1 High Value Engineering (HVE), the Engineering Value Chain (EVC), and Global Engineering Networks (GEN)
Engineering directs the sources of power in nature for the benefit and convenience of human being. The subject has been broadly considered as the synthesising practice of creative art and scientific technology, and specifically defined as problem solving within the constraints of technology, material, budget, and time. High value engineering (HVE) in this context refers to the application of engineering technologies, skills, and capabilities in creating high-value-added products and services that may lead to sustainable economic growth in complex global business networks. Value creation through engineering excellence focuses on the successful transformation of novel ideas and new technologies into marketable products and services as well as the effective integration of a series of engineering activities dispersed in various industrial settings and along the engineering value chain (EVC) . The EVC consists typically of five categories of activities through which engineering operations contribute to customer value and thus the overall competitiveness of a company—idea generation and selection, design and development, production and delivery, service and support, and recycling and disposal (Zhang and Gregory 2011).
Competition in the modern global economy relies on gaining superior engineering capabilities to create high-value-added products and services rather than focusing solely on the output of an engineering system. Such outputs are bound in local contexts and less effective, serving international markets. Engineering network capabilities will address that limitation because they are adaptive and can be transferred across geographic and organisational boundaries. Global engineering operations are thus gaining an increasing importance driven by the rapid growth of the emerging economies , increasing engineering capabilities (and workforce) in the developing countries, the global race for talent, and opportunities made available by the progress of information technologies (Zhang and Gregory 2013). Engineering companies are pioneering new forms of organisations which are knowledge based, technology enabled and globally networked, as a result of the nature of the knowledge they deploy, the degree of jurisdictional control they exercise, and the global client relationships they seek. From a knowledge perspective, engineering companies tend to adopt lateral team structures and reciprocal processes since they have a technical or syncretic knowledge base supported by multiple disciplines rather than a normative knowledge base. From a jurisdiction perspective, engineering professions have weaker social closure and looser geographic jurisdictional boundaries; therefore, it is relatively easy for engineering companies to form a global network structure. From a client perspective, engineering companies require a high degree of face-to-face client interaction in the production process, and thus a high degree of geographic dispersion of assets. The design and operations of global engineering networks (GEN) are expected to develop these essential capability elements by accessing and deploying dispersed resources, integrating and coordinating networked activities, and managing engineering knowledge and collective learning (Zhang et al. 2016).
Global engineering networks (GEN) are knowledge intensive, people-centric, and very often project based. As a result of these distinctive features, the primary concern of engineering operations differs from that of manufacturing or basic research in the tasks, outputs, and required knowledge. The main drivers for engineering task choice are usually external sources rather than the internal curiosity of an engineer or the scientific desire of an engineering organisation. The outputs are often one-off designs or solutions, rather than standardised manufacturing outputs, or a scientific enquiry or theory purely to improve our understanding of the world or to fulfil the discovery desire of a researcher. The required knowledge, especially engineering know-how, is often intangible and embedded in different parts of an organisation or a group of organisations. Such intangible, practical, unpredictable, and embedded characteristics should be properly addressed in building high value engineering capabilities in an international context (Zhang et al. 2014).
2 An Overview of the Book
This timely book provides a holistic view of this frontier knowledge area for building high value engineering capabilities in global network operations. It updates the traditional disciplines of engineering and operations management by addressing challenges and opportunities in building global network capabilities. It also addresses a critical problem of the relevant subject areas which are either technically driven or incapable of dealing with the increasing complexity and dynamics in global engineering networks. The readership includes researchers, practitioners, policymakers, and students working in a wide range of high value engineering areas, especially engineering management, operations management, service operations, supply chain management, technology management, innovation management, engineering design and knowledge management, international manufacturing, industrial sustainability, industrial policy, and regional economy.
The book contains a set of comprehensively developed chapters organised into three parts (Fig.
1: An overview of the book). The first part outlines the engineering value chain and introduces the main capability areas of high value engineering. This section reveals the changing global landscape of engineering, and provides a systematic view of engineering capabilities which are critical to global competition in the current business environment and in the future. To set a scene for discussions in the following parts, key capability areas are introduced around engineering technologies
—to explore the linkage between basic research and emerging technologies to high value engineering; production engineering
—to explain the implications of advanced manufacturing methods to high value engineering; and engineering services
—to illustrate the value creation and transformation processes among engineering services. The part has four chapters.
The second part of this book includes latest methodologies and technologies to support innovation and optimisation in complex global engineering networks. Such developments require the effective integration of engineering capabilities along the whole engineering value chain. Focusing areas of discussion include engineering design, global product development, innovation in international networks, information and communication technologies (ICT), as well as modelling techniques for engineering network coordination, simulation, and optimisation.
The third part of this book looks into future trends and discusses implications for developing high value engineering capabilities from the broader perspectives of industrial sustainability, skills, education, economy, and industrial policies in an international context.
All together, our contributors have completed this book to place value creation through engineering excellence on a solid ground of scientific theories and enabling techniques. This will help engineers, scientists, managers, and students to gain an overall understanding of this cross-disciplinary knowledge area of an increasing importance in the modern economy. Such an overall understanding of high value engineering will enable companies of different sizes to benefit from global engineering networks as well as informing policymakers to develop effective industrial policies for enhancing the competitiveness of engineering sectors at regional and national levels. It has also been expected that our collective efforts will lead to a systematic research agenda for further advancement in this knowledge area through studying key issues in building global engineering network capabilities.
References
Zhang, Y., & Gregory, M. (2011). Managing global network operations along the engineering value chain. International Journal of Operations & Production Management, 31(7), 73...
