Engineering network operations for international manufacturing: strategic orientations, influencing factors and improvement paths

Abstract

Engineering operations contribute to international manufacturing networks (IMN) capabilities and thus improving their performance in an international context. The literature has recognized engineering networks (EN) with different strategic orientations (e.g. efficiency, innovation and flexibility); explored IMN capabilities in four key areas (i.e. accessibility, thriftiness ability, manufacturing mobility and learning ability); but provided diverse views on their possible connections. Especially, the received wisdom offers less guidance on how EN may enhance IMN capabilities. At the same time, the challenges of making effective decisions at the EN-IMN interface are compounded by a large number of influencing factors that are interrelated in a very complex manner. To cope with these challenges, the article reveals four ways that EN may contribute to IMN capabilities, identifies 15 key influencing factors and suggests optimal paths to enhance IMN capabilities based on the interpretive structure model (ISM) method.

Keywords:

• International manufacturing network (IMN)
• engineering networks (EN)
• network capabilities
• influencing factors
• interpretive structure model (ISM)

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Seventh Framework Programme of the European Union through Marie Curie Actions IRSES Europe-China High Value Engineering Network (EC-HVEN) under Grant Number PIRSES-GA-2011-295130; National Nature Science Foundation of China for Young Scholars under Grant Number 71403070.

Notes on contributors

Xueyuan Wang

Xueyuan Wang is a Professor at Harbin University of Science and technology and Director of the high-technology development and strategy research center. She has published over 80 academic papers, most of them are indexed by SCI, EI or CSSCI. As a project leader, she has undertaken over ten major research projects from NSFC, NNSF, Humanities and Social Sciences Research Project of China Ministry of Education, etc. She has also participated in over 40 research projects.

Yufeng Zhang

Yufeng Zhang is a Senior Lecturer of Operations Management at the Business School of the University of Birmingham, UK. He had an earlier industrial career with responsibilities for project management and new business development and continues to work very closely with industry aiming to help companies cope with challenges and opportunities in managing complex global engineering networks. Yufeng is the Director of business programmes with science and engineering, Fellow of the Higher Education Academy, and Coordinator of the EU FP7 Europe-China High Value Engineering Network (EC-HVEN).