Affiliations: Professor Industrial and Systems Engineering and
Director Executive Programs at Tennenbaum Institute, Georgia Institute of
Technology, Atlanta, GA, USA | Professor Industrial and Systems Engineering, Georgia
Institute of Technology, Atlanta, GA, USA | Wahlen Professor of Management, Georgia Institute of
Technology, Atlanta, GA, USA
Note: [] Corresponding author: William Kessler, Professor Industrial and
Systems Engineering and Director Executive Programs at Tennenbaum Institute,
Georgia Institute of Technology, 760 Spring Street NW, Atlanta, GA 30332, USA.
E-mail: [email protected]
Abstract: The capability to manufacture products in the global marketplace is
being revolutionized by technological advancements, the opportunity to capture
innovation and capabilities from worldwide sources, the enticement of entering
new markets, and changing business and political models. Many view this
opportunity as creating an inflection point for manufacturing which could
provide leaders and fast followers with a competitive edge in leveraging and
penetrating the global marketplace. The Tennenbaum Institute at Georgia Tech
has the mission of providing knowledge and skills for enterprise
transformation. The Institute has focused on developing transformation
strategies and capabilities related to large-scale enterprise transformation.
Such strategies and capabilities are applicable to all enterprise
transformations and can be used to accelerate the transformation and minimize
waste of any specific domain transformation. The Institute has recently
selected manufacturing as one of its domain focus topics and this publication
is intended to document progress on the transformative challenges of
manufacturing in a global enterprise. The intent of this chapter is to: 1)
provide an introduction to the topics of enterprise transformation and
manufacturing in a global enterprise, 2) introduce the reader to how the
publication is organized, how it flows, and how a specific global manufacturing
case study creates the thread that links the chapters, 3) discuss the research
challenges, 4) introduce the reader to the Tennenbaum Institute's enterprise
transformation research approach and strategy, and 5) review the motivation and
challenges related to manufacturing in a global enterprise.
