Content uploaded by Tobias Redlich
Author content
All content in this area was uploaded by Tobias Redlich on Nov 06, 2014
Content may be subject to copyright.
M.F. Zaeh (ed.), 5th International Conference on Changeable, Agile, Reconfigurable
and Virtual Production (CARV 2013), Munich, Germany 2013,
419
DOI: 10.1007/978-3-319-02054-9_71, © Springer International Publishing Switzerland 2014
Reconfigurable Strategic Guidelines for Successful Co-operative Value Creation
Patrick Philipp Grames, Tobias Redlich, and Jens Peter Wulfsberg
Laboratorium Fertigungstechnik, Helmut-Schmidt-Universität ! Universität der Bundeswehr Hamburg,
Holstenhofweg 85, D-22043 Hamburg, Germany
patrick.grames@hsu-hh.de, www.hsu-hh.de
Abstract
Manufacturing co-operations, innovation think tanks and technology clusters are well-known and profitable elements of a
modern company's structure. The fast pace of typical product life cycles and innovation rates make it necessary to gain as
much external knowledge as possible to optimise supply chain organisation. The aim of this quantitative, empirical study is
to develop strategic guidelines out of the most influential success factors of manufacturing co-operations. These guidelines
should be reconfigurable and easily adoptable to the situations co-operations regularly face. In order to reach these
objectives the authors identified 110 success factors and analysed their cross-factorial relationships. Strategic guidelines
were then formed and were evaluated by 16 senior managers of various fields, e.g. the aviation and space, transportation,
strategy consulting and publishing industry. On average these managers direct 1247 employees.
Keywords:
Strategic Guidelines; Co-operations; Value creation
1 SITUATION
A study concerning innovation management points out that
companies are able to operate most profitably when they are
actively co-operating with suppliers and customers [1]. Research
and development as well as manufacturing co-operations help to
stabilise a company•s situation among its competitors especially
when it comes to the deployment of highly innovative products. The
new focus on interactive value creation and the permeable
boundaries of companies is supported by recent scientific research
by [2,3,4] and by the overall megatrend towards personalisation and
individualisation [5,6,7].
Researchers describe that the way customers recognise products
has changed during the last two decades [7]. Customers
increasingly expect to purchase not only a product but also gain
access to a broad variety of product-related service benefits ! the so
called: product-service-bundle [8]. Without taking advantage of all
available sources of know-how and experience on the open market
manufacturers will be unable to generate sufficient product-service-
packages.
Acknowledging that establishing business co-operations and
networks are key skills [9,10,11] this still leaves the question for the
right partner. Manufacturers face a highly competitive environment
where the protection of intellectual property soars up to the focal
task of management boards. Even medium-sized businesses have
to face the world market as their key market [12]. Considering that
their environment is so tough, these businesses cannot just open up
their boundaries, allow their knowledge to be spread and hope for
the best. However what should the leaders of companies do who
want to gain the advantages of a more •open production• [3,4,5]
without taking the risk of being exploited? The answer is that they
need to establish strong and resilient relationships with reliable
suppliers and customers.
2 REQUIREMENTS OF SUCCESSFUL CO-OPERATIONS
One way to realise the often proclaimed but rarely implemented
mantra of vital business co-operations is to use the well structured,
transparently generated and easily reconfigurable strategic
guidelines presented in this contribution. These guidelines have
been built to be used and are optimised for medium to large sized
companies in the manufacturing industry.
The guidelines help to increase the efficiency of manufacturing co-
operations in addition to strengthening their robustness in order to
drive economic success [13]. For example the guidelines are able to
provide support by avoiding a sudden appearance of stock-out-
situations among a complex supply chain which can be critical for
suppliers and OEMs. Stock-out-situations are likely to happen when
the process organisation between partners is not synchronised
consistently. The resulting frictional losses which are enforced by
communication problems often directly lead to severe economic
losses [13]. One way to avoid incidents like this is to precisely
analyse which success factors influence the payoff of business co-
operations in the manufacturing industry. In this contribution, the
large amount of possible factors is grouped into influential fields and
further into influential factors (Figure 1).
Regardless of branch or industry there are five basic principles
which apply to all sorts of business co-operations. When thinking
about optimising a supply chain which involves several partners
these principles act as a first checklist to implement before
developing specific strategic guidelines, fitted to a business model:
1. The critical mass needs to be reached. This means that
entrepreneurs on the one hand have to quantitatively acquire
enough potential partners to actually establish a co-operation
network. On the other hand they will have to generate a
persuasive mass of information transaction, idea spreading and
lively communication between the involved partners [14].
2. All partners need to have the intention to co-operate. What
sounds self-evident is crucial to every successful network.
Exchange programs of research and development employees
and a philosophy towards reconfigurable teams across
companies• borders create additional reliance [15,16].
3. During a co-operation relationship the emergence of information
asymmetry is inevitable. To avoid potential opportunistic
behaviour from one of the partners personal and informal
relationships need to be established early [15,16].
4. When establishing a business co-operation there has to be at
least one large focal company. Firstly this is necessary
because smaller suppliers and other members of the network
420 P.P. Grames, T. Redlich, and J.P. Wulfsberg
need to align themselves with the bigger partner. Secondly a
large focal partner creates a special charisma for a young and
new co-operation network, which supports potential customers
in their investment decisions [12,17].
5. Having reached a larger amount of people and companies
involved in the co-operation it becomes useful to establish a
network management organisation. It will optimise the
process organisation and cover network marketing aspects [17].
Figure 1: Four influential fields of co-operative success.
3 SCIENTIFIC APROACH
The aim of this study is to identify the influential factors of successful
co-operative value creation and to form strategic guidelines out of
them. The focus point of the study was to build strategic guidelines
which are easily applicable to the manufacturing industry and at the
same time develop a methodology which can be used as a tool to
create newly reconfigurable guidelines for specific parts of this
branch. To reach these goals a five-step methodological approach
has been conducted.
3.1 Preliminary Study
Execution of a preliminary online-study with 72 academic
respondents (B.Sc., M.Sc., Dr. Ing. and Prof. Dr.) to check and
optimise the methodological steps from 2 to 5.
3.2 Identification
Identification of 110 influential factors of successful manufacturing
co-operations by evaluating eight explorative interviews with
German entrepreneurs of the aviation industry, four scientific
lectures, several brainstorming sessions and scientific literature
[2,4,12,13,15,16,18].
3.3 Selection
Filtering of the 44 most important influential factors by using the
findings of the preliminary study and systematic analysis of their
cross-factorial influence by using a direct influence matrix [19].
3.4 Development
Development of a highly reconfigurable methodology to collect,
arrange and assess influential factors, before automatically merging
them into strategic guidelines. Creation of 13 strategic guidelines for
optimising the success of manufacturing co-operations by causally
linking the 44 most important influential factors (based on their
systematic analysis in the direct influence matrix).
3.5 Evaluation
Validation of all 13 strategic guidelines by 16 senior managers of
Airbus, EADS Deutschland, Cassidian, Rockwell Collins
Deutschland, Eurocopter Group, A. T. Kearney, the Aviation Cluster
Hamburg Metropolitan Region, Verlagsgruppe Handelsblatt,
Deutsche Bahn and several smaller companies who on average
direct 1247 employees. This step was conducted via telephone and
personal interviews which lasted on average 38 minutes and took
place in Hamburg, Germany from May to July 2012.
4 RECONFIGURABLE STRATEGIC GUIDELINES FOR
SUCCESSFUL CO-OPERATIVE VALUE CREATION
The scientific evaluations of this topic lead to 13 strategic guidelines
for successful business co-operations in the manufacturing industry.
To use these guidelines executives should pick one success factor
to optimise among their own co-operation. Then they are able to
check which process factors stimulate their success factors and
which initial factors start the whole guideline (see 4.2 to 4.5). The
result will be an initial factor, which is relatively easy to activate but
which stimulates very important and resounding success factors of
the whole co-operative endeavour.
4.1 Overview of Success Factors
The following passage gives an overview of the success factors of
all 13 strategic guidelines:
1. Both partners' technical ability to cooperate in manufacturing
processes
2. Partners' culture of communication
3. Efficiency of product-focused knowledge exchange
4. Ability to avoid product flops
5. Both partners' technical ability to cooperate during the research
and development phase
6. Ability to split assets and liabilities among partners
7. Intensity of competition among the market sector
8. Information transaction and coordination costs
9. Both partners' social motivation to co-operate
10. Assumed benefit of a manufacturing co-operation
11. Quality of informal relations between both partners
12. Professional experience of co-operation teams
13. Incompleteness of contracts
The authors analysed how modern production co-operations can be
quickly reconfigured to meet the majority of these factors. To give an
impression of how the guidelines can be used the four most
resounding ones will be displayed. All of the displayed factors
influence each other, which is indicated by the direction of the
connecting arrows. The numbers at the arrows indicate the average
percentage agreement of the 16 surveyed experts of the strength of
a connection between the factors
Reconfigurable Strategic Guidelines for Successful Co-operative Value Creation 421
4.2 Guideline 1: Both Partners' Technical Ability to
Cooperate in Manufacturing Process
Having identified the technical ability to cooperate as a factor which
deserves optimisation managers should use this strategic guideline
(Figure 2).
The guideline shows that it is possible to enhance the quality of a
planning process by optimising the consistency of the EDP-systems
co-operating partners use at their supply chain interface. Enforced
by this increased consistency manufacturing costs can later on be
reduced significantly.
Supported by insight of the partner•s manufacturing facilities it is
possible to increase both partners• satisfaction after splitting assets
and liabilities (68 % experts• approval). This chain of causally linked
incidents helps tremendously by improving both partners• technical
ability to co-operate during the manufacturing process.
However one should not believe that continuous EDP-systems are a
daily routine in every successful manufacturing company. Too often
adequate planning software is substituted by simple charts, lists,
registers or other makeshift solutions where important information is
filed in an unstructured way. This forces engineers to invest time
and effort into interpreting ambiguous information which often
results in slips of the pen [20].
The common quality of planning processes shows that there is a lot
of room for further optimisation. Consistently installed milestone
planning software is a key aspect which is used too rarely [19].
A resounding 88 % of the interviewed experts agree that optimised
planning processes would help to gain more out of every
manufacturing co-operation. Only this planning makes it possible to
handle thousands of parts, components and semi-finished products
across borders of companies and countries.
Partners who are successful enough to have reached a state where
their technical ability to co-operate during the manufacturing process
is optimised to a satisfactory extent, should begin to concern
themselves with enhancing the culture of communication which is
practised between their companies.
4.3 Guideline 2: Partners! Culture of Communication
Entrepreneurs who want to optimise the culture of communication
that is practised between them and their partners should adopt this
guideline (Figure 3).
Initially one has the opportunity to increase own market
reconnaissance efforts in order to raise general market
transparency. Employees who are engaged in co-operation teams at
a partner•s company will benefit from this as higher market
transparency stimulates the professional experience they are able to
gain. Due to the fact that there is more information available
Figure 2: Guideline 1: Both partners' technical ability to cooperate in manufacturing process.
Figure 3: Guideline 2: Partners• culture of communication.
422 P.P. Grames, T. Redlich, and J.P. Wulfsberg
between the co-operating companies the impression of participating
in a useful endeavour increases (69 % experts• approval). This late
process factor improves the culture of communication which
connects both partners.
The same initial factor helps to improve the culture of
communication in a second way. A healthy 66 % of the experts
interviewed agree that a higher market transparency has a positive
effect on the probability of whether a product becomes a flop or not.
This will then ease the competitiveness within the market sector a
company is in, which leads to a more lively culture of communication
between co-operating partners.
The above-mentioned consistency of EDP-systems also supports
this strategic guideline. However in this context of communication it
furthermore boosts the motivation both partners develop for
conducting co-operative endeavours (57 % experts• approval). This
incident for his part tightens both partners• communicational
integration (53 % experts• approval).
After partners have ensured their technical ability to co-operate
(Guideline 1) and have established a healthy culture of
communication it is important to make sure the product-focused
information transaction is run in an efficient way.
4.4 Guideline 3: Efficiency of Product-Focused Knowledge
Exchange
Most of the interviewed experts agree that product-specific internal
knowledge is one of the most valuable goods a manufacturing
company owns. They further agree that external partners should
only have access to this knowledge to a certain and very controlled
extent. At the same time vital business co-operations need an
environment where company secrets and internal intellectual
property are transferred widely unhindered in order to keep the
corporate endeavour functioning (Figure 4).
One interviewee solves the dilemma in an elegant way by saying
that •it is usually not necessary to unveil the company•s drastic
secrets.• Based on with this intention one would rather scare off his
partners instead of being able to trade intellectual property with
them. The same interviewee further explains that it is common
practise to only reveal those parts of a documentation with which
partners really need to negotiate. As an example he mentions a
wing of an airplane. While external data, like geometric dimensions
are naturally and necessarily exchanged unhindered, entrepreneurs
would tend to be a bit more nit-picking when it comes to the purpose
and properties of the internal wiring.
However OEMs basically understand those peculiarities of their
suppliers knowing that they distribute their products to more than
one customer and that they take a certain amount of risk by partly
unveiling their efforts [20]. When it comes to co-operations where a
high amount of bidirectional know-how migration is crucial large
non-disclosure-agreements have become a common instrument.
These contracts form a reliable and unambiguous regulatory
framework around the relevant parts of a company•s secrets [4].
Through analysing the strategic guidelines it becomes obvious that
an efficient and satisfying exchange of product-focused knowledge
and company secrets is triggered by three main stimuli. While the
above mentioned culture of communication within partnering
companies is the strongest driver efficient product-focused
Figure 4: Guideline 3: Efficiency of product-focused knowledge exchange.
Figure 5: Guideline 4: Ability to avoid product flops.
Reconfigurable Strategic Guidelines for Successful Co-operative Value Creation 423
knowledge exchange (66% experts• approval) two completely new
factors appear here. Interestingly, according to the experts, the
costs which result from communicating have a relatively small
influence on the efficiency of communication (only 51 % experts•
approval). One interviewee who works as senior vice president for a
large aircraft manufacturer in northern Germany puts it like this:
•Being in the position to ship components and semi-finished
products all around the world only for final assembly, we do not
really worry about costs for information transaction.• Keeping this
aviation-related fact in mind there is a very helpful implication in this
guideline. By improving the input offered by employees in a
business co-operation, the professional experience gained by all
members of this co-operation is enormous (80 % experts• approval).
Via two other important influential factors this will stimulate the
efficiency of cross-company information transaction.
Through obeying these first three guidelines, co-operating
manufacturing companies can minimize frictional losses, inspire
communication and optimize the way they exchange knowledge. It
now becomes necessary to also take one rather external aspect into
consideration.
4.5 Guideline 4: Ability to Avoid Product Flops
Products often fail despite their developers and engineers conviction
of having created something breathtaking. The probability of
suffering a product flop or the ability to avoid it is a typical external
factor in manufacturing co-operations that is driven by customers
and competitors (Figure 5).
In addition the configuration of a product or good itself has large
impact on its probability to fail on the market. The interviewed
experts broadly agree that there is a direct connection between the
complexity of a product and the controllability of its supply chain (90
% experts• approval). Furthermore this influential factor drives the
degree of agility a research and development team can react with
(90 % experts• approval). The strongly linked chain of cause and
effect culminates in the company•s ability to avoid massive product
flops. Through taking these four strategic guidelines seriously
entrepreneurs can cover the most vital aspects of co-operational
success.
5 SUMMARY
For this study the authors analysed the 110 most important
influential factors for the success of modern manufacturing co-
operations between suppliers and original equipment
manufacturers. A specific methodology was used based on the
scenario technique [19]. This allowed to systematically creating 13
strategic guidelines by setting 44 influential factors in causally linked
sequences. The significance of our results has been approved by 16
senior managers from several leading companies in the aviation and
defence industry.
These reconfigurable strategic guidelines provide a portfolio of
measures to improve and optimise business co-operations and to
lead the daily gained experience into conceptual knowledge.
Managers and entrepreneurs will have to choose which of them to
use and which part of their supply chain they want to improve.
6 REFERENCES
[1] Ebert, J.; Chandra, S.; Liedtke, A. (2008): Innovation
Management. Strategies for success and leadership. A.T.
Kearney Inc. Research Papers, pp. 1.
[2] Redlich, T.; Wulfsberg, J. P. (2011): Wertschöpfung in der
Bottom-up-Ökonomie, 1. Aufl., Springer-Verlag, Heidelberg.
[3] Wulfsberg, J.P.; Redlich, T.; Bruhns, F.-L. (2011): Open
production: scientific foundation for co-creative product
realization, in: Prod Eng Res Devel, Vol. 5, No. 2, pp. 127-139.
[4] Grames, P. P.; Redlich, T.; Wulfsberg, J. P. (2011): Open
Source Hardware ! Wie interaktive Wertschöpfung traditionelle
Produktionssysteme revolutioniert, in: ZWF Vol. 106 No. 5, pp.
314-320.
[5] Tseng, M. M.; Jiaob, R.J.; Wanga, C. (2010): Design for mass
personalization, CIRP Annals - Manufacturing Technology, Vol.
59, No. 1, pp. 175!178.
[6] Kumar, A. 2007: From mass customization to mass
personalization: a strategic transformation. International
Journal of Flexible Manufacturing Systems, Vol. 19, No. 4, pp.
533-547.
[7] Zukunftsinstitut GmbH (2011): Heidelberger Leben Studie
Trendmonitor. Studien Heidelberger Lebensversicherung AG,
pp. 4.
[8] Meier, H.; Roy, R.; Seliger, G. 2010: Industrial Product-Service
Systems"IPS². CIRP Annals - Manufacturing Technology, Vol.
59, No. 2, pp. 607!627.
[9] Snow, C.C.; Thomas, J.B. 1993: Building Networks - Broker
Roles and Behaviours. In: Lorange, P. et al. (editors):
Implementing Strategic Processes: Change. Learning and Co-
operation. Cambridge: Blackwell Business.
[10] Wiendahl, H-P.; Lutz, S.; Helms, K. 1999: Management of
distributed capacities in variable production networks. In:
Mertind, K. (editors): Global Production Management. Boston:
Kluwer.
[11] Shi, Y; Gregory, M. 1998: International manufacturing
networks"to develop global competitive capabilities. Journal
of Operations Management. Vol. 16, No. 2!3, pp. 195-214.
[12] Sydow, J.; Möllering, G. (2004): Produktion in Netzwerken.
Make, buy & cooperate, 1. Aufl., Vahlen, München, pp. 318.
[13] Grames, P. P.; Redlich, T.; Wulfsberg, J. P. (2012):
Erfolgsfaktoren unternehmensübergreifender Wertschöpf-
ungskooperationen, in: ZWF Vol. 107, No. 9, pp. 618-622.
[14] Porter, M. E. (2000): Local clusters in a global economy, in:
Economic Development Quarterly Vol. 14 No. 1, pp. 15-34.
[15] Duschek, S. (2002): Innovation in Netzwerken. Renten -
Relationen ! Regeln, 1. Aufl., Deutscher Universitäts-Verlag,
Wiesbaden, pp. 39.
[16] Lerch, F.; Sydow, J.; Wilhelm, M. (2010): Wenn Wettbewerber
zu Kooperationspartnern (gemacht) werden. Einsichten aus
zwei Netzwerken in einem Cluster optischer Technologien, in:
Jörg Sydow (Hg.): Management von Netzwerkorganisationen.
Beiträge aus der #Managementforschung#, 5. Aufl., Gabler
Verlag, Wiesbaden, pp. 187!235.
[17] Birkhan, W. (2012): Das Luftfahrtcluster Metropolregion
Hamburg e. V. Vortrag. Helmut-Schmidt-Universität
/ Universität der Bundeswehr Hamburg. Leitung: Univ.-Prof. Dr.
Duschek. Hamburg, 19.06.2012.
[18] Koller, H.; Langmann, C.; Untiedt, H.M. (2006): Das
Management von Innovationsnetzwerken in verschiedenen
Phasen. Erkenntnisse und offene Forschungsfragen. In:
Wojda, F.; Barth, A. (Hrsg.): Innovative Kooperations-
netzwerke. 1. Aufl., Deutscher Universitäts-Verlag, Wiesbaden,
pp. 34.
[19] Gausemeier, J.; Ebbesmeyer, P.; Kallmeyer, F. (2001):
Produktinnovation. Strategische Planung und Entwicklung der
Produkte von morgen, 1. Aufl., Carl Hanser Verlag, München.
[20] Frank, Cay-Bernhard (2012): Telefoninterviews im Mai 2012;
Unternehmensberater (Principal) bei A.T. Kearney, Berlin.