New Medway Chair of Manufacturing Engineering
Dr James Gao has been appointed to the Medway Chair of Manufacturing Engineering at the University of Greenwich. Dr Gao, from Cranfield University, Bedfordshire, will be developing the university’s expertise in manufacturing engineering and helping local businesses to improve their performance. The Medway Chair, established five years ago, was sponsored by a consortium of manufacturing businesses and Medway Council.
Knowledge management is at the heart of Professor Gao’s work. When he says he is interested in ‘innovative product development’ he doesn’t mean the latest car engine or novel household appliance, he means the software and the processes – he calls them the enabling technologies and processes improvement tools - that will allow a company to share information so effectively that they become super-efficient. Dr Gao gives an example: “Very often, different teams in a company will be working on the same project but they will store information separately. They may even give different names to the same contents of information. It makes collaboration very difficult. We can offer businesses knowledge development tools to improve their processes and allow them to share knowledge so they can reduce lead times and improve quality.”
Knowledge management becomes even more important when manufacturers are dealing with many suppliers. “Nowadays a typical engineering OEM (Original Equipment Manufacturer) is dealing with hundreds of suppliers. Coordination and timing is critical, so information becomes incredibly important.” He points out that as actual production shifts elsewhere, western countries need to develop international expertise in new product development in order to remain competitive.
Professor Gao brings formidable international experience to provide the university with cutting edge research, and regional businesses with the latest development tools. He says: “You can’t buy these tools off the shelf. You have to analyse the problems a company is experiencing, recommend the tools and then test and develop them. Our experience means we can normally anticipate many of the solutions.” The kind of tools he is referring to include knowledge mapping, to show who has what information where, and tools to model information about the life-cycle of a product.
He will be developing two new masters’ programmes in innovative product development and global manufacturing as well as leading the Engineering School’s MSc programmes. James Gao has an MSc and PhD from the University of Manchester. He has authored over 130 research papers, edits several international journals, is a PhD examiner at top universities and a popular keynote speaker at international conferences.
--ENDS--
For information, interviews and images contact:
Hester Brown
Press Officer
University of Greenwich
Office: 020 8331 7663
Mob: 07876 193481
hester.brown@gre.ac.uk