It has been observed that the studies of quality are pursued in various disciplines like economics, quality management, and marketing science, and are seen isolated. The treatments imparted to these studies are also different and has the backdrop of discipline in which the work has been pursued. The nature of isolation is equally seen when quality uncertainty and perceived quality were pursued separately without showing any inkling that these can be complimentary. Economist and Nobel Laureate, Akerlof (1970), wrote a seminal piece "The market for lemons: quality uncertainty and market mechanism," where he described quality uncertainty due to information asymmetry. It refers to the fact that a party in a transaction may have more information than the other. This is information asymmetry. If the seller has more information than the buyer about the product quality, he/she may sell it, as if it is a high-quality product. In reality, it could be a low-quality product. The buyer does not have the information regarding the quality of the offered product. The market condition that led to this transaction is quality uncertainty due to information asymmetry.

More than forty years have passed since the early attempts to model projects. A large domain of theoretical developments has grown producing a high number of analytical and numerical results, but it seems that the main model is still the same: the concept of project network. This concept has come to represent the two major features underlying the notion of a project: the sequential and the competitive nature of its components, the project's activities. Actually, the sequential property defines the structure of the project and the competitive nature stems from the use of common resources (facilities, goods, equipment, management, etc.) to carry out the different activities. However, significant advances have been achieved in project modelling, allowing the production of much more powerful results: A. the concept of precedence and the description of activities has been generalized to produce a wide range of realistic representation of projects. B. the stochastic study of the features of projects such as the duration and cost of their activities is carried out by several analytical and numerical models, allowing experimental and forecasting analyses. C. the allocation of resources can be now studied for more complex situations and restrictions. D. the financial description of projects is more accurately studied and its optimization is thoroughly pursued. E. the assessment and the evaluation of projects now can be studied within the framework of multicriteria decision theory considering multiple perspectives and supporting the project manager to select the most appropriate compromises between risk, time and expected gains.

In two volumes, Planning Production and Inventories in the Extended Enterprise: A State of the Art Handbook examines production planning across the extended enterprise against a backdrop of important gaps between theory and practice. The early chapters describe the multifaceted nature of production planning problems and reveal many of the core complexities. The middle chapters describe recent research on theoretical techniques to manage these complexities. Accounts of production planning system currently in use in various industries are included in the later chapters. Throughout the two volumes there are suggestions on promising directions for future work focused on closing the gaps.

Global competition and growing costumer expectations force indus trial enterprises to reorganize their business processes and to support cost-effective customer services. Realizing the potential savings to be gained by exacting customer-delivery processes, logistics is currently sub ject to incisive changes. This upheaval aims at making competitive ad vantage from logistic services instead of viewing them simply as business necessity. With respect to this focus logistics management comprises the process of planning, implementing, and controlling the efficient, effective flow and storage of goods and services, and related information from point of origin to point of consumption for the purpose of conforming customer requirements I . This definition implies a holistic view on the logistic network, where the actors are suppliers, manufacturers, stock keepers, shipping agents, distributors, retailers and finally consumers. The flow of goods along the supply chain considers raw-materials, work-in-process parts, intermedi ate and finished products, and possibly waste. The prevailing manage ment of logistics operation is driven by aggregated forecasting of these material flows. Modern logistics management propagates a disaggregated view of the material flow in order to meet the precise requirements at the interface between actors in the supply chain. Replacing aggregated information by detailed values establishes the prerequisites for an integrated process planning which goes for the shift from anticipatory towards response based logistic81. Smaller units of goods are considered at shorter periods for planning, implementing and controlling the material flow. From Icf. the Council of Logistics Management (1995)."

First book to combine financial results with proprietary benchmarking data and in-depth interviews with experienced knowledge practitioners. The resulting framework provides an inside- and outside-the-firm view of the risks and opportunities found in knowledge management and competitive intelligence.

First book to combine financial results with proprietary benchmarking data and in-depth interviews with experienced knowledge practitioners. The resulting framework provides an inside- and outside-the-firm view of the risks and opportunities found in knowledge management and competitive intelligence.

Value stream design is increasingly asserting itself as "the" key approach for production optimization, but there has never been a detailed and systematic presentation of the value stream method before a gap that has now been filled by this book.

The author provides an easily comprehensible code of practice for the effective analysis of production processes, product family-oriented factory structuring and the target-oriented development of an ideal future state of production. The book plausibly conveys ten design guidelines for production optimization with corresponding equations, descriptive illustrations and industrial examples well-proven in numerous industrial projects. It addresses the professional public, practitioners wishing to avoid waste and systematically improve their factories value streams, and students - tomorrow s practitioners.

In contrast to other publications, this book complements the value stream analysis and its unique compact visualization of the entire production process by a detailed illustration of the information flow and a comprehensive discussion of the operator balance chart. The -traditional- concept of value stream design is significantly expanded with a view to its applicability in complex productions by way of methodological innovation and further development concerning campaign formation, value stream management and technological process integration. The method is embedded in a comprehensive procedural approach for factory planning, starting with the definition of the desired lean production goals."

Through a series of case studies and surveys, the authors examine current sustainability trends in outsourcing and recommend how providers should prepare for increasing buyer demands in this area, suggesting buyers and providers can work together to build successful outsourcing relationships through collaborative sustainability projects.

Organization Structure: Cybernetic Systems Foundation utilizes a cybernetic systems framework for the study of organizations using GST (General Systems Theory) and presents a comprehensive formal view of organizations assessing regulation, coordination and adaptation managements. The use of GST in this book is in sharp contrast to previous attempts. It addresses structural problems totally based on qualitative, non-numerical mathematics. The book lays a framework for initial efforts to investigate the potential of using formal GST to address organizational dilemmas. The text has been tested in several graduate courses. It can serve as an excellent textbook or reference for graduate level research in this field, as well as a reference for researchers in related fields.

Due to market forces and technological evolution, Big Data computing is developing at an increasing rate. A wide variety of novel approaches and tools have emerged to tackle the challenges of Big Data, creating both more opportunities and more challenges for students and professionals in the field of data computation and analysis. Presenting a mix of industry cases and theory, Big Data Computing discusses the technical and practical issues related to Big Data in intelligent information management. Emphasizing the adoption and diffusion of Big Data tools and technologies in industry, the book introduces a broad range of Big Data concepts, tools, and techniques. It covers a wide range of research, and provides comparisons between state-of-the-art approaches. Comprised of five sections, the book focuses on: What Big Data is and why it is important Semantic technologies Tools and methods Business and economic perspectives Big Data applications across industries

This book is about the role of knowledge spillovers and strategic entrepreneurship in the management context. It focuses on how knowledge spillovers and strategic entrepreneurship are crucial to the process of creative destruction and construction. The book aims to provide insights into and discussion on how firms combine entrepreneurial action that creates new opportunities for industries, regions and economies. This book is first of its kind to link knowledge management perspectives to strategic entrepreneurship to understand the co-creation process. Being interdisciplinary in nature, this book appeals to entrepreneurship and knowledge management scholars, students and practitioners.

W. Edwards Deming's central premise was that improvements in product quality would increase productivity, improve competitive position, and help ensure long-term survival. Point 12 of his landmark 14 Points for Management says that management's job is to remove the barriers that keep people from taking pride in their work. That's exactly what this book is about. Shedding new light on Deming's 14 Points, Removing the Barriers to Efficient Manufacturing: Real-World Applications of Lean Productivity outlines time-tested organizational structures and methods to help you reduce variability and deliver high-quality products consistently. It describes the financial losses that can occur as a result of variability and details the specific activities management must engage in to avoid these losses and ensure long-term success. Instead of taking you on a "random walk," the book supplies each manufacturing group in your organization with straightforward directions for creating a smooth-running facility with reduced variability. It includes "work assignments" in each chapter that, if completed in the order presented, will guide you through the creation of the Model Vision for your manufacturing facility. It also: Covers key topics on working with people, including training and retraining Supplies pointers for working with unions Considers Single Minute Exchange of Die (SMED) Describes how to put it all together with action plans The book includes a write up on Deming's famous Red Bead Experiment as well as an introduction to statistical process control techniques in the appendices. Filled with real-world examples and a case study to illustrate essential concepts, the book arms you with the insight and common-sense approaches required to build on Deming's fundamental principles and consistently deliver high-quality products that instill a sense of pride in your workforce.

The availability of effective global communication facilities in the last decade has changed the business goals of many manufacturing enterprises. They need to remain competitive by developing products and processes which are specific to individual requirements, completely packaged and manufactured globally. Networks of enterprises are formed to operate across time and space with world-wide distributed functions such as manufacturing, sales, customer support, engineering, quality assurance, supply chain management and so on. Research and technology development need to address architectures, methodologies, models and tools supporting intra- and inter-enterprise operation and management. Throughout the life cycle of products and enterprises there is the requirement to transform information sourced from globally distributed offices and partners into knowledge for decision and action. Building on the success of previous DrrSM conferences (Tokyo 1993, Eindhoven 1996, Fort Worth 1998), the fourth International Conference on Design of Information Infrastructure Systems for Manufacturing (DrrSM 2000) aims to: * Establish and manage the dynamics of virtual enterprises, define the information system requirements and develop solutions; * Develop and deploy information management in multi-cultural systems with universal applicability of the proposed architecture and solutions; * Develop enterprise integration architectures, methodologies and information infrastructure support for reconfigurable enterprises; * Explore information transformation into knowledge for decision and action by machine and skilful people; These objectives reflect changes of the business processes due to advancements of information and communication technologies (ICT) in the last couple of years.

We overspend on data center storage ... yet, we fall short of business requirements. It's not about the technologies. It's about the proper application of technologies to deliver storage services efficiently and affordably. It's about meeting business requirements dependent on data center storage. Spend less, deliver more. Data Center Storage: Cost-Effective Strategies, Implementation, and Management provides an industry insider's insight on how to properly scope, plan, evaluate, and implement storage technologies to maximize performance, capacity, reliability, and power savings. It provides business and use-case focused coverage of storage technology, including storage area networks (SAN), capacity-optimized drives, and solid-state drives. It offers key insights on financially responsible spending for data center storage. Delivered in accessible language, the book starts with a discussion of the business merits of replacing direct attached, compartmentalized storage with consolidated SAN-attached storage. The author advises on the use of service level applications (SLAs) as a tool to drive business unit collaboration with IT and prioritize those actions that impact productivity and profit from those that are less critical. This business guide to applied technologies disassembles big problems into digestible segments to help you understand, quantify, and fix any problems that arise as you work towards meeting your growing storage needs. The book builds on the consolidation and SLA driven approach to take advantage of the compelling benefits and potential savings of managed hosting and cloud storage.

The second edition of "Benefits Management" has been updated with current examples, further insights from experience and recent research. It shows how the enduring challenges achieving business value from information systems and technology projects can be addressed successfully. The approach, which is synthesized from best practices, sound theories and proven techniques from a range of management disciplines, is exemplified from the authors' extensive experience of working with a wide range of organizations. The book includes examples from a wide variety of projects including non-IT projects. The book is written in an accessible style, ideal for practicing managers, and includes check lists and templates for using the processes, tools and techniques and real-life case studies of their application and impacts.

The book now also includes: International survey results that reinforce the importance of the topic, the key management issues and evidence of how the more successful organizations' practices are closely aligned with those described in the book.A Benefits Management Maturity diagnostic which enables organizations to understand the reasons for their current investment success levels and then how to increase them.Discussion of the role and contribution Project Management Offices (PMOs): how they can improve the delivery of value IT projects.Further practical advice and guidance on Program and Portfolio Management, including findings from the authors' recent research in several large organizations.

Production engineering and management involve a series of planning and control activities in a production system. A production system can be as small as a shop with only one machine or as big as a global operation including many manufacturing plants, distribution centers, and retail locations in multiple continents. The product of a production system can also vary in complexity based on the material used, technology employed, etc. Every product, whether a pencil or an airplane, is produced in a system which depends on good management to be successful. Production management has been at the center of industrial engineering and management science disciplines since the industrial revolution. The tools and techniques of production management have been so successful that they have been adopted to various service industries, as well. The book is intended to be a valuable resource to undergraduate and graduate students interested in the applications of production management under fuzziness. The chapters represent all areas of production management and are organized to reflect the natural order of production management tasks. In all chapters, special attention is given to applicability and wherever possible, numerical examples are presented. While the reader is expected to have a fairly good understanding of the fuzzy logic, the book provides the necessary notation and preliminary knowledge needed in each chapter.

Back in 1983 I was chatting with Dick Coleman, publisher of Traffic World magazine, when he unexpectedly proposed that I write a column for the magazine on computer applications in the transportation/physical distribution industry. "But, Dick, I don't know all that much about computers," I protested. "You use one, don't you?" he asked logically. Yes, I did; I'd been running my consulting business with it for two years. But that didn't, I explained, make me an expert. "Think about it," he said. That's typical Coleman; he drops these studiedly casual ideas and just lets them lay there until you pick them up and wind up doing just what he wanted you to do all along. Sure enough, the longer I pondered the notion the more it appealed to me. OK, I wasn't a computer expert (I'm still not). But I was a computer user, in the transportation/distribution field; maybe from that perspective I might have some useful things to say to other transportation/distribution users and would-be users of computers. Thus was born the "Computer Software for Transportation" column. The first one appeared in the April 11, 1983, issue of Traffic World, and it's been a once-a-month schedule ever since. And thus, too, was ultimately born this book.

This book contains substantially extended and revised versions of the best papers from the 13th International Conference on Enterprise Information Systems (ICEIS 2011), held in Beijing, China, June 8-11, 2011.

The 27 papers included (plus one invited paper) in this volume were carefully reviewed and selected from 57 full papers presented at the conference (out of 402 submissions). They reflect state-of-the-art research that is often driven by real-world applications, thus successfully relating the academic with the industrial community. The topics covered are: databases and information systems integration, artificial intelligence and decision support systems, information systems analysis and specification, software agents and Internet computing, and human-computer interaction."

Written by the world's leading academics in the outsourcing field, this books gives the most recent overview of developments in research and practice. It focuses on new practices in innovation, offshoring, onshoring, capabilities, project management and cloud services, offering a distinctive theory of outsourcing.

Provides an updated view of knowledge management strategies of knowledge-intensive business services (KIBS) by focusing on how those firms manage innovation in their value chains and at the territorial level. Offers an original analysis of key processes of KIBS, specializing in design, professional firms and information technology.

Provides an updated view of knowledge management strategies of knowledge-intensive business services (KIBS) by focusing on how those firms manage innovation in their value chains and at the territorial level. Offers an original analysis of key processes of KIBS, specializing in design, professional firms and information technology.

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the Workshop on E-Business (WEB 2011), held in Shanghai, China, on December 4, 2011. The 40 papers, which were selected from 88 submissions to the workshop, touch on topics that are diverse yet highly relevant to the challenges faced by today's e-business researchers and practitioners. They are organized in topical sections on social networks, business intelligence, and social computing; economics and organizational implications of electronic markets; and e-business systems and applications.

TO QUALITY CONTROL 3A CORPORATION Originally printed in Japan as "Dai-3-pan Hinshitsu Kanri Nyumon" (Introduction to Quality Control 3rd Edition) by Kaoru Ishikawa. (c)Kaoru Ishikawa 1989, published by JUSE Press Ltd. Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 1989 Distributed outside Japan and North America by: CHAPMAN & HALL 2 -6 Boundary Row, London SEl 8HN, UK. ISBN-13: 978-94-011-7690-3 e-ISBN-13: 978-94-011-7688-0 DOl: 10. 1007/978-94-011-7688-0 All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means, without permission in writing from the publisher. First Printing . . . . . October 1990 Translated by J. H. Loftus Contents Preface XVII Acknowledgment XIX CHAPTER 1 WHAT IS QUALITY CONTROL? 1 1. 1 What is Quality Control? 1 1. 1. 1 The Definition of Quality Control 1. 1. 2 Some Misunderstandings about Quality Control and Total Quality Control 1. 1. 3 The Benefits of Companywide Quality Control 1. 2 The History and Current Status of Quality Control 7 1. 3 Advances in Quality Assurance 13 1. 4 What is Quality? 15 1. 4. 1 Quality to Satisfy the Consumer 1. 4. 2 True Quality Characteristics and Substitute Characteristics; Product Research 1. 4. 3 Quality Analysis and Product Research 1. 4. 4 Clarifying Definitions Concerning Quality 1. 4. 5 What are Good Quality and Good Products? 1. 5 What is Control? 36 1. 5. 1 The Old-Fashioned Approach to Control 1. 5. 2 Control Methods and Philosophy 1. 5. 3 Action for Recurrence Prevention ("Permanent Fix") 1.

The great, complex and rapid change happening in fonner Soviet Union is overfloading an impressive impact on the western world, especially Europe, and, in the close future, on the global world. Most of this change is generating positive effects and even more optimistic expectations, but surely the difficulties to support and to render these results real and longlasting cannot be underestimated . In fact, difficulties in the adaptation, especially of the most important Countries capabilities, like R&D process and Innovation development and transfer, are being evidenced in the transitional period to completely new socio-economic and political conditions. For the above reasons various Conferences and Meetings have been organised on international base, most of them taking care of identifying and developing recommendations for improving organisation of Science in East Europe and reshaping the research in Science and Technology in the context of new socio-economic conditions. These efforts were mainly confined to scientific research that was considered one of the most important wealth's of Soviet Union, giving not specific attention to the strategic importance of Science and, even more, Innovation for industrial and socio-economic growth in the new N.I.S. Countries. Furthennore, the impressive speed of change in Innovation on the global market coupled to the enonnous change realised by N.I.S. Countries, especially by the leader Russia, is accelerating the need of an operating solution capable of linking these Countries with the Western World, rules and market, starting from Europe.