PRODUCTION/OPERATIONS MANAGEMENT
KEONG LEONG, Feature
Editor, Fisher College of Business,
The Ohio State
University
Business and Engineering Collaboration: Strategic Partners or
Strangers Passing in the Night?
by Vicki Smith-Daniels,
Department of Management, Arizona State University
The accelerating evolution of
the information age, expanding global markets, and the
proliferation of technology have increased the importance of
product variety, speed, and flexibility in building and sustaining
competitive advantage. This competitive challenge requires
manufacturing organizations to confront the need for a fundamental
change in the way products and services are designed, produced, and
delivered to the customer. Time-based competition, rapid product
development, agile manufacturing, and knowledge-based operations
are all strategic initiatives to facilitate broad-based
manufacturing reform. These strategic initiatives shift the focus
of competition from the factory and back room operations to a
broader view of operations that encompasses the entire product
realization cycle, including product conceptualization, product
design, production, distribution, customer service, and product
disposal. Competitive manufacturing in this new environment
requires a holistic understanding of the entire manufacturing
enterprise, especially knowledge of the interdependencies between
engineering domains and management disciplines.
In recognition of a trend toward increased collaboration between
industry and university business and engineering programs, the
Orlando DSI meeting included a number of well-attended sessions on
emerging business/engineering integration. Presenters and session
participants spoke of the positive support their programs are
receiving from industry and students, and the challenges and
barriers of implementing multidisciplinary programs at their
universities. While these programs differ in scope and content,
most of them share a common vision of integrating the technical
fundamentals of engineering and a solid grounding of management
principles in their curriculum and research programs. In this
article, I provide a profile of these emerging programs and
encourage POM scholars to take a leadership role in advancing the
development of innovative research and educational programs
involving joint business and engineering partnerships with
industry. I conclude with some discussion of the challenges and
barriers most universities have encountered as they move toward
greater integration of the two diverse cultures of business and
engineering.
Challenge for POM
For the field of POM, this new manufacturing paradigm offers
abundant opportunities for multidisciplinary research and education
programs with industry. POM has a well-established history of
working in common areas with industrial engineering, particularly
in the areas of scheduling, inventory, capacity, production
planning, queuing, and materials management. To leverage future
opportunities, POM faculty must accept a broader-based definition
of our discipline that includes not only a spectrum of qualitative
and quantitative research methods, but incorporates engineering
dimensions of the product realization cycle into our research and
teaching programs. There is some evidence we have already moved in
this direction. Most recently, Skinner [2] called for the reshaping
of manufacturing strategy research in terms of the whole range of
policy decisions involved in product realization from engineering
design through customer service. Voss and Weich [3] perform field
research on how companies are integrating the functions of
engineering and production in their operations strategy.
Collaborative Educational Programs
As this new picture of manufacturing emerges, graduates of
engineering and business programs will be called on to be not only
specialists capable in their area of expertise, but also to be both
an operations integrator, and above all, a manufacturing
strategist. This is a significant change from the past.
Traditionally, business and engineering programs have educated
students for organizations that are characterized by functional
specialization, economies of scale, and mass production systems. A
number of new manufacturing master's programs are emerging that
address the need for "next generation" manufacturing capabilities
and include a strong foundation in operations management. While
individual programs differ in the mix of business and engineering
courses, pedagogical approaches, and the nature of industry
involvement, graduates of these programs share a deep commitment to
manufacturing excellence and an ability to synthesize business and
engineering perspectives. A sample list of new master's
manufacturing programs include:
- Arizona State University's Technology MBA and JACMET Program
Cal Poly University, SLO's Engineering Management Dual Degree
(MBA/MSE)
- Carnegie-Mellon University's Master of Manufacturing
- Clarkson University's Master of Engineering and Manufacturing
Management
- MIT University's Leaders for Manufacturing Dual Degree (MBA/MS)
- University of Michigan's Tauber Manufacturing Institute
Programs
- Northwestern University's Master of Management in Manufacturing
- Penn State University's Master of Manufacturing Management
- Texas A&M University's Master of Science in Life Cycle
Engineering and Operations Management
- University of Wisconsin-Madison's Master of Manufacturing and
Technology Management
- Industrially-Sponsored Student Project Teams
Industry continues to stress the importance of graduates with an
appreciation for and an understanding of multidisciplinary team
decision-making approaches. Many graduate and undergraduate
programs have responded to this challenge by offering applied
project courses involving business and engineering students. These
projects deepen their understanding of integrated manufacturing
problems by analyzing an industrial problem and recommending a
solution that can be implemented by the sponsoring organization.
There are a number of pedagogical approaches for delivering
business/engineering student project experiences. One approach,
Cornell's Semester in Manufacturing, was recently profiled in the
POM feature column of Decision Line [1]. Other pedagogical
approaches for delivering business and engineering student project
experiences are being offered by universities such as Arizona
State, Auburn, Michigan, MIT, New Hampshire, Stanford, and
Tuskegee. While these programs vary in scope and duration, they
have all enjoyed strong enrollments and industrial support and
feedback have been very positive.
Multidisciplinary Manufacturing Research Programs
The majority of past manufacturing research takes a disciplinary
perspective on activities associated with the production function.
While many of these studies are yielding positive advances in both
academia and industry, our industrial partners often tell us that
our research efforts to date have not resulted in significant
improvements in the performance of their organizations. Perhaps our
lack of success in providing useful knowledge for industry can be
attributed to our focus on discipline-based research programs. To
realize collaborative research efforts between business and
engineering faculty at Arizona State University, we have developed
a research agenda for manufacturing. This research agenda was
developed from several sources that included faculty focus groups,
analysis of research agendas at nationally recognized manufacturing
programs, industry discussion, and an examination of
federally-funded research programs. This agenda includes six major
research groups including:
- Cultural and Organizational Change
- Strategic Management of Projects
- Global Production and Supply Networks
- Enterprise Information and Communication Technologies
- Product Modeling and Simulation
- Rapid Process Realization
- Implementation Challenges
Almost any new multidisciplinary effort encounters institutional
barriers. Many participants of the business/engineering tracks at
the Orlando DSI meeting faculty spoke of the common barriers they
have faced in implementing joint business and engineering programs
at their respective institutions. I have the following story to
illustrate the challenges of bringing together faculty from the two
diverse cultures of business and engineering. It is titled "The
Parable of the Dirt Pile."
"The Parable of the Dirt Pile"
NCE upon a time, there was a Grand Wizard who visited a
world-renowned university and discovered a massive dirt pile on its
grounds located directly between the Colleges of Business and
Engineering. The Grand Wizard immediately went to see the deans of
Business and Engineering and explained to them that beneath the
dirt pile they could find a pot of gold, the gift of wisdom and
knowledge, and a magic carpet to visit far away places. The Grand
Wizard told the deans that if business and engineering faculty
worked together to remove the dirt pile within the next six months,
these treasures would be theirs. Otherwise, the pot of gold, the
gift of wisdom and knowledge, and the magic carpet would be moved
by the Grand Wizard to another university.
Naturally, the deans expressed strong reservations to the wizard's
challenge because they knew faculty had been adding mounds of dirt
to this pile for the past 20 years. Given the treasures, however,
the deans decided to proceed forward and encourage their faculties
to work together to move the dirt pile. Over the first three months
of the "dirt removal" initiative, little dirt was moved. Instead
there was intense debate between the faculty in business and
engineering on how to devise a multidisciplinary strategy for
moving this pile of dirt. Not surprisingly, much of this discussion
had a strong discipliary flavor and proceeded as follows:
Engineering: "We should not work on moving the dirt pile
unless the National Science Foundation announces a prestigious
"university dirt removal" program and we are awarded a grant for
equipment, graduate students, faculty stipends and overhead."
Business: "Before proceeding on this initiative, we need to
address whether moving the dirt pile is in our college's mission
and strategic plan."
Engineering: "Moving dirt is not an intellectually
challenging problem to work on!"
Business: "Rather than design a technology for moving the
dirt, let's study why faculty add dirt to the pile?"
Engineering: "It is not in our performance evaluation to
move dirt. The dean's office must change the rules if they want for
us to collaborate with business faculty. Besides, a joint business
and engineering publication on dirt removal is not likely to be
published in the best engineering journals."
Business: "Just tell the wizard we can't move the dirt pile
because engineers are difficult people to work with."
Engineering: "If we develop the best technology for dirt
removal, then we can move that dirt, receive the pot of gold, the
gift of wisdom and knowledge and the magic carpetþand leave those
business faculty out of it."
Business: "Why move the dirt ourselves? Those engineers can
invent something and move it themselves. We should spend our time
romancing the wizard, in hopes of locating other treasures."
Engineering: "Even if we develop the best technology for
dirt removal, how are we going to stop faculty from throwing dirt
on the pile? Can we theoretically remove dirt fast enough to reach
the treasures?"
As this dialogue continued, time was passing by very quickly. After
hearing of the lack of progress, the Grand Wizard decided to meet
with business and engineering faculty to use her magical powers to
convince them that the dirt pile must be moved. Does the Grand
Wizard succeed? The final chapter has yet to be written.
Conclusion
Achieving long-term, sustainable integration between business and
engineering colleges will require relentless support from all
stakeholdersþfaculty, students, industry, professional
associations, university administration, and government. Many
faculty are skeptical of multidisciplinary integration -- either
because they believe multidisciplinary should be an initiative that
is undertaken by industry, or they feel that these new programs are
short-lived and in the end, joint business/engineering programs can
be nothing more than "strangers passing in the night." Successful
business and engineering collaboration must be sustained by formal
organizational policies that provide appropriate rewards and
recognition for faculty who accept the risks and rewards that
accompany multidisciplinary collaboration in the traditional
disciplined-based university structure. This will be no simple
task. But the potential benefits of business and engineering
collaboration may be worth the investmentþpots of gold, gifts of
wisdom and knowledge and magic carpets. Can we ask for more?
References
[1] Matthews, Ronald, "Cornell's Semester in Manufacturing: An
Innovative Graduate-Level Teaching Approach," Decision Line,
27(5), 1996, 7-9.
[2] Skinner, Wickham, "Manufacturing Strategy on the "S Curve,"
Production and Operations Management, 5(1), 1996, 3-14.
[3] Voss, C. A. and Winch, G. M, "Including Engineering in
Operations Strategy," Production and Operations Management,
5(1), 1996, 78-90.
from Decision Line, March 1997, 28(2)
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