This post refers to my above titled invited talk at the OSCM Symposium organized by the Department of Business Administration, Sambalpur University on 20 March 2016 (Sunday). The talk started by introducing the learners to the concept of intelligent products coming out of a transformative process in the automotive supply chain (something akin to the smart product in the movie "Tarzan - The Wonder Car" - a smart car which can also think and act). A concept much like students coming out of a transformative process in the education system which takes care to see the students from two perspectives: both as (a) products and also as (b) customers. As in the movie, it is important in supply chains to harness the power of design. The abstract of the talk follows:
Related links:
Promoting Design Thinking in Indian Professional Higher Education
Under design thinking label
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Abstract: To realize
the benefits of competitiveness, Indian companies need to improve domestic
performance. They have to be strongly rooted in the needs and wants of the
domestic customers. Therefore, they need to first overcome the local challenges
before going global. If we look closely, most of the answers to the challenges
faced by our manufacturing industry can be traced back to the design stage.
Therefore, design plays a prominent role in enhancing both efficiency
and responsiveness of these domestic supply chains. Our research
indicates that there is a certain firm-level design deficit that inhibits our
manufacturing performance. Hence, there is a need for harnessing the
power of design thinking which promotes the adoption of improved design methods
for fostering firm-level competitiveness. Design thinking provides the guiding
principles for aligning design with various supply chain initiatives. There is a huge potential yet to be tapped – be it with regard
to “design for supply chains” or “design of supply chains”. Design thinking
which starts with empathy holds the promise for developing viable domestic
supply chains in support of the recent initiatives of the Govt. of India – be
it for ‘Make-in-India’, ‘Skill India’ or ‘Digital India’. These programs will
all start well if we put design upfront in our endeavors.
To
support the needs of the industry it is also important to bring changes in the
professional higher education sector of India. There is a need for business
school programs to overhaul their courses by establishing innovation labs for
supporting the learning environment. We will discuss our experience in adopting
design thinking for supporting various operations and supply chain management
courses while looking for synergies in the approaches related to product
lifecycle management (PLM), total quality management (TQM), enterprise resource
planning (ERP), supply chain management (SCM) and customer relationship
management (CRM).
Keywords – Design
thinking, design deficit, competitiveness, manufacturing challenges, industry-driven
curriculum
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[See attachment]Related links:
Promoting Design Thinking in Indian Professional Higher Education
Under design thinking label
