professor Pekka Kess and professor Harri Haapasalo

The Industrial Management focusing on four more specific areas within the field;

• Business and Strategic Management,
• New Product Development and Innovation,
• Operations Management, and
• Supply Chain Management and Logistics.

The research of Business and Strategic Management is focusing on problems and development of small and medium sized companies, as well as organisations in the public sector. In the recent years extensive research work has been carried out in utilising the ICT in business processes along with research on Knowledge Management.

Business management oriented research studies specific features in different fields of industry, ending on developing co-operation models and networking between organisations. Analysis of value chains connects former directly to the research of Supply Chain Management (SCM). However the SCM research is also focusing on developing models for more effective manufacturing. This in turn reflects into the research done inside one organization – research in Operations Management, consisting mainly optimization of operations and processes.

Newest, but probably greatest current interest is New Product Development and Innovation. It is focusing on product development inside an organisation or in co-operation between several companies, where interest is on commercializing on the development results of. Innovation has in proportion much wider perspective, starting from regional innovation processes and ending into the innovation infrastructure.