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Knowledge management (KM) is popular within the engineering industry. With increasing investment in KM projects, companies are looking for ways to justify their effort. This research develops a framework to assess the contribution of KM solutions within a business against its corporate objectives. The framework uses a set of key performance indicators (KPIs) as lead indicators. The lead indicators are developed in line with the lag indicators at the strategic level. A number of templates is developed to implement the framework within a company. A real life case study is presented where the templates are used to identify KPIs for a manufacturing solution. The paper also gives guidelines on using the templates effectively.

In the light of challenges experienced in cost estimation at the bidding stage of complex engineering services in the defence industry (e.g. contracting for availability), the purpose of this paper is to present a framework to manage the influence of uncertainty on cost estimates.

The research applied the Soft Systems Methodology and benefitted from interaction with four major organisations in the defence industry through document sharing, semi-structured interviews, workshops, and case studies.

The framework is composed of seven stages to plan, identify, prioritise, classify, and manage cost uncertainties. Through the validation of three case studies some of the key benefits of the framework were realised in project planning, uncertainty visualisation, and capability management.

The research has been applied in the defence sector in the UK and focuses on the bidding stage. Further research needs to be applied to confirm that the findings are applicable across industries and across the life cycle.

The paper builds on the theory behind risk and uncertainty management and proposes an innovative framework that avoids the assumption of “perfect” knowledge by raising questions about the validity of the input data.

The aim of this research paper is to present the critical factors that constitute a successful implementation of lean manufacturing within manufacturing SMEs.

A combination of comprehensive literature review and visits to ten SMEs based in the East of the UK were employed in the study. The companies' practices were observed to highlight the degree of lean manufacturing utilisation within these companies. This was followed by interviewing of the relevant and key personnel involved in lean implementation. Results were analysed and validated through workshops, case studies and Delphi techniques.

Several critical factors that determine the success of implementing the concept of lean manufacturing within SMEs are identified. Leadership, management, finance organisational culture and skills and expertise, amongst other factors; are classified as the most pertinent issues critical for the successful adoption of lean manufacturing within SMEs environment.

Continued scepticism within SMEs about the benefits of lean to their business is one of the fundamental limitations this research faces. SMEs are, therefore, not very willing to provide useful information and data, timely for further investigation.

The novelty of this research project stems from the realisation of critical factors determining a successful implementation of lean manufacturing within SMEs environment. The results would provide SMEs with indicators and guidelines for a successful implementation of lean principles.

The purpose of this paper is to develop a technical product‐service systems (t‐PSS) for the BoX^® (Big OptiX) ultra precision free‐form grinding machine which has been designed and developed at Cranfield University. BoX is a new machine concept where advanced mass production and ultra precision technologies are combined.

This work utilises the machine as a demonstration case study to investigate t‐PSS for the machine tool providers. It develops three t‐PSS business models for the BoX machine: product‐, use‐ and result‐oriented.

The paper discusses the stakeholders' responsibilities, cash flows, application sectors, and consequently benefits and shortcomings of the three business approaches.

The enhancement of competition from low cost economies, vibrant market requirements and increasing customer demands cannot be addressed merely by the latest achievements in technology. As a response to this, the modern manufacturing industry is shifting its orientation towards t‐PSS. t‐PSS is an integrated product and service offering that delivers value in use.

The novelty of this paper lies in identifying and analysing the key implications of t‐PSS on machine tool industry using the BoX machine as an example case study.

As enterprises focus on offering integrated product/service bundles, performance‐based contracts become ever so important in ensuring effective delivery. Performance‐based contracts fall under the result‐oriented category of industrial product service systems (PSSs). The paper aims to present a conceptual framework for operations strategy in performance‐based industrial PSSs that will help manufacturing companies configure their operations to support effective delivery of integrated product/service offering.

This paper first develops a conceptual framework for operations strategy in performance‐based contracts by identifying the key elements after a detailed systematic review of literature. A major shift in support and maintenance logistics for complex engineering systems over the past few years has been observed in the defence and aerospace industries. Availability contracting, a special type of performance‐based contracts, is replacing traditional service procurement practices. Two exploratory case studies involving defence availability contracts are conducted for making inferences regarding the operations strategy.

The important findings of this research are a set of elements of operations strategy guiding the development of a conceptual framework, a set of operating principles and processes supporting effective delivery of performance‐based service contracts.

The true value of this research is to open up the novel area of result‐oriented industrial PSSs operations strategy by capturing the key characteristics of operations using both literature and empirical evidence.

Strategic trends towards service operations have been widely reported in the recent literature, but organisational capabilities to support such service-centred strategies are less well understood. The purpose of this paper is to identify key organisational issues in managing complex engineering service operations throughout the lifecycle.

Using instruments developed from the product lifecycle management technologies and the network configuration concept, key organisational issues for engineering service operations were identified through case studies focusing on complex engineering products and services systems across a variety of industrial sectors.

The case studies demonstrated different organisational features and strategic priorities of engineering service operations along the whole lifecycle. A generic trend has been observed for engineering systems to move from being design, development and manufacturing focused to embracing support and end-of-life recycling matters.

This paper provides an overall framework for integrating key organisational issues in engineering service operations. It contributes to the service literature by highlighting the need of developing appropriate organisational capabilities to support service-centred strategies with engineering cases. It also provides guidance for companies to manage their engineering network operations throughout the whole lifecycle of complex products and services systems.

In their seminal book, The Experience Economy, Pine and Gilmore point out that customers buy experiences and are willing to pay a steep premium for them and hence service organizations should try to make them more fun. The purpose of this paper (and the premise of the recent book) is that services can be redesigned using psychological principles to deliver positive experiences for any kind of service, not just those that lend themselves to fun; by definition, satisfaction with a subconscious aspect of a service cannot be explained by the customer; and the psychological aspects of service interactions have to be approached with the same level of rigor as that are used to design processes that deliver the technical features of the service.

A point of view on the gap and opportunities in the field.

The authors show that there is an opportunity to extend the service operations field.

Enables managers and researchers to think about new approaches for designing experiences.

Valuable in a number of areas including healthcare.

Presents a new point of view.

The adoption of the product‐service system business model means that the designing company has greater scope and motivation to learn from experience of its products in use to improve their core design and engineering capabilities. Continuous improvement, however, depends crucially upon the implementation of effective knowledge and information management (KIM) systems within a dynamic learning environment that impinge on diverse communities throughout the product lifecycle. This paper aims to address these issues.

This paper consolidates literature reviews and presents empirical observations relating to the current KIM systems and practices within large aerospace and manufacturing companies. In particular, experiences from a case study to enhance reuse of in‐service feedback conducted with an aerospace company are reported.

The empirical observations suggest that the feedback processes rely on a combination of formal and informal personalization and codification approaches, but companies are placing greater emphasis on the development of information systems to support learning from in‐service experience. It is argued that greater value could be realized from collective reuse of in‐service information but should be considered from the outset such that its content and representation could be made more amenable to computational analysis and organization for knowledge discovery.

To achieve the full aspirations of learning from in‐service experience, issues and challenges of KIM need to be addressed. These are summarized as strategies to promote success of codification approaches.

The initial value of the techniques for improving in‐service information reuse has been demonstrated to the industrial collaborator.