Managing Global R&D Projects: Challenges & Innovations - Essay Sample

Introduction

Due to global competition, companies are encouraged to seek more innovative ways to survive (Serra & Kunc 2015). More sophisticated research and development activities are introduced, which makes the managerial approach more critical, including research and development requiring a unique managerial attitude.

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Integrated projects face many challenges because most of them are situated in different geographical locations. Challenges faced by research and development projects from the formulation of an idea to launch include; lack of coordination among the various teams. This is because of the spread of the groups globally (Kerzner 2017). There is a lack of coordination, which does not only lead to information leakage but can also lead to wrong information communicated to the teams.

The other challenge is unsynchronized priorities and timelines, when priorities of a team are not in line with the other teams in the same organization; it is difficult for a task to be integrated. There is a high wastage of resources due to a lack of coordination. It also has trouble in decision making by managers due to lack of accurate information

Action, Decisions, And Experiences of People Involved In the Process

Project management is a process where resources, technology, people, and job task are coordinated and combined to achieve an organizational objective (Reid & Sander 2015). Management involves developing and clarifying the mission, policies, and goals of an organization. As a means of sharing responsibilities and delegating authority, the organization has to establish its formal and informal structures (Quarshie et al 2016).

The processes involve setting priorities revising and reviewing the organizational objectives when there is a change in demand. There is the maintenance of effective communication within the working group with other corporate groups (Maitland & Sammartino 2015). Management secures required funds, manages the budget, and evaluates the accomplishments of the project (Svejvig & Andersen 2015).

Operations and Project Management and Strategy

Operation management is focused on managing the processes of production and distribution of products and services. The significant activities here include product creation, product development, production, and product distribution (Bromiley et al. 2016).

Osram's plan to achieve its aim in Opto semiconductors is in three forms. It drives competitiveness in the core business. It accelerates growth in new application fields, e.g., sensing and uLED and extending value chain towards component (Xu et al. 2017).

Osram uses strategic partnering as an option when they think about ways of entering into new markets or extending the existing business ideas. Their rationale varies depending on the case; it might be an addition of revenue, market entrance, IP portfolio, or new technology. For instance, Osram has been looking at infrared applications and the market to enter. Their first step was to do a market transparency assessment to obtain an outside-in perspective.

To break into a new growth market, Osram has highlighted innovation and quality as fundamental for both medium and long-term success. It has continued to push its transformation from alighting manufacture into the ever-growing high tech markets to become a leading high tech photonics company (Hitt et al. 2016). The challenges and global trends like personal transport progressive automation, the continuous growth of demand for digital services, and the aging population of western societies continue to open up opportunities for light-based applications. For future systems, Osram identifies digital technologies and intelligent sensors as the significant issues that need to be tackled.

Supply Chain Management, Capacity, and Quality

Supply chain management is a basic part of every organization (Oelze et al. 2018). It involves the activities of managing the movement of materials and products in and out of a company while maximizing the customer value to achieve and maintain a suitable competitive company advantage (Prajogo et al. 2016).

Initially, Osram experienced challenges in its demand-supply network within the global lighting industry due to the dynamics and complexity in the supply network. Customer service requirements and operation increased (Heydari & Ghasemi 2018). Concerning certain raw materials, Osram's procurement function is organized regionally, but the management is done globally. And for each raw material group, they have formulated specific requirements for their suppliers (Saenz et al 2015). For instance, the suppliers must provide evidence of certification and occasionally undergo supplier audits (Noe et al. 2015).

Osram uses technology in checking suppliers against restricted party lists (Saberi et al. 2019). Their updated lists are automatically uploaded to the export monitoring systems for an appropriate check to be made on existing suppliers in case an order is submitted (Desaulniers et al. 2016).

Technology, People, and Ethics

Departments within organizations are continuously evolving, including operations management. Automation is a key trend here; automation increases efficiency and saves companies large sums of money (Choi et al. 2016). Advanced planning helps synchronize supply with demand; create optimized programs to balance production efficiency (Kaine & Josserand 2019.

Osram's ethical issues in artificial intelligence deal in both healthcare and autonomous driving (Ichinose et al. 2018). It is majoring in areas of human influencing decisions through nudging with artificial intelligence and trust in machine learning (Lvovich et al 2016).

Osram has sensors embedded in luminaires that serve as ideal data nodes on a smart lighting network. Osram's new cloud platform, Lightelligence store lighting, and environmental data collected from the nodes. The stored data can then be accessed via API analytics software. With these solutions, guesswork out of space utilization is removed, which enables commercial real estate companies to see the exact space utilized.

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