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Technological advancements and global societal changes reshapes manufacturing industry emphasizing needs for competence development of industrial professionals. The purpose of this paper is to study how organizational learning supports the development of academic structures, creating agile and sustainable formal educational models meeting novel competence needs.

The qualitative case study, part of a longitudinal research study, focuses on internal academic processes supporting a new formal educational model. Qualitative data was collected through five focus groups, incorporating 32 informants from different HEI function categories.

Changing traditional academic structures requires joint engagement between all HEI functions, emphasizing organizational learning with subprocesses of searching, creating, sustaining and exchanging knowledge in a learning loop. Results show a consensus among the different HEI functions regarding the value of the HEI’s coproduction with society; however, bureaucracy and academic structure hinder flexibility. Cross-functional teams building a “chain-of-trust” throughout the HEI coupled with full management support show opportunities to progress into a learning organization.

Organizational learning within HEIs requires trustful and open communication, multifunction knowledge exchange, holistic views of processes and system thinking, achieved through cross-functional teams and continuous improvement through learning loops.

Industry-academic collaboration on formal education for lifelong learning needs to become both agile and resilience to meet technological advancement and sustainability.

Novel technology, digitalization and sustainability gain ground and require that society and organizations, including academia, change and learn. This means that academia is meeting new challenges and needs to develop internal processes.

The purpose of this paper is to describe an approach to build a quality culture within a higher education institution.

This paper is based on Action research and a Case study.

The authors show the result of the mapped processes of a higher education institution, Management planning and control, Education, Research and Support, and describe how the mapping was performed, working in cross-functional teams. Further on, they discuss the result of the pilot and the plan for implementation.

A process-oriented approach in higher education institutions, with its complexity, creates opportunities for successful quality assurance and control when having an integrated quality assurance system.

Quality management, by means of total quality management (TQM), is considered to foster organisational performance characterised by competitiveness and long‐term profitability. Since the benefits of quality management cannot be achieved without the sustained performance of equipment affecting product quality, maintenance management has become important. This has led to the development of maintenance methodologies, such as total productive maintenance (TPM) and reliability centred maintenance (RCM). TQM, TPM and RCM implementation have, however, often failed or been poorly executed. This has affected organisations' performance and ultimately survival in a competitive environment. This paper includes a comparative study of literature on TQM, TPM and RCM implementation, focusing on organisational change. The study found several common categories of activities when implementing TQM and the maintenance methodologies. These categories can be considered crucial to obtain management and employee commitment. Case studies on TQM, TPM and RCM implementation are used to validate the categories identified, and to yield recommendations on the handling of activities within these.

The purpose of this paper is to put forward the methodology and most important aspects used at the Spanish group of timber companies Grupo Losán to design and implement a satisfactory preventive maintenance program in the manufacture of melamine and veneers in accordance with continuous improvement and TPM philosophy.

The paper draws on empirical evidence from one case study and develops a framework for improvement in continuous improvement management for company competitiveness.

The authors judge the difficulty in implementing a continuous improvement culture to be caused by the complexity of obtaining commitment and involvement from the personnel most affected by the project. In this context, a participative approach and a suitable methodology for implementation are key factors that are not always taken into account by companies. This experience also proposes the important role that researchers can play as “agents of change” from a viewpoint of “action research”.

The management experience provides companies with a useful guideline to implement continuous improvement culture not only in the maintenance area, but also in supply chain management.

The case study covers a gap in the research field on the lack of implementing guidelines which aid adopting continuous improvement in companies.