore the influence of the industry technology intensity on the drivers of manufacturing backshoring.

An analysis of backshoring factors in recent cases of backshoring in the European manufacturing industry based on original qualitative and quantitative information collected from different databases. This analysis was performed using different econometric models applied to samples of firms classified by technology intensity of industries.

Drivers of backshoring are conditioned by the technology intensity of the industries. The models that analyse firms classified by technology intensity of the industries have a good explanatory capacity with few key factors. In industries with low-technology intensity, backshoring is a cost-oriented strategy and the drivers are linked to internal process optimisation and external factors related to labour and logistics costs in the host location. In industries with high-technology intensity, backshoring is mainly an innovation-oriented strategy and the key drivers are those related to the internal innovation capacity for improvement of the technological level of manufacturing processes. The research also identifies the more suitable theoretical approaches for explaining backshoring drivers in each type of industry according to its technology intensity.

This research analyses the backshoring drivers by means of models applied to firms classified by the technology intensity of industries. It also reinforces the dynamic perspective of time to analyse backshoring as a reassessment of location decisions made after prior offshoring.

There are an increasing number of predictions on the future of the European PWB manufacturing industry stating that Europe is becoming increasingly uncompetitive in the field of PWB manufacture and that, as a result, the European PWB manufacturing industry will collapse as OEMs and assemblers seek to source their PWBs from other regions of the world. This paper will review the competitive position of Europe in the global marketplace. Global technology, differing regional manufacturing cost structures, individual company financial expectations and other influencing factors such as governmental policy and environmental legislation will be discussed in detail. Reasons both “for” and “against” an indigenous European PWB source will be developed and compared and contrasted. This paper will then seek to develop potential “winning” business strategies to ensure the survival of PWB manufacture in the region.

The purpose of this paper is to discover how Hungarian manufacturing companies interpret technology and human resources as driving forces and barriers in terms of Industry 4.0 implementation.

The authors conducted 23 semi-structured interviews with corporate leaders and applied qualitative content analysis using Atlas.ti software.

The authors formulated a new definition of Industry 4.0 which emphasises the role of human factors. The authors identified driving forces (efficiency with speed/information flow/precision) and barriers (technology compatibility, human fears and lack of digital skills) in terms of Industry 4.0 implementation and developed the DIGI-TEcH performance management dimensions.

Comparison with other countries is limited. Given the exploratory and qualitative nature, further quantitative research would be needed to generalise results. Finally, only manufacturing companies are examined.

It provides empirical evidence to practitioners to understand concerns about technology and human resource in terms of Industry 4.0 implementation. In addition, corporate performance management can be extended by the developed DIGI-TEcH dimensions.

This paper reveals key evidence for the uptake of technology and human factors in terms of Industry 4.0 implementation and their impacts on corporate operation and performance. It also provides an insight into a specific country context, which can be a useful benchmark for other Central and Eastern European countries.

This paper aims to map the incidence of teamwork in European manufacturing industries and describe the process of teamwork diffusion over time. The impact of country, company size, manufacturing sector and other factors on teamwork diffusion is identified.

The study is based on data from 3,522 companies gathered by the European Manufacturing Survey covering ten European countries with a common survey tool.

Overall, six out of ten manufacturers with more than 20 employees have implemented teamwork in production. Furthermore, the authors show that implementation rates vary significantly by country, firm size and, to a lesser extent, sector of the company's activity. R&D expenditure, product complexity, innovation capability, strategy and to a lesser extent international competition and supply chain position create significant differences between firms opting for teamwork as a work organization practice and companies neglecting it.

The main limitations of the paper derive from the concept of EMS as a multi-purpose survey and the lack of adequate representation across European countries.

The value of this research is the ability to offer recent, international and relevant figures about teamwork implementation and diffusion. Furthermore the data set makes it possible for the first time to describe the process of teamwork diffusion over time.