Alan Pilkington


Alan Pilkington is a British engineer and researcher known for his work in technology management, operations management, Manufacturing strategy and enterprise engineering. He has been a professor at the Copenhagen Business School, Hult International Business School and S P Jain School of Global Management. He is currently Professor of Technology Management at Westminster Business School in London. He is past chair of the IEEE Technology Management Council for the UK and Republic of Ireland joint chapter on engineering management.

Biography

Pilkington attended King Edward VI School, Retford and received his B.Eng. degree from De Montfort University in 1987, and his PhD from Aston University in 1992.
After graduation in 1987 Pilkington started his career in industry as project manager in manufacturing engineering at the Rover Group, where from 1989 to 1993 he was part of the Manufacturing Policy Unit. In 1996 he returned to academia as associate professor in operations and technology management at the Royal Holloway, University of London, where he stayed until September 2013. Pilkington has been visiting scholar at the University of California, Davis between 1997 and 2003; at the University of Western Australia between 2003 and 2005; and at Cesar Ritz Colleges in 2011–12. He has held posts at the Hult International Business School in London and Dubai and was a professor at Copenhagen Business School. In 2017 he became adjunct professor at the S P Jain School of Global Management.
Since 2015 he has been professor of technology management at Westminster Business School in London.
At the IEEE Pilkington has chaired the IEEE Technology Management Council for the UK and Republic of Ireland joint Chapter on Engineering Management.

Work

Pilkington has made significant contributions to the field of bibliometrics and operations management. His research interests also cover the fields of innovation, particularly new product development outsourcing for the alternative fuel vehicle, enterprise engineering, and the early startup company.

Bibliometrics

Using studies based on citation and co-citation tools, Pilkington has made contributions to understanding the development and diffusion of disciplines, particularly in the fields of operations management and innovation.

Innovation

Pilkington's approach to innovation concerned "product of individual, organisational and knowledge trajectories". His idea was that "modelling the relationships between observed typologies within each of these spheres, conditions for successful innovation can be identified and failures explained. This work is leading to tools which will help managers define successful and achievable technology strategies."

Enterprise engineering

Pilkington has initiated and directed the Pilkington research in Enterprise Engineering at Royal Holloway. According to Pilkington :
This Enterprise Engineering research had focussed on five types of management specialties:
  • Engineering Management : the application of engineering principles to business practice. It brings together the technological problem-solving savvy of engineering and the organizational, administrative, and planning abilities of management to oversee complex enterprises from conception to completion.
  • Innovation Management : discipline of managing processes in innovation. It can be used to develop both product and organizational innovation. Innovation management includes a set of tools that allow managers and engineers to co-operate with a common understanding of goals and processes.
  • Operations Management : area of management concerned with overseeing, designing, and controlling the process of production and redesigning business operations in the production of goods or services.
  • Service Management : integrated part of supply chain management, the intersection between the actual sales and the customer. The aim of high performance service management is to optimise the service-intensive supply chains, which are usually more complex than the typical finished-goods supply chain.
  • Technology Management : set of management disciplines that allows organisations to manage their technological fundamentals to create competitive advantage. Typical concepts used in technology management are technology strategy, technology forecasting
At Royal Holloway more specific topics of research in this field concerned Alternative fuel Technology, Bibliometrics and Patent analysis.

Publications

Pilkington has authored and co-authored numerous publications in the field of Management of technology, Operations management, Manufacturing strategy and Enterprise engineering. A selection: