Centre for Excellent in Research: Building Block for Achieving World-Class University

Centre for Excellence in Research

The Centre for Excellence in Research is an advanced management research centre providing latest management knowledge and technology for the manufacturing and service industry in local, regional and global contexts. The centre is part of the Universiti Putra Malaysia; linking a team of multidisciplinary researchers from the Faculty of Economics and Management, Graduate School of Management, Faculty of Engineering, and Faculty of Computer Science. The center has a wealth of expertise and experience in manufacturing and service management. It is unique in a sense that it particularly emphasise an integrated view of different functions of a business; linking strategic planning, design and engineering, manufacturing, human resource, distribution, marketing, and service; in both strategy and operational level of an organisation. It aims to be a leading academic research centre in its field, in a global context. It is specially formed to support industrial companies by providing a focus for both conceptual and practical research, a forum for industry-academic discussion, a professional interface with industry and a range of industrially related services such as workshops, training and consultations. It delivers a wide range of industry-based programme to enhance the performance of manufacturing and service businesses.

What World-Class University aims to achieve?

The centre’s mission

The mission of the Centre for Excellence in Research is to increase the competitiveness of manufacturing and service industry by enhancing their management and technological capability in producing value-added products and services in today’s global market. In order to satisfy the above mission, the centre aims to contribute to the development of manufacturing and service industry by:

• Conducting leading edge research to support and enable manufacturing and service industry in the process of modernising and improving management and technological knowledge
• Enhancing the knowledge in operations management from a practical point of view through collaborative research with the industry
• Promoting high value-added manufacturing and service management activities to facilitate a shift from labour-intensive to knowledge-intensive operations
• Increasing the number of able people in manufacturing and service through innovative industry-based programmes such as workshops, training, and consultations

Industrial-University Collaboration: a trend in World-Class University today

Industrial-University collaboration

Working with the centre

Working with the research centre, companies will be benefited from a range of activities. The centre prepares to deliver its research outputs in accessible, useable formats so that industrial companies can gain practical benefits. The research outputs will be disseminated through workshops, seminars, consultation projects, publications, and workbooks. In order to deliver support to a wide range of businesses in manufacturing and service, the centre’s research activities are based on the following general themes:
• Strategy
• Operations
• Technology
• Business processes
• Supply chain management
• International supply networks

The research centre prepares to work closely with companies to identify the areas for improvement. The centre will work through a quick ‘diagnostic’ to identify key problems and opportunities. The centre’s team have substantial industrial experience and will draw in expertise from external sources depending on the company’ needs. Some of the activities will touch on one of the following areas:
• Reengieeering business processes
• Measuring and improving performance
• Formulating and implementing effective strategies
• Managing change and organisational development
• Improving operating efficiency, product and process technology

Research must be relevant to practical usage

A distinctive approach: linking research to practice


The research centre takes a distinctive approach to link teaching and research to real industrial practice by carrying out practical research to enhance the value-adding capability of manufacturing and service, including:

• Creating tools and techniques to improve the operational performance of manufacturing and service businesses
• Pursuing the application of latest technology in support of the development of innovative new products and services
• Growing the body of knowledge in management and technology to facilitate the shift from labour-intensive to capital-intensive economy
• Developing and promoting a coherent view of manufacturing and service business from both the strategic and operation perspectives
• Maintaining a high level of industrial involvement, leading to practical outputs for companies
• Producing calibre managers (at undergraduates, postgraduates, and post-experience levels) that are outstanding, down-to-earth, and practically oriented people through teaching.

Research must be relevant to practical usage

A distinctive approach: linking and research to practice


The research centre takes a distinctive approach to link teaching and research to real industrial practice by carrying out practical research to enhance the value-adding capability of manufacturing and service, including:

• Creating tools and techniques to improve the operational performance of manufacturing and service businesses
• Pursuing the application of latest technology in support of the development of innovative new products and services
• Growing the body of knowledge in management and technology to facilitate the shift from labour-intensive to capital-intensive economy
• Developing and promoting a coherent view of manufacturing and service business from both the strategic and operation perspectives
• Maintaining a high level of industrial involvement, leading to practical outputs for companies
• Producing calibre managers (at undergraduates, postgraduates, and post-experience levels) that are outstanding, down-to-earth, and practically oriented people through teaching.

What is Conceptual Research

Conceptual research

The field of Management is facing a fundamental change from focusing on operational level to strategy level of the manufacturing and service activities. The recognition of effective management of a company’s businesses from the strategy perspective has led to a greatly increased interest, both academic and managerial, in concepts from theory, which might be applied in practice. To develop an appropriate debate and to assist managers in meeting the challenges in today’s global environment, it is necessary to conduct research that is not immediately linked to commercial practicality: theory building. Such research is typically conducted in collaboration with industrial partners. Sometimes, such research must be done without the constraints of immediate practicality, in order to ensure that radical concepts are tested with the industrialists and then debated in conferences with the academic communities.

What is Practical Research

Practical research

Practical research is an important research activity to conduct research collaboration with the industrial partners. Practical research aims at developing practical tools, methods, and techniques that may be used by managers to improve their operations and competitiveness of their businesses. A research centre should focus on the most recent research trend and especially in rapidly developing areas such as technological innovations and supply networks for the need of the future. This research should always look ahead of time to provide practical solutions, derived from theory or conceptual research, which may be in need in future. The research centre should provide supervision of research project for Masters and PhD programmes for those who wish to pursue their studies to a more advanced level. The research has the highest quality outputs and thus a highly selected group of graduate students embark on research work which integrates management studies with engineering, finance, economics, marketing, human resource, computer sciences, and other technology and science related disciplines.

What is Practical Research

Practical research

Practical research is an important research activity to conduct research collaboration with the industrial partners. Practical research aims at developing practical tools, methods, and techniques that may be used by managers to improve their operations and competitiveness of their businesses. A research centre should focus on the most recent research trend and especially in rapidly developing areas such as technological innovations and supply networks for the need of the future. This research should always look ahead of time to provide practical solutions, derived from theory or conceptual research, which may be in need in future. The research centre should provide supervision of research project for Masters and PhD programmes for those who wish to pursue their studies to a more advanced level. The research has the highest quality outputs and thus a highly selected group of graduate students embark on research work which integrates management studies with engineering, finance, economics, marketing, human resource, computer sciences, and other technology and science related disciplines.

Building up network in research

How to establish research networking

Research centre should maintain a close contact with the local academic community and industry, and establish and maintain extensive international networks, which engage industrialists, academics and policy makers. It draws together a range of expertise in different disciplinary areas to solve industrial problems. The research centre will support new ideas, and promote new ways of doing thing through local, national and international networking.

Local networking: maintain a strong link with other faculty or research centre within a university such as the engineering faculty and advanced technology research centre. Work with local governmental agencies and companies from regional industrial areas.

National networking: maintain a strong link with other research centre, institutions, and universities in the country. Maintain a link with the policy maker and non-governmental organisation. Interest, support and challenge from industry will always be a fundamental part of the centre’s national networking policy. Working with these professional bodies requires a professional mindset, confident, and competence back by our research capability.

International networking: maintain a strong link with international academic communities from UK, USA, China, South East Asian countries, etc. Interact with multinational companies that have their operations in Malaysia. The centre prepares to work with many parts of the world and maintains the strong international presence. This will consists of a constant dialogue with researchers around the world.

Industrialists and companies who work closely with the research centre will be benefited from enlarging their networking capability, interacting with academic and research communities from local and overseas, keeping track with the latest development in new management technology, knowing the latest development in management research, enhancing knowledge in manufacturing and service management, through a range of activities organised by the centre, such as research collaborations, interest group, seminars, workshops, consultation projects, publications, etc.

Centre for Excellence in Research

Centre for Excellence in Research

The Centre for Excellence in Research is an advanced management research centre providing latest management knowledge and technology for the manufacturing and service industry in local, regional and global contexts. The centre is part of the Universiti Putra Malaysia; linking a team of multidisciplinary researchers from the Faculty of Economics and Management, Graduate School of Management, Faculty of Engineering, and Faculty of Computer Science. The center has a wealth of expertise and experience in manufacturing and service management. It is unique in a sense that it particularly emphasise an integrated view of different functions of a business; linking strategic planning, design and engineering, manufacturing, human resource, distribution, marketing, and service; in both strategy and operational level of an organisation. It aims to be a leading academic research centre in its field, in a global context. It is specially formed to support industrial companies by providing a focus for both conceptual and practical research, a forum for industry-academic discussion, a professional interface with industry and a range of industrially related services such as workshops, training and consultations. It delivers a wide range of industry-based programme to enhance the performance of manufacturing and service businesses.

Building Block for a World Class University

Centre for Excellence of Research: Building Block of a World Class University

Dr. Yee Choy Leong
Universiti Putra Malaysia
Graduate School of Management
Global Supply Network Research Centre

Recommendation: establishing an excellence research centre:

1. To use an industrial-academia collaboration concept. To provide a platform for discussions, research, and exchange of idea among managers from industry and researchers from academia. This is not a new concept, in fact it was well known by many countries for many years however the main concern here is about how? How to do it better and how to form an effective and established research centre?
2. To form an interest group (within industrial managers, academics, and graduate students, i.e. PhDs, MPhils, and MBAs).
3. To identify current research in global supply network:
• Materials flow
• Information sharing
• Financial transaction
• Relationships management
• Strategy and performance
(Academic disciplines: Operations management, logistics, purchasing, new products development and innovations, information technology, marketing, finance, organisational behaviour, strategic management)
4. To keep proper references, build a library or resource centre, organise/participate in related forums, seminars, and conferences.
5. To focus on limited areas but do it better (based on the rationale that a university is having limited resources and expertise in doing a wide range of research work). Examples can be obtained from Cambridge’s Institute for Manufacturing (specialised in manufacturing strategy and performance measurement), Bath (specialised in health supply network and transparency), Cardiff (specialised in value stream management based on waste elimination), Cranfield (specialised in supply chain relationship, change), and Warwick (specialised in modelling techniques, etc).
6. To keep track with global research communities and identify possible joint research work.
7. To identify some specific research projects.
8. To let our graduate students/academics in carrying out these projects. The main concerns here are the introduction and the use of proper research methodologies (such as process approach) and the participations of industrial managers in the research projects. The outputs of these research projects are in the forms of tools, processes, methods, or frameworks. These outputs could help companies in improving their performances. Examples of similar work are obtainable from www.ifm.eng.cam.ac.uk.
9. To further promote our research outputs through publishing our work in journal, organising workshops, and offering consultation.
10. To offer/sell these outputs to a wider industrial context, on the one hand to help Malaysian companies to achieve better performance and on the other hand to further validate the research outputs to enhance theory development (such as through generalisation of the research findings).
11. To promote the centre in overseas and attract more expertise in doing research here and eventually equipped the centre with the capabilities to offer a wide range of products and services to local industries.

大學卓越研究中心

為配合高教部邁向頂尖大學願景，邁入世界排名100大之國際一流大學，特設立「大學卓越研究中心」，負責卓越研究計畫之執行，主要任務為「提升學校研究成效」。為達成「提升學校研究成效」，「大學卓越研究中心」依據學校之教育目標，並兼顧「制度面」、「教師面」、「學生面」、「設備面」，從而訂定「強化研究功能」、「提升研究廣度及深度」、「建立教師研究制度」、「提高教師積極性研究」、「提供教師所需資源」、「提高學生學習研究」、「培養研究環境」、「創造研究創意及國際觀」、「培育社會研究菁英」、「培養五育均衡發展」十大策略，據以執行卓越研究各項願景。大學教授是成效良窳之舵手，如何「激勵大學教授積極性與技巧，讓大學教授能獲得成就感是本中心努力的重點，誠摯歡迎我國大學教授貢獻睿智，群策群力，共同為 「提升學校研究品質與學生研究成效」而努力。我國高等教育面對研究品質提升，如何將資源集中在幾所好的研究型大學，留住最需要的人才，不要把「卓越」、「菁英」的觀念汙名化；而其他大學可朝「卓越的教學大學」、「卓越的建教合作大學」等方向努力。特別提高對高等教育卓越計畫的預算。堅持只要選出幾所好的研究型大學給予經費支援，但不了解為什麼後來從原本的1所增加到4所，這麼做是「備多力分」，「4所研究型大學已經相當多了」。大學學術已沒競爭力，擔心高等教育的師資會外流，「如何留住學術人才是目前亟待解決的問題。」雖然我們沒有辦法全面提高大學師資待遇，但應該「集中在點的突破」，把最需要的研究人才留住。研究型大學以外的學校可以發展出很好的研。一些國立大學教授，退休後轉任私校，常抱怨學生素質差。進入新世紀，要定位為知識、科學研究所，改善研究品質刻不容緩，雖然要花很多錢，但絕對值得。提升大學品質，還要從師資著手。大學教授應教學、研究並重，一進大學，就有責任要做好研究，專業研究和課程有關研究。政府過去推動一連串世界企業經營概念，未來應該研究、發展世界企業經營概念、策略及管理模式，將更具世界競爭力。

Technology roadmap management

Choy Leong Yee

Faculty of Economics and Management
Universiti Putra Malaysia, 43400 UPM Serdang, Selangor, Malaysia.
Tel: 603-8946 7731; E-mail: yee@econ.upm.edu.my



Abstract
The issue of technology management is becoming increasingly important and critical in delivering competitive advantage to companies. The effective management of technology requires appropriate methods or systems such as a technology roadmap process, which can support the development and implementation of integrated strategic business, product and technology plans. This paper reviews the rapidly increasing literature on the technology roadmap process. Based on the literature on a Technology Roadmap (TRM) process developed by Cambridge’s manufacturing group, a gap is identified within a few implementation problems of the process in practical settings, especially concerning human resource management issues. A new method is proposed to overcome the problems and fill this gap. The paper is divided into four major parts. Firstly, a general review on technology management. Secondly, an illustration of technology roadmap processes in terms of their types of format, purposes and architectures. Thirdly, the issues and challenges of applying technology roadmap process are discussed and a gap is identified within the literature on the existing TRM process. Lastly, the paper concludes with a proposal for a new method, Technology Roadmap Management (TRM-II), to fill the gap. The implications of the proposed method to both industrialists and academics are discussed.