[Development of Standardised Machine Tool Health Profiles for Resource Selection in the Aerospace Supply Chain]

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION3

Significance of the Study3

Objective of the study4

Research Questions4

CHAPTER 2: LITERATURE REVIEW6

Product safety and quality control7

CHAPTER 3: METHODOLOGY9

Resources needed12

Estimated Expenditure12

Work plan / Gantt Chart12

REFERENCES14

CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION

Corporate-level strategy is defined as any action taken that attempts to gain a competitive advantage in the marketplace by selecting and managing several businesses competing in multiple industries or markets. By using this definition for strategy, successful managers will lead and direct several strategic business units (SBUs) to achieve an end-result exceeding that of the sum of its parts. In today's business environment, a definition similar to that above, where strategy entails an individual firm and its SBUs, is somewhat short-sighted as strategic decisions are rarely limited to the four walls of the factory or even a firm's boundaries (Cooper and Slagmulder 1999. Situations where firms will compete on a one-on-one basis will be the exception rather than rule.

Furthermore, strategy and decision-making will most likely span and affect the entire supply and customer chain. With the emergence of supply chain strategy and supply chain management (SCM), companies are now competing as a network of firms. As such, supply chain partners are attempting to be more competitive in the marketplace by increasing the visibility of supply chain costs in order to produce a competitive advantage and allow managers to improve decision-making and generate higher profits. SCM has been defined as the integration of all activities across the network to increase the efficiency or effectiveness at which a firm or organization designs, produces, and delivers its products and/or services to the end user define SCM as the “integration of key business processes from end user through original suppliers that provides products, services, and information that add value for customers and stakeholders.” (Blackler, 1995)

In response to fiercer competition in the global marketplace, there has been a call for innovative solutions in terms of products, technologies and practices at the same time as reducing lead-time and costs (Rose-Anderssen et al., 2005; Goffin et al., 2006).

Creating innovative solutions, however, requires going beyond the improvement of adopting practices used within other industries and by competitors. Competitive advantage can be enhanced through introducing radically new products into the market. Veryzer (1998) refers to these new products as discontinuous innovations, where the products have been designed beyond customers' imagination. In that sense creative performance and innovation can be positively influenced by what Kratzer et al. (2006) refer to as team polarity. Team polarity is defined as the difference in opinions and perspectives among members of innovative teams. In this paper, Kratzer et al.'s polarity is referred to as diversity.

Significance of the Study

Modern computer numerically controlled (CNC) machine tools are limited in functions because their controllers rely on G-codes for communications. G-code is considered a “dumb” language as it only documents instructional and procedural data, leaving most of the design information behind. G-code programs are also hardware dependent, denying modernCNC machine tools desired ...