An introductory essay: Creating a competitive edge in operations and service management through technology and innovation

摘要

This special issue of the Journal of Engineering and Technology Management focuses on the role technology and innovation plays in creating a competitive edge for the broad discipline of operations and service management. Modern operations management has employed a wide array of technologies for enhancing the efficiency and effectiveness of different business processes. In particular, the Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) system has been widely implemented and it has proven to be critical to the success of many companies. In recent years, the adoption of technology and innovation in operations management has continued at a fast pace. For example, the use of RFID technology has become widespread in both manufacturing and service operations. Incidentally, to survive in the aftermath of the latest global financial turmoil, firms need to profoundly improve their operations and elevate their productivity, and the use of technology and innovation holds the key to success of such a campaign. However, managers face great challenges in planning, development, integration, and implementation in their drive to create competitive advantage from technology and innovation adoption. With a view to publishing research findings that examine how technology and innovation support and strengthen operations and service management, spanning the whole product life cycle embracing research and development, procurement and supply, production, distribution, retailing, disposal and reverse logistics, we have selected 11 papers that explore a wide array of fundamental research issues pertinent to the theme of the special issue. We organize the papers into four clusters as follows.