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Research and consultancy

Centre for Business Performance and Lean Leadership

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Education

Research and consultancy

The centre undertakes consultancy projects and longer term projects sponsored through government or EU support. Examples of the potential sources are listed below.

Ingenuity

Ingenuity funding (£5,000) is available to support the direct involvement of Centre faculty in supporting exploratory consultancy work that may lead to longer term involvement. A recent project provided 10 days of consultancy support to an SME precision engineering company designed to improve its delivery performance and lead time. This work subsequently led to a two year Knowledge Transfer Project (KTP) to redesign the sales and operations planning and control system.

Stimulating Innovation for Success

Stimulating Innovation for Success (SIS) funding (£10k) is potentially available to support the direct involvement of centre faculty in supporting small or exploratory learning projects. A recent project with NCC involved the use of the Theory of Constraints (TOC) buffer management approach in support of social care service targets and the interface with health care.

Knowledge Transfer Partnerships

Knowledge Transfer Partnerships (KTP) are government funded projects of between 18 months and three years. This funding involves recruiting one or more graduates who run the project under joint supervision and is applicable to both large and SME organisations. A recently completed two-year KTP developed a planning and control system to manage production orders utilising TOC buffer management concepts.

Research

The centre aims to integrate all its educational and application activities through research, which typically takes the form of case and action research that is utilised to develop and test the developing theory associated.

Research degrees

Research may take the form of MPhil, PhD and Professional Doctorates (DBA) on a full- or part-time basis. Funding may be obtained through centre sponsorship and CASE awards in support of industry sponsored research projects. Sponsorship opportunities are periodically available.

Recent publications

Stratton R., and Knight A., 2010. Managing Patient Flow using Time Buffers . Journal of Manufacturing Technology Management (special issue on Transferring Best Practices between the Manufacturing and Service Sectors), 21 (4) pp484-498.
Stratton, R., 2009. Critical Chain Project Management – Theory and Practice.
Journal of Project Management and Systems Engineering, TOC Special Issue, 4, pp149-173.
Stratton, R., 2010. Managing Supply Chain Stability in the Grocery Sector.
Proceedings of the seventeenth International Annual EurOMA Conference, Porto, Portugal, 6-9 June.
Koskela, L., Stratton, R. and Koskenvesa, 2010. Last Planner and Critical
Chain in Construction Management: Comparative Analysis. Proceedings of the seventeenth Annual Conference, International Group for Lean Construction, Haifa, Israel, July 14-16.
Stratton, R., 2010. Critical Chain Project Management - Theory and Practice . Journal of Systems Engineering, Publication details pending
Stratton, R., 2009. Critical Chain Project Management - Theory and Practice. Proceedings of the twentieth Annual Production Operations Management Conference, Orlando, FL,(May)
Stratton, R., 2008. Theory Building: Relating Variation, Uncertainty, Buffering Mechanisms and Trade-offs. Proceedings of the Third World Conference on Production and Operations Management, South Asia (Manufacturing Fundamentals: Necessity and Sufficiency), Tokyo, Japan (August)
Stratton, R., Robey D. and Allison I., 2008. Utilising Buffer Management to Manage Uncertainty and Focus Improvement. Proceedings of the International Annual Conference of EurOMA, Groningen, the Netherlands (June)
Stratton, R., and Warburton, R. D. H., 2006. Managing the Trade-off Implications of Global Supply. International Journal of Production Economics, 103, pp667-679