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Surveys show that the results of top‐down oriented Business Process Reengineering projects often are to be questioned because of implementation problems due to internal resistance to change. Bottom‐up oriented Continuous Improvement projects on the other hand experience typically a lack of strategic orientation and do not necessarily improve the enterprise process system as a whole. The MOTION (MOdel for Transforming, Identifying and OptimiziNg core processes) approach developed in a European Union project provides a method to combine the strengths of the top‐down approach of business process reengineering with the advantages of the bottom‐up oriented continuous improvement process to create well balanced processes to meet customer requirements. The MOTION guidelines were developed by a consortium of European industrial companies and universities.

Construction of devices is not the most important element of flexible assembly systems; the true value lies in the realisation of systematic and need‐oriented planning.

THE German Diehl Group has divisions producing: non‐ferrous metal products; clocks and watches; control systems; industrial machinery; ammunition; and track systems. It employs a total of more than 13,000 people.

It is no coincidence that the universities were pioneers of the internet, for the medium lends itself uniquely well to academic debate and collaboration. We call this process of sharing ideas in cyberspace “virtual learning”, and the main goal of any such community is to create a shared understanding that will inspire research and development. This paper describes trends and issues in creating a Virtual Learning Community in systems engineering, drawing upon the results of an European ALFA‐funded project named COSME.

The function of a planning algorithm for sensor systems in assembly is presented.

Rapid prototyping technologies are now evolving toward rapid tooling. The reasons for this extension are found in the need to further reduce the time‐to‐market by shortening not only the development phase, but also the industrialization phase of the manufacturing process. The present state of rapid tooling is reviewed and the direct rapid tooling concept, aimed at developing direct and rapid tool manufacturing processes, is presented, along with three promising methods. Their intrinsic properties are outlined and compared. Necessary research and development are described in terms of direct rapid tooling requirements.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the benefit of pre-emptive disruption management measures for assembly systems towards the target dimension adherence to delivery times.

The research was conducted by creating simulation models for typical assembly systems and measuring its varying throughput times due to changes in their disruption profiles. Due to the variability of assembly systems, key influence factors were investigated and used as a foundation for the simulation setup. Additionally, a disruption profile for each simulated process was developed, using the established disruption categories material, information and capacity. The categories are described by statistical distributions, defining the interval between the disruptions and the disruption duration. By a statistical experiment plan, the effect of a reduced disruption potential onto the throughput time was investigated.

Pre-emptive disruption management is beneficial, but its benefit depends on the operated assembly system and its organisation form, such as line or group assembly. Measures have on average a higher beneficial impact on group assemblies than on line assemblies. Furthermore, it was proven that the benefit, in form of better adherence to delivery times, per reduced disruption potential has a declining character and approximates a distinct maximum.

Characterising the benefit of pre-emptive disruption management measures enables managers to use this concept in their daily production to minimise overall costs. Despite the hardly predictable influence of pre-emptive disruption measures, these research results can be implemented into a heuristic for efficiently choosing these measures.

The software industry has matured into a global business with software products and applications growing in number, complexity, and market importance. Global sourcing and software production and operations sharing are becoming the industry standard. At the same time, the marketplace has become less tolerant of poor‐quality products and hidden maintenance costs. Reviews various existing standards and frameworks and discusses the massive consolidation and coordination efforts currently ongoing for the purpose of developing international quality standards. Also proposes an eight‐step framework that puts all 29 clauses required by ISO 9001 for certification implementation in the software industry into clusters for more efficient management. Warns, however, that becoming ISO 9000 registered is only the first step to achieving consistent software quality.

During recent decades, the emergence of artificial intelligence (AI) from computer science, psychology and linguistics has created a great impact on the design and implementation of process planning systems. This article provides a review of the state‐of‐the‐art AI‐based automated process planning systems. A generalised framework for expert process planning systems is proposed and prospective research issues are discussed.

Companies have to assess the benefit of supplier innovation before realization. The specific situation of supplier innovation differs from conventional innovation evaluation because a supplier innovation refers to a subproduct for which the supplier is responsible. To date, supplier innovation evaluation has not been comprehensively discussed in the literature. Therefore, the purpose of this paper is to focus on how supplier innovation should be evaluated.

For this purpose, a case study based on expert interviews has been conducted to identify how supplier innovation is evaluated in practice. On the basis of the empirical findings the specific situation of supplier innovation is discussed in relation to theoretical basics about the object, objective, time, reference, person, recipient, criteria, and methods of evaluation as well as the evaluation and selection process.

Results are recommendations for the special situation of supplier innovation evaluation before their realization in the purchasing company.

Based on the recommendations, a systematic and comprehensive approach with evaluation criteria and methods should be developed. Future research should address useful evaluation criteria and methods.

Managers can use the recommendations to evaluate supplier innovation in practice and to establish a systematic evaluation and selection process for supplier innovation.

The research findings contribute to the literature about innovation management and supplier management research by providing insights into the special situation of supplier innovation evaluation; in particular, this is the first paper which provides a systematic and comprehensive discussion about supplier innovation evaluation.