Value Networks in Manufacturing: Sustainability and Performance Excellence

This book highlights innovative solutions together with various techniques and methods that can help support the manufacturing sector to excel in economic, social, and environmental terms in networked business environments. The book also furthers understanding of sustainable manufacturing from the perspective of value creation in manufacturing networks, by capitalizing on the outcomes of the European ‘Sustainable Value Creation in Manufacturing Networks’ project. New dynamics and uncertainties in modern markets call for innovative solutions in the global manufacturing sector. While the manufacturing sector is traditionally driven by technology, it also requires other managerial and organizational solutions in terms of network governance, business models, sustainable solution development for products and services, performance management portals, etc., which can provide major competitive advantages for companies. At the same time, the manufacturing industry is subject to a change process, where business networks play a major role in value-creating processes. By far the biggest challenge in this context is making value creation a sustainable process where economic, social, and environmental demands are met. Managing product and service-related business operations in manufacturing networks thus brings different challenges that cannot purely be resolved using traditional methods, and techniques.

This book is an outcome of a European project funded by the European Commission, and performed by a dedicated R&D consortium comprised of some leading Research institutions and Industrial partners.

Prof. Liyanage specializes in Industrial asset management at the University of Stavanger (UiS), Norway, and is a Guest Professor of Universiti Teknologi Petronas, Malaysia, and University of Cincinnati, USA.. Dr. Liyanage has earned B.Sc. in Production engineering (First Class Honours), M.Sc. in Ergonomics / Human factors (Distinction) (LTU, Sweden), and PhD in Offshore technology (NTNU / Norway). He is the Chair of the University-Industry cooperative Centre for Industrial Asset Management (CIAM). He also serves in the Board of Directors of Society of Petroleum Engineers (Stavanger section) and the Board of Directors of the Norwegian Ergonomics and Human factors Society (NEHF). In addition, he is a member of the Standardization committee SN/K 536 on Asset management with Standard Norway. Dr. Liyanage is the Co-Chair of the European Network for Strategic Engineering Asset Management (EURENSEAM) involving approx. 15 European countries. He is actively involved in the Working Group (WG) onAdvanced maintenance engineering, Services, and Technology of IFAC (International Federation for Automatic Control), and honorary member of IFRIM (International Foundation for Research in Maintenance). He is also a Founding Fellow of the ISEAM (International Society of Engineering Asset Management). He is actively involved in a number of R&D and joint industry projects over the last few years both at advisory and managerial capacities, and has published more than 100 publications. He is an editorial reviewer and a member of international editorial boards of a number of international journals and the Editor-in-Chief of International Journal of Strategic Engineering Asset Management (IJSEAM). For his performance he has received a number of prestigious awards inclusive of University of Peradeniya Award for the Best Performance in Engineering (1995), Colombo Dockyard Award for the Best Performance in Production Engineering (1995), The Overall Best in Masters (1999), Lyse Energy Research Award for Excellent Research and Academic Contributions (2001), Society of Petroleum Engineers Best PhD Award (2003), Emerald Literati Club Award for Excellence (2004).

Teuvo Uusitalo is a Senior Scientist and Team Leader at VTT Technical Research Center of Finland. He has extensive experience in the field of risk management and has been involved in research related to enterprise risk management, critical infrastructure protection, resilience, and sustainability. His current research topics are related to risk management in service business and business networks, and sustainable value creation in manufacturing. Mr. Uusitalo is the coordinator of the Sustainable value creation in manufacturing networks project.