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The purpose of the paper is to investigate how product‐centric businesses (PCBs), operating in a business‐to‐business environment, develop industrial services to align with their services strategies and sources of market differentiation. PCBs are companies whose businesses were historically based on the products, rather than the services, that they sold.

This was a UK‐based study that included interviews with 40 managers in 25 industrial companies for whom services are a market differentiator.

The empirical results show that PCBs' industrial services are aligned with their services strategies and sources of market differentiation and can be categorised, i.e. “discrete services”, closely linked to PCB‐supplied products, either their own or those of other suppliers; “product lifecycle services”, concerned with product‐related activities throughout the lifecycle of a PCB's products; “output‐based solutions”, providing solutions to customers' operational issues. Modularity in design means that service categories are often backward compatible, meaning that PCBs supplying output‐based solutions can also supply product lifecycle and discrete services.

The main limitation is the focus on the perspective of suppliers, with customers likely to impact which service offerings PCBs provide.

PCBs should align industrial services with their resources that provide market differentiation, for example related to their products or relationships with other parties. Whilst it can be valuable to increase the range and depth of services provided to customers, creating modular offerings will ensure that customers are able to find an appropriate level of services engagement with their product suppliers.

The study provides a new typology of PCB service categories that are related to services strategies and sources of market differentiation.

Manufacturing industry’s success in reducing time‐to‐market, costs, environmental impact; and improving quality, and flexibility, has exposed an underlying factor limiting further significant improvement in competitive performance ‐ the effective management of production data. This article identifies the business benefits of product data management and examines the building blocks for a product data management strategy.

This study aims to investigate four internal (organisational structure, quality of information technology, business strategy and market orientation) and two external (competition intensity and perceived environmental uncertainty) contextual factors affecting the use of production planning and control accounting techniques (PPC), as well as the impact of PPC usage on organisational competitiveness.

Seven major PPC techniques were investigated, namely: attribute costing, lifecycle costing, quality costing, target costing, value-chain costing, activity-based costing and activity-based management. By deploying a multi-informant strategy, a structured questionnaire was used to gather survey data from 129 senior accounting, finance and production personnel of publicly quoted manufacturing companies in Nigeria.

The results, using structural equation modelling, show that market orientation is the strongest determinant of PPC usage. The inability of competition intensity and perceived environmental uncertainty to notably affect PPC usage suggests that external environmental pressure to use PPC is weak. Although PPC can engender organisational competitiveness, their interactive usage yields optimal results.

The study contributes to knowledge by: (i) presenting evidence that although PPC techniques can engender organisational competitiveness, it is their interactive usage that yields optimal results; (ii) empirically demonstrating that contextual factors influence PPC usage in line with the contingency theory; and (iii) validating the diffusion of innovation theory that organisations will typically deploy PPC techniques because of their relative advantage of improving organisational competitiveness.

The Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) system has found varieties of deployments in various domains of product-based industries. Current study aims to provide a framework for the adoption of PLM systems in manufacturing organizations to meet the actual requirements of industries.

First, a systematic review of extant literature was performed, and further, the case study approach is opted to study the process of New Product Development (NPD) in a manufacturing organization. Triangulation methodology was adopted wherein the interview results, actual observations, and authorized documentations were used to validate the result and provide conclusions.

A conceptual framework and implementation architecture for PLM is derived. The complete ecosystem for digital footprint is mapped for New Product Development (NPD) activities.

The study could be helpful for Techno-Functional Managers. For individuals with only functional/technical knowledge, additional training might be required to adopt the framework in actual practices.

The paper contributes to the existing literature by providing a framework and demonstrating the feasibility of implementation through the case study.

Over the last two years, the authors have studied the growth strategies and the supporting operations of nearly 650 companies around the world. While most have the expectation that innovation will drive corporate fortunes, the research makes it clear that building or restructuring business operations to profitably bring new products and services to market is a top priority only for best performing companies but near the bottom of most companies' priorities.

Explains how top‐performing global companies are investing in the product development capabilities, the supply chain process infrastructure, and the sophisticated information systems needed to support and synchronize innovation across the value chain.

Research on a subset of the survey base (the 300+ larger companies and business units with revenues ranging from US$200 million to US$10 billion and higher) shows that those that can synchronize complex global value chains – the complexity masters – are up to 73 percent more profitable than the others.

Interviews with senior managers at leading firms and case studies on the complexity masters would be of high value.

The authors suggest three steps: create innovation – build an idea‐generation machine; exploit innovation where and when it matters; and invest in innovation capabilities for creating and sustaining a profit cycle. The four ingredients that make top‐performing companies stand out are visibility, flexibility, collaboration, and technology.

Lists the best practices – the strategies and tactics – of the most profitable innovators, the elite “complexity masters.”

The purpose of this paper is to study the barriers to institutionalize the product lifecycle management (PLM) in large manufacturing organizations. The paper explores the hurdles and identifies the causal barriers to support the organizations’ transformation into digitized firms.

The paper utilized the multi-criteria decision making technique, i.e., DEMATEL (DEcision MAking Trial and Evaluation Laboratory) method to find the causal barriers, and adopted maximum mean de-entropy (MMDE) algorithm to determine the threshold value based on the information entropy of the relations among the barriers to PLM institutionalization.

This study explored nine barriers to PLM institutionalization and empirically identified the four critical barriers among the nine.

The present work is exploratory case-based research which is limited to a case of an Indian aircraft manufacturing firm with a limited number of respondents. More sophisticated statistical tools can be utilized to consider the subjectivity of the respondents. However, this research explores the various hurdles to PLM success and serves as a relevant outcome to identify the critical barriers to institutionalize the PLM concept.

The findings of the paper provide guidelines to the case company and similar firms for obtaining maximum benefits of PLM. The methodology shown in this paper will be useful to various large scale industries in identifying the critical barriers to PLM institutionalization among all existing barriers so that they can take appropriate measures before they proceed to adopt PLM.

The present work discusses the different reasons for which the companies are not able to derive the maximum benefits of PLM even after the implementation of PLM systems. This work uniquely applied the DEMATEL and MMDE methods to investigate the critical barriers to PLM institutionalization in an aircraft manufacturing firm.

Many audits, subsequent to various fire incidents, revealed that the failure to prevent the use of non-compliant and non-conforming building products earlier in the process have been mainly attributed to the inability of the existing building and building product certification processes to mitigate the risks of having non-compliance and non-conformance. This paper presents findings from a research project in Western Australia (WA) set up to evaluate and manage the risks of non-compliance and non-conformance of building products, with a specific focus on (although not limited to) aluminum composite panels as an external cladding material, across the project processes by mapping the lifecycle of building products used in building projects. The research is underpinned by the basic principles of risk management applied in the construction industry but considering the impact of the regulatory environment.

Lessons learnt from various jurisdictions indicated a real need for reform to the current building and building product certification processes unique to a jurisdiction in order to better manage such risks in these jurisdictions. This research focuses on a specific jurisdiction, namely the WA. The methodology used to gather and analyse data was both a quantitative and qualitative approach, facilitated through administering an online questionnaire followed by validation and refinement of interviews involving practitioners from WA.

The findings demonstrated that mitigating such risks will be feasible if an integrated and concerted approach is applied. Such a holistic approach has also unveiled specific potential reforms to the current building product certification framework that could be implemented to mitigate such risks. All of these led to the development of an idealised building product certification framework as the main contributions of this research.

The proposed idealised framework can be used as the framework to instigate reforms aiming to reduce the risks of allowing non-compliant and non-conforming building products within the WA jurisdiction. Whilst the framework was developed using the data from, and therefore aimed for the WA jurisdiction, the methodology applied here can be used as the basis to develop further frameworks in other jurisdictions.

Organisations are investing in systems such as product lifecycle management (PLM) to support product development, collaboration across complex supply chains and to provide a framework for digital transformation. Graduates of apparel programmes would benefit from a knowledge of PLM to help realise the opportunities that PLM offers. The purpose of this paper is to report on an educational research project that used PLM as a context for practice-based learning and as a mechanism to update the learning experience and stimulate the development of future practice.

This paper reports on the experiences, critical reflections and data from an action research study to establish a learning community through an educational partnership for PLM software within an undergraduate fashion business course. The cohort of the first year of the intervention (n = 28) is the main study population.

The findings indicate that PLM provided a stimulating learning context supportive of a detailed understanding of current industry practice, critical and innovative thinking and the development of a professional identity.

The opportunity for the development of both industry and educational practice is outlined.

A general introduction to PLM provides important information to support and advance Fashion Industry 4.0. Educational partnerships can reduce barriers to the integration of advanced technologies into the higher education curriculum.

Applications of PLM are under researched in textiles and apparel. The paper contributes to the broadening of the knowledge base of PLM and its potential to achieve strategic transformation of the sector.

This paper reviews the latest management developments across the globe and pinpoints practical implications from cutting‐edge research and case studies.

This briefing is prepared by an independent writer who adds their own impartial comments and places the articles in context.

Closed‐loop product lifecycle management (PLM), is a new principle that is gradually taking hold in the engineering world. The idea is to continuously gather data on the condition and performance of a product throughout its life and use that information to predict its remaining lifetime, possibly extend the overall product life, cut maintenance costs, lessen the impact on the environment through more effective reuse and recycling and ultimately improve the design of future products. In Europe, this concept is being developed through PROMISE, an EU‐funded project bringing together 25 partners in nine countries.

Provides strategic insights and practical thinking that have influenced some of the world's leading organizations.

The briefing saves busy executives and researchers hours of reading time by selecting only the very best, most pertinent information and presenting it in a condensed and easy‐to‐digest format.

This study aims to explore how green supply chain management (GSCM) strategies can be effectively implemented for business supply chain operations, relationship management and product design to gain green competitive advantages.

An exploratory in-depth case study was conducted with one of the largest Chinese electronics manufacturers that is considered a leading GSCM adopter in the industry, to understand how the company adopts green supply chain practices across its multiple product lines.

The findings show that businesses can build different green focuses across GSCM elements of green operation, green relationship management and green product design to form diverse hybrid strategic solutions. They include green control, lean, leagile, agile and clean innovation while taking consideration of supply chain type and product lifespan. A taxonomy of four key GSCM strategic combinations is proposed based on the findings. The strategies align with green demand and supply chain characteristics balancing a series of business competitive objectives in terms of reducing pollution and waste, improving green cost efficiency, enhancing green demand innovation and building green service effectiveness.

This study lends insight into the strategic alignment relationships between product supply chain types and approaches to GSCM.

The findings of this study can support industry practitioners in formulating aligned GSCM strategies based on product types to achieve optimal results.

Optimised green supply chain design, operations and relationship management incorporating product attributes can help further minimise negative impacts of business activities on the environment.

This research provides a systematic understanding of how product supply chain types can influence GSCM strategy formulation. It gives a holistic picture of how hybrid choices of strategies with green supply chain operations, relationship management and product design can be formulated based on product and supply chain characteristics.