A robust and competitive manufacturing base is key to economic vitality, and the importance of recognizing, understanding and applying new approaches to manufacturing is self-evident. A 2011 report from the President’s Council on Science and Technology acknowledged that we are now entering a new phase of ‘manufacturing as a system’. Consideration of the entire design, manufacturing and sustainment cycle as a system is paramount, and a systems approach for dealing with the inherent complexity of this is required. This book is the product of research conducted by the Tennenbaum Institute, an interdisciplinary research center dedicated to understanding and providing methods and education to help enterprises transform in the light of new strategies, technology, business models and market pressures. The researchers and authors of the paper's presented in this book are ideally qualified to comment on transformative future trends in manufacturing in global enterprises. The book is divided into four sections: domain in transformation; frame the challenges; create the required knowledge; and deploying knowledge. Each chapter addresses important perspectives on the interdisciplinary nature of enterprise transformations, and the findings from one transformation case study related to Lockheed Martin Aeronautics, and its global realization of a military product, provides a common thread between chapters. The book provides a workable framework and strategy for enterprise transformation, providing sufficient content on methods, tools and knowledge to enable others to build from this base, and also share the resulting information and knowledge.
