Special Sessions

Meet the Editors

Chair: Nigel Caldwell

Join the Meet the Editors session to learn what the editors of leading OM journals are looking for, what is hot and what is not. Do not forget to bring your questions.  The panel consisting of editors from all top journals include:  Steve Brown, Stephen Childe, Martin Spring, Louise Knight, Jan Olhager, Jeremly Hall, Wendy Tate, Bart Maccarthy, Patrik Jonsson, Mark Pagell, Beverly Wagner and Harm-Jan Steenhuis

Special Sessions

1. Lean and Six Sigma for achieving and sustaining operational and service excellence
2. Project management: “Meeting the challenges of managing temporary (multi) organisations”
3. Operations and Supply Chain Management in engineer-to-order industries
4. Managing conflict, opportunism and trust repair: The dark side of supply relationships
5. Productivity: Management and Improvement
6. Right shoring: Making resilient offshoring and reshoring decisions
7. Learning in the Classroom and the Playground: Exploring OM Gaming in Practice
8. Maritime Operations
9. Managing the dynamics of production development
10. The Digital Supply Chain – Research Opportunities and Challenges
11. Managing University and Industry Engagement
12. Teaching Award

Lean and Six Sigma for achieving and sustaining operational and service excellence

Organised by Jiju Antony and Rick Edgeman

Contact details
j.antony@hw.ac.uk; rick.edgeman@usu.edu

Lean Enterprise strategy, methods and models are often associated with the Toyota Production System, quick changeover, agile manufacturing, Kaizen continuous improvement approaches, and the Shingo Prize for Operational Excellence. Similarly, Six Sigma strategy and methods generally call to mind approaches aimed at breakthrough levels of improvement, innovation and design that lead to nearly perfect performance. Integration of Lean and Six Sigma yields strategies and supporting methods aimed at simultaneous delivery of both incremental and breakthrough levels of improvement, innovation, and design.

While Lean, Six Sigma, and Lean Six Sigma are most easily applied in areas with more easily measured and tangible outputs, application in finance, services, and healthcare and other areas where cause-and-consequence are more difficult to demonstrate have seen rapid increase in application. We would encourage latest developments on Lean and Six Sigma topics in manufacturing, service, public sector and third sector organizations.

While manuscripts related to Lean and / or Six Sigma are invited, those addressing one or more of the following themes are especially welcome:

• Case studies of Lean, Six Sigma or Lean Six Sigma in any industrial sector;
• Demonstration of cause-and-consequence relationships between Lean and / or Six Sigma implementation and unit or enterprise performance;
• Demonstration of cause-and-consequence relationships between implementation of operations excellence models such as the Shingo Model and unit or enterprise performance.
• Novel applications of Lean and Six Sigma
• Sustainability of Lean/Six Sigma/Lean Six Sigma business strategies
• Lean and Green
• Lean Six Sigma for Supply Chain and Logistics
• Lean Six Sigma and Big data
• Re-imagination of the works of the masters such as Shingo, Imai, Deming, Juran, Feigenbaum and others.

The organisors would be happy to discuss initial ideas for papers
A special issue of Total Quality Management and Business Excellence is associated with this track.
ring decisions

Project management: “Meeting the challenges of managing temporary (multi) organisations”

Sponsored by the Association for Project Management

Organised by David Bryde and Christine Unterhitzenberger
The track convenors would be happy to discuss ideas for papers and can be contacted by email:

Contact details
D.J.Bryde@ljmu.ac.uk; C.Unterhitzenberger@ljmu.ac.uk

Temporary (multi) organisations (TMO) can take a number of forms, i.e. projects, short-run supply chains. TMOs are formed to deliver products and services on a project-by-project basis in many industry and business sectors, yet there is much about the workings of such organisations that is not yet fully understood. The temporary nature of TMOs, coupled with the complexities of successfully delivering projects, creates unique challenges which need to be met for them to be successful. This special track will focus on understanding what the threats and opportunities are and the ways to manage them. We would anticipate papers would be submitted from various sub-disciplines within operations management, i.e. traditional project management, supply chain management, inter-firm relationships, knowledge management, change management etc. Whilst welcoming papers that relate to any aspect of managing TMOs, we are particularly interested in papers on topics relating to the social relationships in such organisations. The social relationships formed between the individuals, teams and organisations involved in TMOs present specific threats and opportunities in relation to achieving performance both at the intra- and inter-firm levels. Sub themes we particularly would like to cover in the track are:

• ensuring fair and equitable treatment of teams and individuals at the intra and inter-firm level (including establishing structures, distribution channels and appropriate methods for person-to-person interactions)
• managing social relations at the inter-firm boundaries
• strategies for dealing with key (and often difficult) stakeholders both inside and outside the TMO
• psychological pressures – and solutions – to individual’s working in TMOs
• social relationship implications of introducing new ways of managing TMOs, such as lean, agile management techniques and new forms of contracts
• developing TMO capabilities of individuals and companies, both over the short-term and the long-term
• integrating people in short-run supply chains into the TMO

Operations and Supply Chain Management in engineer-to-order industries

Organised by Martin Rudberg and Jonathan Gosling
The track convenors would be happy to discuss ideas for papers and can be contacted by email:

Contact details
Martin.rudberg@liu.se; goslingj@Cardiff.ac.uk

The ‘engineer-to-order’ (ETO) sector, including construction, shipbuilding, and offshore (oil platforms, wind power, etc.), typically constitutes a major part of many countries GDP and, directly or indirectly, employs a lot of people. Still, most of the published research in operations and supply chain management has neglected the needs of the ETO sector. ETO-type industries typically face a number of unique challenges, as the products are often one-of-a-kind and/or highly customized. Bespoke methods, approaches and purchasing requirements have to be managed appropriately, and products are quite often, at least partially, produced on the site of use, resulting in temporary ‘factories’ and supply chains. We are particularly interested in papers that address the following sub themes:

• adapting approaches from MTS
• classifications and cross industry comparisons
• CODP concepts and interfaces in engineer-to-order
• design automation and IT developments (including VDC and BIM)
• engaging with the customer and customization
• logistics, 3PLs, and supplier management
• production strategies and supply chain planning

Managing conflict, opportunism and trust repair: The dark side of supply relationships

Organised by Jens Roehrich and Mickey Howard

Contact details
J.Roehrich@bath.ac.uk; M.B.Howard@exeter.ac.uk

Over the last decade management research has witnessed a tremendous increase in the magnitude and frequency of various types of inter-firm cooperative arrangements such as alliances, joint ventures and partnerships. There has also been a steady shift in the management of inter-organisational relationships towards coping with increasingly unpredictable socio-political events, economic uncertainty and environmental catastrophe. In the midst of these challenging times, senior managers must devise new ways of navigating global supply relationships and networks that consistently create value for an increasing number of diverse company stakeholders (e.g. government buyers, NGOs, MNCs). While prior studies have explored social phenomena such as the importance of trust, cooperation, collaboration, commitment and social capital in these inter-organizational relationships, there is limited research on the existence, consequences and management of the ‘dark side’ of inter-organizational relationships such as conflict, disputes, opportunistic behavior and distrust when actors fail to facilitate cooperation. Yet interdependence between organizations, as evident in long-term cooperative relationships increases both the likelihood for conflict and distrust, and the need to manage them. It is this gap in theory and practice that informs our call for papers in seeking to develop a more fine grained understanding of the dark side in long-term inter-organizational relationships. This dark side of supply relationships is important not just to manage relationship exchange performance, but also in driving long-term innovation.

We are therefore seeking papers that will explore the existence, consequences and management of the ‘dark side’ of inter-organisational relationships. We welcome conceptual as well as empirical papers and encourage multi-disciplinary and inter-disciplinary contributions across different units of analysis. All methodological approaches are equally welcome.

The track convenors would be happy to discuss ideas for papers and can be contacted by email:
J.Roehrich@bath.ac.uk and M.B.Howard@exeter.ac.uk

Productivity: Management and Improvement

Organised by Martin Spring and Kim Sundtoft Hald

Contact details
m.spring@lancaster.ac.uk ; ksh.om@cbs.dk

Productivity is of fundamental importance to economic prosperity and is a central concern among policy-makers. In some countries (notably the UK) productivity (in terms of output per labour hour) has stagnated since the 2008 financial crisis, and there is an urgent need to address this. Although operations management (OM) has always been concerned, in many ways, with improving productivity, the term ‘productivity’ has fallen from the academic OM lexicon. In policy circles, discussions about productivity usually involve economists, and rarely involve OM issues. In OM, the conversation has turned to ‘performance’ and we now consider a wide range of performance measures including those related to flexibility and sustainability.
This track seeks to explore how productivity fits into contemporary OM debates and how a managerial conversation about productivity and its improvement at the level of the operation, firm or supply chain can connect to the policy debates at sectoral, regional or national level.
We therefore invite papers on any aspect of productivity in operations and supply chain management, on themes that could include:

• How OM performance measures such as delivery performance and quality relate to productivity
• How productivity is managed in complex service operations, digital sectors and other novel settings
• How performance measures and management in firms relate to productivity measurement in sectors and regions
• Why and how the notion of ‘productivity’ fell from use in the operations management literature
• Empirical studies of how the notion and language of productivity is used in management practice
• How productivity is defined and operationalised at the firm, the supply chain and the regional and national systemic level.
• Empirical studies of how firms and supply chains may be understood to apply different productivity improvement strategies.
• How accounting methods and practices may relate to the measurement and management of productivity in OM
• Whether and how improvement practices such as lean and six sigma improve productivity
• How potentially desirable operations properties such as flexibility, resilience and sustainability can (or can’t) be shown to impact on productivity
• The relationship between technology adoption and productivity improvement at the level of the operation or supply chain
• Productivity measurement and management in inter-organisational networks or supply chains.

Right shoring: Making resilient offshoring and reshoring decisions

Organized by David Eriksson (Jönköping University, Sweden), Per Hilletofth (Jönköping University, Sweden), Steffen Kinkel (Karlsruhe University, Germany) & Wendy Tate (University of Tennessee, US)

The track convenors would be happy to discuss ideas for papers and can be contacted by email:

Contact details

dr.d.eriksson@gmail.com, per.hilletofth@ju.se, steffen.kinkel@hs-karlsruhe.de, wendy.tate@utk.edu

International relocation of manufacturing activities are commonly discussed as offshoring (moving to another shore/country) or reshoring (moving to the home shore/country). Offshoring has received the greatest attention in research and practice, and is often considered in the context of manufacturing strategy, for example global footprint design, global value chains or make-or-buy. Offshoring has been a competitive tool, mainly to reduce cost of manpower, but also to gain other benefits, such as market access and economies of scale. However, it has become apparent that offshoring is not always successful, and for several reasons companies are now turning to reshoring. In this special track we invite papers focusing on different “shoring” decisions, so as to build towards a better knowledge about right-shoring. We are interested in the following sub-themes but are open to other research ideas:

• decision criteria and frameworks for offshoring/reshoring
• experiences and good practices from offshoring/reshoring
• nearshoring as alternative to reshoring or offshoring
• lifecycle of (consecutive) offshoring or reshoring decisions
• manufacturing strategy and location decision
• differentiated manufacturing strategy
• new technology adaption and offshoring/reshoring
• global value chains
• make-or-buy

The best papers in this special track will be invited to submit an updated version for a special issue in Journal of Purchasing and Supply Management (impact factor: 2.562). This review process will be handled separately after the conference has ended.

If you have any question regarding appropriateness for the track, please contact the coordinators.

We look forward to seeing you in Edinburgh, Scotland in July of 2017!

Learning in the Classroom and the Playground: Exploring OM Gaming in Practice

Alistair Brandon-Jones
Nigel Slack
Eamonn Ambrose

This session explores the role of gaming within Operations Management teaching. In the first half of the session, we will experience gaming from a student perspective by playing an OM simulation (focused on quality management) that we have recently released (teams of around 4-5 will need a laptop, so if you have one handy bring it along). The second half of the session will be an open forum to discuss the strengths and limitations of this and other simulations in bringing different OM topics to life. We plan to use this as an opportunity to explore key contingencies to consider when adopting (or not adopting!) simulations. We look forward to an interactive two hours!

Maritime Operations

Organised by Stavros Karamperidis

Contact details
s.karamperidis@hw.ac.uk

The maritime sector carries nearly 90% of world trade. Small adjustments therefore in maritime operations have an enormous knock on effect on productivity, prices and economic policy. Maritime operations are of fundamental importance to economic prosperity, and a central concern of policy-makers and businesses.
As the world’s supply chain maritime operations are constantly reacting to changes In local and global business practices. For example in some countries (notably the UK), in 2014, for the first time, maritime imports from developing countries overtook those of developed countries.
Given its dominance in transporting global trade the environmental footprint of ships and port operators is high on environmental policy maker’s agenda. If higher environmental standards and new solutions mean additional costs, then these will flow directly to the final customer.
This track is an opportunity to explore how maritime operation fits into contemporary OM debates and particularly supply chain thinking. We welcome all papers that engage with any aspect of maritime operations but topics could include; performance improvement in the sector, the spread of good practices, links to policy whether local, regional or national, the coming of big data and the sector and of course the impact of new regulations whether global, national or environmental.

Managing the dynamics of production development

Organized by Anna Granlund, Jessica Bruch, Koteshwar Chirumalla, Magnus Wiktorsson and
Mats Jackson

Contact details
Anna.granlund@mdh.se; Jessica.bruch@mdh.de; Koteshwar.chirumalla@mdh.se; Magnus.wiktorsson@mdh.se ; Mats.jackson@mdh.se

Among a wide range of industries it is increasingly acknowledged that superior production system development capabilities are crucial for competitive success. Accentuated by globalization, sustainability and emerging technologies the strategic development of production systems is increasingly dynamic, interacting with other processes, stakeholders and organisations. New and innovative processes and strategies for production system development, managing the dynamics and facilitating the interactions with product development, operations, R&D, new suppliers, etc becomes crucial. How can operations management processes be organized to enable innovation, change and strategic development of future production systems? We are open to a wide range of topics within this scope, but are particularly interested in papers that address the strategic development of production systems, under the influence of globalization, sustainability and emerging technologies.

The Digital Supply Chain – Research Opportunities and Challenges

Co-Chairs: Jag Srai, Cambridge University; Bart MacCarthy, Nottingham University
Panellists will include: Constantin Blome (Sussex University); Tobias Schoenherr (Michigan State University), Matthias Holweg (Oxford University), Phill Greening (Heriot Watt

Supply chains, supply networks, and extended enterprises have been dominant areas of interest for the Operations Management research communities in the last three decades. Whether it is ‘traditional’ topics such as quality management, planning and control, and purchasing, or more recent themes such as sustainability and innovation, understanding the ‘connectivity’ of actors (including consumers) in value creation remains at the core of what we investigate. However, digitalisation is changing the operational world. Developments in production technologies, automation, IT and communication technologies, are affecting the scale and economics of production, where and what we produce, and how we serve customers. The panel will examine research opportunities and challenges in the emerging digitally connected world.

Will the digital landscape change the focus of what we study in supply chain and international operations? Are new digitally connected international network configurations emerging? Is the world now flat in terms of supply chain or will there be an increasing digital divide between developing/developed world and large/small businesses? How does digital affect the manufacturing/ service spectrum? Does real-time information mean that traditional S&OP planning, quality management require fundamental reassessment?  Is SCM becoming a mega-silo in itself, too divorced from advances in production technologies? How much of what we have researched in supply chain is still relevant in the digital age? Importantly the panel will debate how contemporary supply chain and operations management research must further adapt to improve its academic and practical relevance in the digital age.

Managing University and Industry Engagement

Organised by Ben Clegg and Jan Olhager

Contact Details
b.t.clegg@aston.ac.uk, jan.olhager@tlog.lth.se

This track will focus on how to manage the processes of industry-academic collaboration. These processes may be for teaching, research or other more general institutional management.

The aim of the track is to learn how to make universities more relevant to practice whilst remaining academically rigorous, how to increase and improve collaboration between academics and professionals, and to increase the impact which operations management can have beyond academia.

We specifically invite papers which:
• describe the process of successful practice based research and teaching
• discuss the do and don’ts of engagement with industry and professionals
• advise on intellectual property issues, contractual terms and conditions etc.
• reveal which sort of methodologies work effectively and why
• investigate which theories are and aren’t contemporary and relevant
• guide data collection and data validation
• inform how to make reciprocal knowledge transfer work
• advise how universities should attract more industry and professional interactions
• report on action research processes
• advise on how to manage co-authorship with people from industry
• report on innovative industry based teaching methods
• enlighten the valorisation process to ensure academia, industry and the wider society benefit through mutual collaboration.

This stream is not purely focused upon the outcomes of applied research or teaching per se. Instead it aims to focus on approaches by which they are effectively delivered. Novel approaches and papers co-authored with people from industry and professional organisations are particularly welcome.

We wish this track to be interactive and lively so that the above points can be debated.

We want to emphasize that this is an OPEN TRACK – open to all and not restricted to special invitation.

Teaching Award

Nigel Slack Teaching Innovation Award

The purpose of this award is to recognize impact and innovation in the teaching of Operations Management. This award will align with the submission and evaluation process for the other EurOMA best paper awards whilst taking into account the necessity to allow submissions to demonstrate creativity and impact.
Submission format and process
The submission must outline an original teaching innovation that has been used successfully in a class. The submission should describe the teaching innovation in a way that interested readers will have sufficient information to replicate the innovation in their own classes.
The submission and assessment process is as follows:
• Submission of extended abstract to the Annual conference.
• Decision on abstract acceptance.
• Submission of full paper to the Annual conference.
• Selection of shortlist of submissions.
• Presentation in a dedicated 30 minute slot in the Annual Conference (for short listed papers)

Evaluation

The submissions will be evaluated equally across three dimensions:
• Evidence of pedagogical excellence
• Evidence of creativity and/or innovation
• Evidence of impact.
There will be two parts to the submission:
• Paper – 100% evaluation by the panel
• Presentation (for short listed papers) – 100% evaluation by the panel

Prize Giving

There will be one prize allocated each year of €200. All short listed papers will be identified in the EurOMA timetable / proceedings so that they are easily identifiable sessions for delegates to attend. All short listed submissions will be verbally recognized at the prize giving but only the winning submission will receive a prize.

Contact

Professor Jan Godsell
University of Warwick,
Coventry, UK
Email: j.godsell@warwick.ac.uk

Professor Andreas Groessler
University of Stuttgart,
Stuttgart, Germany
Email: andreas.groessler@bwi.uni-stuttgart.de