Ben Clegg

Aston University · Operations and Information Management Group

Purpose The purpose of this research is to develop empirically grounded propositions for further research into UK manufacturing productivity. Design/methodology/approach Interviews were conducted with managers from strategic, tactical and operational levels from four manufacturing sectors to produce case studies. A modified strategic alignment the...

This paper explores the effectiveness of Quality Function Deployment (QFD) in selecting a Warehouse Management System (WMS) to facilitate warehouse digitalization. Through observation, reflection, planning, and action phases, the data on current operations and processes is collected for the WMS selection. The findings demonstrate the value of QFD i...

Managing passenger information during disruption (PIDD) is a significant factor in running effective and quick-to-recover rail operations. Disruptions are unpredictable, and their timely resolution is ultimately dependent on the expert knowledge of experienced frontline staff. The development of frontline employees by their employers usually takes...

This study investigates the scope of digitalisation in legal service delivery. It reflects on the diversity of new technologies, whilst deliberating on their value proposition to the customer. An exploratory research design, embracing an abductive approach was adopted to scope out the role of legal technologies, as well as their perceived performan...

Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA), provides an empirical estimation of the production frontier, based on an observed sample of decision making units (DMUs). Except for the single input-single output case, the asymptotic distribution of the DEA estimator can only be approximated through bootstrapping approaches. Therefore, bootstrapping techniques hav...

One of the most important effects that railways have on the environment is noise pollution, notably in Europe. The purpose of this study is to evaluate the environmental efficiency of railways in 22 European countries, considering two factors; a country’s response in retrofitting their wagon fleet with more silent braking technology and the number...

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate how action research-based interventions can effect change in a complex and challenging professional service environment (Lewis and Brown, 2012). This paper presents a successful way to do this. First, by eliciting factors for change driven by deregulation in the United Kingdom’s (UK) legal service...

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to improve the efficacy of professional support services and teaching processes within a leading UK university so that they align better to changing academic requirements and external market forces, using a novel systems thinking methodology. A case study is given from a school in a leading UK university. Desig...

The UK government's objective to increase accessibility to the rail system for users presents challenges for the management of day-today operations. This research reports on the development of a virtual-reality-based learning tool (game) to facilitate continuous improvement of rail service management in respect of accessibility. Application is via...

This paper gives an in depth action research case study on how organisational change has been implemented in a medium-sized law firm in the UK (Higgs & Sons). The Canonical Action Research process was followed and a specific novel type of Soft Systems Methodology (SSM) known as Process Oriented Holonic (PrOH) Modelling was used to define systemic p...

This chapter critiques trends in enterprise resource planning (ERP) in respect to contemporary multi-organizational enterprise strategy in order to identify under-researched areas. It is based on the premise that multi-organization strategies and information systems span more than one legal company entity and are becoming increasingly important as...

Purpose – To investigate dependencies that arise between companies during the ramp- up of production volume in the electric vehicle (EV) supply chain. Design/methodology/approach – An inter-company case study method has been used. Data was collected via tours of manufacturing plants, workshops and interviews from multiple tiers in a supply chain, n...

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to know which growth-impeding constraints are perceived to act upon operations of small- to medium-sized (SME) companies by their owner-managers and to recommend transitionary paths to elevate constraints and increase contribution levels made by SMEs’ operations. To do so, this research has been primarily found...

This paper provides an account of an action research study into the systemic success factors which help frontline staff react to and recover from a rail service disruption. This study focuses on the effective use of information during a disruption to improve customer service, as this is a priority area for train-operating companies (TOCs) in Great...

This paper aims to: (1) précis the extant literature on servitization and enterprization transformations, focusing on the role of information technology (IT) and information systems (IS) and their inter-relationships; (2) illustrate these interrelationships by showing how a small-to-medium-sized enterprise (SME) can move from being a predominantly...

In recent years Saudi Arabia has made great strides in higher education. This paper looks at the higher education sector in Saudi Arabia with special emphasis on outsourcing to Software as a Service based email systems as a positive enabler of higher education. Outsourcing can be defined as the process of contracting services to a third party with...

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to construct a new e-commerce innovation and adoption model that takes into account various stages of e-commerce adoption (interactive, non-interactive and stabilised) and covers technological, organisational and environmental factors. This was tested using data collected from manufacturing and service compani...

Purpose The purpose of this work was to construct a new E-commerce innovation and adoption model that takes into account various stages of e-commerce adoption (interactive, non-interactive and stabilised) and covers technological, organisational and environmental factors. This was tested using data collected from manufacturing and service companies...

Electronic commerce (e-commerce) has become an increasingly important initiative among Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) as both a great opportunity and as a source of competition. The factors affecting adoption decisions of e-commerce by SMEs have been well documented, but there is a paucity of empirical studies that examine the adoption of e-co...

This paper reports on an empirical case study based in a UK manufacturing company which was striving for more effective employee engagement. Social Network Analysis (SNA) was used to investigate the situation through a consultative approach involving the workforce in a structured debate about employee engagement and its possible effects upon the or...

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to investigate enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems development and emerging practices in the management of enterprises (i.e. parts of companies working with parts of other companies to deliver a complex product and/or service) and identify any apparent correlations. Suitable a priori contingency framewo...

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to investigate the use of high-value manufacturing (HVM) concepts in Scottish SMEs and define how they are being used to gain competitive advantage. Design/methodology/approach – Cross-sectional research carried out using a large-scale survey of 435 SMEs and semi-structured interviews of a subset of 50 SMEs....

The purpose of this work was to construct a new E-commerce innovation and adoption model that takes into account various stages of e-commerce adoption (interactive, non-interactive and stabilised) and covers technological, organisational and environmental factors. This was tested using data collected from manufacturing and service companies in Saud...

In the global Internet economy, e-business as a driving force to redefine business models and operational processes is posing new challenges for traditional organizational structures and information system (IS) architectures. These are showing promises of a renewed period of innovative thinking in e-business strategies with new enterprise paradigms...

Saudi Arabian Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) will face fierce competition from new entrants to local markets as a result of their accession to the Word Trade Organisation (WTO), and electronic commerce (e-commerce) technologies can reinforce SME's competitive edge. This study investigates the state of e-commerce adoption and analyses the facto...

Despite the proliferation of e-commerce adoption by SMEs and the world-wide growth of e-commerce, in general there is a paucity of empirical studies that examine the adoption of e-commerce by SMEs in the Middle East. In this paper, the authors provide insights into the salient e-commerce adoption issues by focusing on Saudi Arabian SMEs. This resea...

The enterprise management (EM) approach provides a holistic view of organizations and their related information systems. In order to align information technology (IT) innovation with global markets and volatile virtualization, traditional firms are seeking to reconstruct their enterprise structures alongside repositioning strategy and establish new...

This article discusses the importance of collaboration with suppliers and partners during research and development (R&D) technology projects. It details how this can be accomplished using the collaborative enterprise governance (CEG) concept to manage a technology project. CEG is based on the premise that parts of companies work with parts of other...

Purpose: The aim of this article is to detail the correlation between quality management, specifically its tools and critical success factors, and performance in terms of primary operational and secondary organisational performances. Design/methodology/approach: Survey data from the UK and Turkey were analysed using exploratory factor analyses, str...

The enterprise management (EM) approach provides a holistic view of organizations and their related information systems. In order to align information technology (IT) innovation with global markets and volatile virtualization, traditional firms are seeking to reconstruct their enterprise structures alongside repositioning strategy and establish new...

In the global Internet economy, e-business as a driving force to redefine business models and operational processes is posing new challenges for traditional organizational structures and information system (IS) architectures. These are showing promises of a renewed period of innovative thinking in e-business strategies with new enterprise paradigms...

Business-to-business (B2B) electronic commerce (e-commerce) has become an increasingly important initiative among organisations. The factors affecting the adoption decisions have been well-documented but there is a paucity of empirical studies that examine the adoption of e-commerce in developing economies in the Arab world. The aim of our study is...

Despite the proliferation of e-commerce adoption by SMEs and the world-wide growth of e-commerce, in general there is a paucity of empirical studies that examine the adoption of e-commerce by SMEs in the Middle East. In this paper, the authors provide insights into the salient e-commerce adoption issues by focusing on Saudi Arabian SMEs. This resea...

A special inventory problem is presented: aircraft spares that are repaired and returned to spares, called rotable inventory. Rotable inventory is not consumed so does not change in the medium term, but is rotated through operational, maintenance and stock phases. The objective for inventory performance is fleet Service Level (SL), which effects ai...

Enterprise resource planning (ERP) projects are risky. But if they are implemented appropriately, they can provide competitive advantage to organisations. Therefore, ERP implementation has become one of the most critical aspects of today's information management research. The main purpose of this article is to describe a new ERP risk assessment fra...

Despite the proliferation of e-business adoption by organisations and the world-wide growth of the e-business phenomenon, there is a paucity of empirical studies that examine the adoption of e-business in the Middle East. The aim of our study is to provide insights into the salient e-business adoption issues by focusing on Saudi Arabian businesses....

Saudi Arabian Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) will face fierce competition from new entrants to local markets as a result of their accession to the Word Trade Organisation (WTO), and electronic commerce (e-commerce) technologies can reinforce SME’s competitive edge. This study investigates the state of e-commerce adoption and analyses the facto...

This chapter looks at how the current global economic crisis has impacted upon the global automotive industry from an operations and supply chain perspective. It presents an empirical and theoretical background to help long and short term planning for organisations experiencing adverse trading conditions. The empirical research study (conducted bet...

The enterprise management approach provides a holistic view of organizations and their related information systems. In order to cope with the globalization, virtualization, and volatile competitive environment, traditional firms are seeking to reconstruct their organizational structures and establish new IS architectures to transform from single au...

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to help managers to successfully plan, implement, and operate enterprise resource planning (ERP) projects using a risk management framework. Design/methodology/approach This paper adopted a combined literature review and case study method. Using literature review, the paper first identified major issues of mana...

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to investigate the effectiveness of quality management training by reviewing commonly used critical success factors and tools rather than the overall methodological approach. Design/methodology/approach The methodology used a web‐based questionnaire. It consisted of 238 questions covering 77 tools and 30 critic...

This article has no abstract

The omnipresent global economic crisis has had a particularly dramatic effect on the global automotive industry. It has increased the need for a 3rd revolution and the move towards mass-collaboration between all industrial players that may ultimately lead to a governance model based on partnership-focused collaborative relationships. The first two...

There’s a commonly held view that manufacturing is in terminal decline. This perception seems to be particularly dominant in developed economies, where employment levels in manufacturing have fallen significantly in recent years. Yet the decline of manufacturing is often over stated and in many cases simply misconceived. Instead of decline, we shou...

Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) projects are strategic and capital intensive, so failure may be costly and even cause bankruptcy of companies. Previous studies have proposed ways for improving implementation, but they are mostly generic and follow standardized project management practices as specified in various standards (e.g. the “project mana...

Although a regional leader, Internet banking in Saudi Arabia is yet to be fully utilised as a value-adding tool to improve customer relationships and achieve cost advantages. The aim of this study was to identify the factors that encourage customers to adopt online banking in Saudi Arabia. The research constructs were developed based on the technol...

Although a regional leader, Internet banking in Saudi Arabia is yet to be fully utilised as a value-adding tool to improve customer relationships and achieve cost advantages. The aim of this study was to identify the factors that encourage customers to adopt online banking in Saudi Arabia. The research constructs were developed based on the technol...

This chapter reports on a framework that has been successfully used to analyze the e-business capabilities of an organization with a view to developing their e-capability maturity levels. This should be the first stage of any systems development project. The framework has been used widely within start-up companies and well-established companies bot...

Organizations today face intense competitive and economic pressures leading to large scale transformation of existing business operations and transactions. In addition, organizations have adopted automated business processes to deal with partners and customers. E-business diffusion is a multi-phase process, moving from initiation through to routini...

Methodologies for understanding business processes and their information systems (IS) are often criticized, either for being too imprecise and philosophical (a criticism often levied at softer methodologies) or too hierarchical and mechanistic (levied at harder methodologies). The process-oriented holonic modelling methodology combines aspects of s...

This article has no abstract

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to investigate how research and development (R&D) collaboration takes place for complex new products in the automotive sector. The research aims to give guidelines to increase the effectiveness of such collaborations. Design/methodology/approach – The methodology used to investigate this issue was grounded t...

Due to environmental changes and business trends such as globalisation, outsourcing and virtualisation, more and more companies get involved in business activities that are outside their direct control. This typically occurs by entering into collaborative relationships and joint ventures with specialised companies in order to fulfil the demands of...

Advances in electronic banking technology have created new ways of handling banking transactions, especially via the online banking channel. In Saudi Arabia, internet banking is still in its early stages and it is not utilised as a considerable savings tool in operating costs for banks and in improving customer relationships. The intent of this res...

This chapter reports on a framework that has been successfully used to analyze the e-business capabilities of an organization with a view to developing their e-capability maturity levels. This should be the first stage of any systems development project. The framework has been used widely within start-up companies and well-established companies bot...

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to show how QFD can be used as part of a structured planning and analysis framework for micro‐sized enterprises to build‐up their e‐business capabilities. Design/methodology/approach This case study has been produced using a new framework which integrates the balanced scorecard, value chain and quality function...

Purpose – To develop a systems strategy for supply chain management in aerospace maintenance, repair and overhaul (MRO). Design/methodology/approach – A standard systems development methodology has been followed to produce a process model (i.e. the AMSCR model); an information model (i.e. business rules) and a computerised information management ca...

This paper reports on the theoretical foundations and the practical reasons for the increasing popularity of enterprise management. The research has specifically aimed to investigate the dependency between the prevailing type of core competence and the emergent enterprise structure. Empirical inductive research has been conducted in the German auto...

The application of systems thinking to designing, managing, and improving business processes has developed a new "holonic-based" process modeling methodology. The theoretical background and the methodology are described using examples taken from a large organization designing and manufacturing capital goods equipment operating within a complex and...

This paper reports on current work that has developed a new matrix exploring extended enterprise dynamics used here to demonstrate the elements of commercial-financial risk by looking at the problems of project cost overruns -how costs are budgeted (i.e. committed) and incurred (i.e. experienced) during derivation of large complex products delivere...

Purpose The purpose of the work discussed in this paper is to understand, analyse and benchmark the “Packing and Filling” processes within BASF. A benchmarking project is described in detail which aimed to cover sites in different countries that supplied many different variants of finished goods in order to establish best practice and then to gener...

In July 1995 Aston Business School had the privilege of organising and hosting the First European Conference of the International Association for Management of Technology (IAMOT). At the time it was the first IAMOT conference to be held outside North America. Since then the association has held its annual international conference in Gothenburg, Swe...

In July 1995 Aston Business School had the privilege of organising and hosting the First European Conference of the International Association for Management of Technology (IAMOT). At the time it was the first IAMOT conference to be held outside North America. Since then the association has held its annual international conference in Gothenburg, Swe...

This paper reports on the theoretical foundations and the practical reasons for the increasing popularity of the enterprise management perspective. Theoretical foundations are given that discuss vertically integrated, virtual and extended enterprises in terms of endogenous and exogenous factors, and the tensions that these create. An exploratory st...

In July 1995 Aston Business School had the privilege of organising and hosting the First European Conference of the International Association for Management of Technology (IAMOT). At the time it was the first IAMOT conference to be held outside North America. Since then the association has held its annual international conference in Gothenburg, Swe...

Purpose The purpose of this study is to develop a performance measurement model for service operations using the analytic hierarchy process approach. Design/methodology/approach The study reviews current relevant literature on performance measurement and develops a model for performance measurement. The model is then applied to the intensive care...

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to describe how the application of systems thinking to designing, managing and improving business processes has resulted in a new and unique holonic‐based process modeling methodology know as process orientated holonic modeling. Design/methodology/approach The paper describes key systems thinking axioms that ar...

This article reports on a framework that has been successfully used to analyze the e-business capabilities of an organization with a view to developing their e-capability maturity levels. This should be the first stage of any systems development project. The framework has been used widely within start-up companies and well-established companies bot...

This paper describes work conducted as a joint collaboration between the Virtual Design Team (VDT) research group at Stanford University (USA) ¹ , the Systems Engineering Group (SEG) at De Montfort University (UK) and Elipsis Ltd ² . We describe a new docking methodology in which we combine the use of two radically different types of organizational...

Discusses the necessity for the conscious recognition of the phenomenon known as the extended enterprise; this demands that product, process and supply chain design are all considered simultaneously. Structure must be given to the extended enterprise in order to understand and manage it efficaciously. The authors discuss multiple perspectives for d...

A current EPSRC project, product introduction process: a simulation in the extended enterprise (PIPSEE) is discussed. PIPSEE attempts to improve the execution of the product introduction process (PIP) within an extended enterprise in the aerospace sector. The modus operandi for accomplishing this has been to develop process understanding amongst a...

The process of introducing complex new aerospace products is such that a single company can rarely claim to possess the entire technical expertise, resource base, or investment capital required to fully accomplish it. Therefore, it is a growing trend for aerospace companies to require a provisional understanding between their suppliers, partners, o...

The paper discusses a current EPSRC project (PIPSEE-Product Introduction Process: a Simulation in the Extended Enterprise) that is attempting to improve the execution of the product introduction process (PIP) within an extended enterprise in the aerospace sector. The modus operandi for accomplishing this has been to develop process understanding am...

This paper discusses the fundamental commonality of ‘total quality management’ (TQM) and ‘business process reengineering’ (BPR) that originates from their roots in ‘systems thinking’. The authors draw on the same ‘systems thinking’ origin to develop a new soft systems methodology known as the Boardman Soft System Methodology (BSSM). The BSSM has be...

The desirable state for a systems engineering firm to be in is to adopt the tenets of concurrent engineering (CE), a means for accomplishing this desired state is to use the doctrine of business process reengineering supported by a suitable systems approach. The ideas postulated in the paper give a new angle of approach to concurrent engineering, a...

This paper attempts to integrate the philosophies of Concurrent Engineering (CE), Business Process Reengineering (BPR), and Soft Systems Methodology (SSM) by adapting the classical interpretation of SSM and introducing an element of 'hardness' without becoming too intrusive and prescriptive for the users. An examples is given showing how a manufact...

The Systems Engineering Group (SEG) at De Montfort University are developing the Boardman Soft Systems Methodology (BSSM) which allows complex human systems to be modelled, this work builds upon Checkland's Soft Systems Methodology (1981). The BSSM has been applied to the modelling of the systems engineering process as used in design and manufactur...

If product cycle time reduction is the mission, and the multifunctional team is the means of achieving the mission, what then is the modus operandi by which this means is to accomplish its mission? This paper asserts that a preferred modus operandi for the multifunctional team is to adopt a process-oriented view of the manufacturing enterprise, and...

In this paper we assert that corporations and institutions will be unable to implement continuous improvement successfully unless three fundamental conditions are met: widespread agreement among the work force about the current situation being not good enough, and therefore in need of improving or re-engineering; genuine ownership, by individuals a...