Decision Engineering Report Series : Industrial Product-Service Systems (IPS2): THINK TANK

摘要

Cranfield University and Rolls-Royce plc designed and developed a one-day ‘Think-Tank’ international workshop to establish the future research direction for IndustrialProduct-Service Systems (IPS2). The workshop was held at Cranfield University, UK,by invitation only to visionary academics across the globe, senior industrialists andfunding organisations.The workshop aimed to trigger discussions on high impact challenges involved inIPS2. The research directions from the workshop could inform IPS2 researchers andresearch funding decisions in the future. The overall objectives were to: Engage multi-disciplinary academics and practitioners in a deeper discussionto identify major research directions for the future. Identify the unique challenges faced in IPS2 and also any country specificrequirements. Prioritise the research directions into mid-term and long-term categories. Identify major industry and public procurement trends across differentcountries.The workshop design has gone through two main phases. Prior to commencing theevent, the participants submitted their thoughts on either “IPS2 Research Directions”or “Industrial requirements for IPS2” and these were thoroughly analysed. During theevent, the analysed results were presented and followed by capturing strengths,weaknesses, opportunities and threats (SWOT analysis) to IPS2 research acrossdifferent countries. One of the main strengths of the research area is that IPS2research is maturing in international profile and creating wide awareness of itsimportance among stakeholders. How the bigger picture of IPS2 was described andthe immaturity of models, tools and techniques developed for real industrialapplications were major weaknesses of IPS2 research. To develop an enhancedunderstanding of IPS2 research results across countries, wider opportunities toestablish a common case studying pool is suggested. Finally, prolonged researchfunding for analysing real impact on industry is a major threat widely discussed.Every delegate had to express his/her views on potentially high-impact in theircountries. Combined grouping analysis of these answers gave ten common themeswithin them. Examples of these common themes are cost, skills, design andmanufacturing, society, and case studies. These themes underwent a rigorousprioritization process by the delegates to identify high impact challenges. From theprioritization of grouped challenges, the themes - Design and Manufacturing, Casestudies, Business capability, Cost and Complexity, all emerged as the foremostareas on which to concentrate.