Duncan McFarlane – författare

For manufacturers of complex engineering equipment, the focus on service and achieving outcomes for customers is the key to growth. Yet, the capability to provide service for complex engineered products is less understood.

Taking a trans-disciplinary approach, Complex Engineering Service Systems covers various aspects of service in complex engineering systems, with perspectives from engineering, management, design, operations research, strategy, marketing and operations management that are relevant to different disciplines, organisation functions, and geographic locations. The focus is on the many facets of complex engineering service systems around a core integrative framework of three value transformations – that of material/equipment, information and people.

Complex Engineering Service Systems is the outcome of the EPSRC/BAE Systems S4T (Service Support Solutions: Strategy and Transition) research programme of 10 universities and 27 researchers, which examined how high-value manufacturers of complex engineering products adapt to a multi-partnered environment to design and deliver value in a service system.  Complex Engineering Service Systems aims to be the main source of knowledge for academics and professionals in the research and practice of contracting, managing, designing, leading, and delivering complex engineering service systems. The book takes a value-based approach to integrating equipment and human factors into a total service provision. In doing so, it aims to advance the field of service systems and engineering.

Success in the continuous process industries depends upon the ability to adapt to the demands of global supply chains in real-time. Thus, process plants must be designed to be easily reconfigured as and when necessary. “A Distributed Coordination Approach to Reconfigurable Process Control” presents research that addresses this issue, via developing a new distributed framework that will enable the building of a process control system that is capable of reconfigurability. This framework views the process as a set of readily-integrated, modular process elements, which operate relatively independently and are each supported by a degree of stand-alone decision-making capability. The rationale and benefits of moving towards the new approach is demonstrated by means of a worked example of a real process plant. The research will also help end-users to gain an understanding of the economic aspects of material flows across their plants, and the ways in which their processes can be integrated across the enterprise.