Innovative Quality Improvements in Operations

This book examines current and emerging challenges in manufacturing related to the ideal of developing production processes with variability and agility on one level of the system, combined with structures ensuring stability and robustness on another level; close to what by other scholars has been discussed in terms of continuous innovation.  However, this ideal has proven to be difficult to achieve in practice, and there is a need for enhanced and more sophisticated theoretical models dealing with the complexity surrounding organizational conditions to foster incremental as well as radical change in production systems, and, at the same time to ensure stability over time.

As a theoretical frame of reference, a perspective on change where conflicting demands and conflicting activities, e.g., exploration and exploitation, are seen as intertwined and interdependent, is used throughout the book. The ideal from this perspective is to make use of such conflicting forces and to develop the change dynamics by keeping them in the same social system, not to structurally separate them in different departments or different initiatives.

The main purpose of the book is to address an increased need for quality improvement through innovation and disruptive change in production. Traditional theories and managerial models of production systems are developed with a focus on stability and improvement. There is a need for enhanced models to reach an ability to develop new future production systems. The goal of the book is to provide nuances and new perspectives giving more realistic models of the production system to be able to increase the change potentiality of the organization and thus the long-term competiveness. Learning and organizational perspectives are in focus as enablers to increase the understanding of a production system as such. Long-term competitiveness through adaptability and the potential for radical improvement is of importance throughout the book. The use of dualities and the concept of ambidextrous organizations as a frame of understanding is the innovative strength for this area.

Tomas Backström is a Professor of Innovation Science at Mälardalen University, Sweden.  Starting with an undergraduate degree in Engineering Physics and a PhD in Engineering, his work has grown more and more multi-disciplinary and he has published articles and chapters in a wide spectrum of venues such as: The Learning Organization, International Journal of Computer Integrated Manufacturing, Economics and Business Letters, Nonlinear Dynamics, Psychology, and Life Sciences, and Emergence: Complexity & Organization. With experience from thirty-five years of research in work life he currently researches and teaches about innovation management and creativity in groups and organizations, with a special focus on communication and leadership.

Anders Fundin is a Professor of Quality Technology and Management at Mälardalen University, Sweden. With a PhD in Quality Technology and Management and a MSc in Engineering his interest has evolved in areas suchas Quality Technology and Management, Operations Management and Change Management. Through 18 years of research and development experience within the automotive industry his research work has been published in journals such as for example, International Journal of Operations and Production Management, International Journal of Service Industry Management, International Journal of Quality and Reliability Management, and Journal of Business and Industrial Marketing.

Peter E. Johansson is a Senior Lecturer in Innovation Science since 2012, and since 2015 he is the subject representative for Innovation Science at the School of Innovation, Design and Engineering. Peter is a part of the research group Workplace Innovation and Quality Management, WIQM, and he received his PhD in Education in 2011 at Stockholm University; specialized in the fields of workplace learning, learning organisations and organization pedagogics. Peter has been involved in several cross-disciplinary research projects, and his current research interests are positioned in the intersection between operations management and innovation management research. His research deals with the origins of, and conditions for, learning and development of innovation competencies; on an individual and organisational level as well as the relation between those.