Operations management in high value manufacturing

This paper explores the issue of high value manufacturing from an operations management perspective and discusses the critical role that the operations management community must play in moving manufacturing organisations to 'higher value ground'. An exploratory study was carried out in two phases. In Phase 1 existing literature was examined following a systematic review process. This was followed by a stakeholder analysis that included manufacturing companies, government agencies and consultancies and case studies of three organisations that had recently repositioned their businesses. Phase 2 comprised of a focus group based industry consultation exercise. The aim of the second phase was to validate and refine the findings from the initial phase and to generate the key ideas that would inform a future research agenda. This paper provides the foundation for further research by identifying those operational issues that are affecting industry as it seeks to move to higher value ground.