This research monograph aims at presenting an integrated assessment approach to describe, model, evaluate and improve the eco-efficiency of existing and new grinding processes and systems. Various combinations of grinding process parameters and system configurations can be evaluated based on the eco-efficiency. The book presents the novel concept of empirical and physical modeling of technological, economic and environmental impact indicators. This includes the integrated evaluation of different grinding process and system scenarios. The book is a valuable read for research experts and practitioners in the field of eco-efficiency of manufacturing processes but the book may also be beneficial for graduate students.

This contributed volume brings together research papers presented at the 4th International Conference on Dynamics in Logistics, held in Bremen, Germany in February 2014. The conference focused on the identification, analysis and description of the dynamics of logistics processes and networks. Topics covered range from the modeling and planning of processes, to innovative methods like autonomous control and knowledge management, to the latest technologies provided by radio frequency identification, mobile communication, and networking. The growing dynamic poses wholly new challenges: logistics processes and networks must be(come) able to rapidly and flexibly adapt to constantly changing conditions. The book primarily addresses the needs of researchers and practitioners from the field of logistics, but will also be beneficial for graduate students.

This book discusses the main techniques and newest trends to manage and optimize the production and service systems. The book begins by examining the three main levels of decision systems in production: the long term (strategic), the middle term (tactical) and short term (operational). It also considers online management as a new level (a sub level of the short term). As each level encounters specific problems, appropriate approaches to deal with these are introduced and explained. These problems include the line design, the line balancing optimization, the physical layout of the production or service system, the forecasting optimization, the inventory management, the scheduling etc. Metaheuristics for Production Systems then explores logistic optimization from two different perspectives: internal (production management), addressing issues of scheduling, layout and line designs, and external (supply chain management) focusing on transportation optimization, supply chain evaluation, and location of production. The book also looks at NP-hard problems that are common in production management. These complex configurations may mean that optimal solutions may not be reached due to variables, but the authors help provide a good solution for such problems. The effective new results and solutions offered in this book should appeal to researchers, managers, and engineers in the production and service industries.

The book develops manufacturing concepts and applications beyond physical production and towards a wider manufacturing value chain incorporating external stakeholders that include suppliers of raw materials and parts, customers, collaborating manufacturing companies, manufacturing service providers, and environmental organisations. The focal point of the value chain remains as a manufacturing system and its operations whiles flows of parts/materials and information and services across the supply/value chain tiers are taken into account. The book emphasises on the two innovative paradigms of Reconfigurable Manufacturing Systems (RMS) and the 4th industrial revolution (Industry 4.0) along with their incorporated development. RMS, as a relatively new paradigm, has been introduced to meet the requirements of 'the factories of the future', which is aimed by Industry 4.0, though introducing greater responsiveness and customised flexibility into production systems, in which changes in product volumes and types occur regularly. Manufacturing responsiveness can be achieved by RMS through reconfiguring the production facilities according to changing demands of products and new market conditions. The book addresses challenges of mass-customisation and dynamic changes in the supply-chain environment by focusing on developing new techniques related to integrability, scalability and re-configurability at a system level and manufacturing readiness in terms of financial and technical feasibility of RMS. It demonstrate the expected impacts of an RMS design on operational performance and its supply/value chain in the current/future manufacturing environment facing dynamic changes in the internal/external circumstances. In order to establish a circular economy through the RMS value chain, an integrated data-based reconfiguration link is introduced to incorporate information sharing amongst the value chain stakeholders and facilitate grouping products into families with allocation of the product families to the corresponding system configurations with optimal product-process allocation. Decision support systems such as multi criteria decision making tools are developed and applied for the selection of product families and optimising product-process configuration. The proposed models are illustrated through real case studies in applicable manufacturing firms.

This proceedings volume examines the state-of-the art of productivity and efficiency analysis and adds to the existing research by bringing together a selection of the best papers from the 8th North American Productivity Workshop (NAPW). It also aims to analyze world-wide perspectives on challenges that local economies and institutions may face when changes in productivity are observed. The volume comprises of seventeen papers that deal with productivity measurement, productivity growth, dynamics of productivity change, measures of labor productivity, measures of technical efficiency in different sectors, frontier analysis, measures of performance, industry instability and spillover effects. These papers are relevant to academia, but also to public and private sectors in terms of the challenges firms, financial institutions, governments and individuals may face when dealing with economic and education related activities that lead to increase or decrease of productivity. The North American Productivity Workshop brings together academic scholars and practitioners in the field of productivity and efficiency analysis from all over the world. It is a four day conference exploring topics related to productivity, production theory and efficiency measurement in economics, management science, operations research, public administration, and related fields. The papers in this volume also address general topics as health, energy, finance, agriculture, utilities, and economic dev elopment, among others. The editors are comprised of the 2014 local organizers, program committee members, and celebrated guest conference speakers.

This book outlines the benefits and limitations of simulation, what is involved in setting up a simulation capability in an organization, the steps involved in developing a simulation model and how to ensure that model results are implemented. In addition, detailed example applications are provided to show where the tool is useful and what it can offer the decision maker. In Simulating Business Processes for Descriptive, Predictive, and Prescriptive Analytics, Andrew Greasley provides an in-depth discussion of Business process simulation and how it can enable business analytics How business process simulation can provide speed, cost, dependability, quality, and flexibility metrics Industrial case studies including improving service delivery while ensuring an efficient use of staff in public sector organizations such as the police service, testing the capacity of planned production facilities in manufacturing, and ensuring on-time delivery in logistics systems State-of-the-art developments in business process simulation regarding the generation of simulation analytics using process mining and modeling people's behavior Managers and decision makers will learn how simulation provides a faster, cheaper and less risky way of observing the future performance of a real-world system. The book will also benefit personnel already involved in simulation development by providing a business perspective on managing the process of simulation, ensuring simulation results are implemented, and that performance is improved.

This book constructs a model of the knowledge value chain in the university and analyzes the university knowledge value-added mechanism in the process of Industry-University Collaborative Innovation. The efficiency of university knowledge value-added of Provinces in China is measured. The book illustrates the operating mechanism between enterprise subsystems and college subsystems in the collaborative innovation system, and establishes a Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) model with parallel decision making units to assess the performance of Industry-University Collaboration Innovation in China by considering the complex internal structure of the collaborative innovation system. The book also addresses various behaviors of knowledge agents in the knowledge sharing process. The research findings of this book will provide some policy implications to help policy makers to establish a more effective collaborative and interactive innovation system. The focus on China offers a unique contribution, because the form that university-industry collaborations take differs widely from country to country. The United States, the United Kingdom, Japan, and China differ vastly in the way that they implement their respective R&D policies. Some of these differences stem from national culture, others from the historical evolution of the institutions that support innovation efforts, and some from the extent of available resources.

The proceedings volume consists of academic papers on decision-making under uncertainty, smart decision, stochastic optimization, management simulation and its applications. It presents some compelling and valuable results on the cutting-edge modeling methods and the practical case studies in the operations management process for power, transportation, and logistics companies.

This book describes how a deeper knowledge and understanding of cultural differences represents a meaningful and useful tool for management of companies, and in particular SMEs, in the People's Republic of China. After introductory chapters on the internationalization of SMEs and the role played by management in this process, the authors explore the implications of academic discourses on culture and its dimensions for company management. The influence of Chinese cultural roots and the country's current cultural environment on management is then examined, with provision of guidance on response to the identified challenges. A key feature of the book is the presentation of important recent fieldwork in the main economic regions of China. This research further clarifies how business culture and cultural differences impact on company activities in China and casts light on various aspects of the adaptive capability of SMEs within the country, highlighting the value of cultural awareness and intelligence. The book will be of interest to academics and practitioners alike.

This book bridges two essential aspects of assessing and achieving business excellence in 21st-century organizations. The author argues that transnational companies face a twofold challenge: managing global knowledge networks and multicultural project teams on the one hand; and interacting and collaborating across boundaries using global communication technologies, on the other. The author also argues that this dual challenge calls for the creation of a business excellence program that fits and thrives within these multicultural environments. In response, he reviews corporate practices in quality management and business excellence frameworks that have been extensively used on a transnational scale to drive organizational performance. The book approaches quality management as an element that is no longer a choice, but has now become a necessity if companies want to compete in highly globalized environments.

The main target of this book is to raise the awareness about social networking systems design, implementation, security requirements, and approaches. The book entails related issues including computing, engineering, security, management, and organization policy. It interprets the design, implementation and security threats in the social networks and offers some solutions in this concern. It clarifies the authentication concept between servers to identity users. Most of the models that focus on protecting users' information are also included. This book introduces the Human-Interactive Security Protocols (HISPs) efficiently. Presenting different types of the social networking systems including the internet and mobile devices is one of the main targets of this book. This book includes the social network performance evaluation metrics. It compares various models and approaches used in the design of the social networks. This book includes various applications for the use of the social networks in the healthcare, e-commerce, crisis management, and academic applications. The book provides an extensive background for the development of social network science and its challenges. This book discusses the social networks integration to offer online services, such as instant messaging, email, file sharing, transferring patients' medical reports/images, location-based recommendations and many other functions. This book provides users, designers, engineers and managers with the valuable knowledge to build a better secured information transfer over the social networks. The book gathers remarkable materials from an international experts' panel to guide the readers during the analysis, design, implementation and security achievement for the social network systems. In this book, theories, practical guidance, and challenges are included to inspire designers and researchers. The book guides the engineers, designers, and researchers to exploit the intrinsic design of the social network systems.

This book highlights storytelling as a concrete and viable method which can be used in various operational fields in organizations: from change management to project management and knowledge management, it presents employees' stories on past projects and the diverse, essential aspects of corporate culture they reveal, in an easy-to-comprehend and entertaining fashion. These stories focus on specific but generic experiences which can be adapted and exploited by the reader to ultimately tap into hidden knowledge and increase transparency during daily routines in his or her own organization. Knowledge managers, coaches, and strategists alike will find a 'real-life' connection through these stories, helping them improve their own storytelling methods. The book also provides exhaustive information on the latest storytelling methods and strategies. The adaptations Thier has made to bring learning histories to corporate settings accelerates the capture, flow, and application of organizational knowledge that speeds up changes to improve operations! George Roth (Principal Research Associate at MIT Sloan School of Management, Boston, United States)

This book analyses the role of Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) and Business Intelligence (BI) systems in improving information quality through an empirical analysis carried out in Italy. The study begins with a detailed examination of ERP features that highlights the advantages and disadvantages of ERP adoption. Critical success factors for ERP implementation and post-implementation are then discussed, along with the capabilities of ERP in driving the alignment between management accounting and financial accounting information.The study goes on to illustrate the features of BI systems and to summarize companies' needs for BI. Critical success factors for BI implementation are then presented, along with the BI maturity model and lifecycle. The focus of the research entails a detailed empirical analysis in the Italian setting designed to investigate the role played by ERP and BI systems in reducing information overload/underload and improving information quality by influencing the features of information flow. The practical and theoretical implications of the study are discussed and future avenues of research are suggested. This book will be of value for all those who have an interest in the capacities of ERP and BI systems to enhance business information quality.

Small businesses make up some 90-95 percent of all global firms. Many undervalue the importance of information and communication technology (ICT). Within the small business segment there can be significant differences amongst the avid early adopters of ICT and the laggards. Research on early adopters tends be more prevalent as they are perceived to have a more interesting and positive story. However, late adopters and 'laggards' also have their own interesting stories that are under-reported. Small Business and Effective ICT draws on research undertaken over several years and documents the adoption/use of ICT across 'better' users of ICT (Leaders), typical ICT users (Operationals) and late adopters (Laggards). The findings are presented using a re-formulation of the LIASE framework which addresses a number of areas that include ICT literacy (L), information content/communication (I), Access (A), Infrastructure (I), Support (S) and Evaluation (E). Some 60 businesses were investigated in Australia and the UK, with each business presented as a concise vignette. The vignettes serve to show that small businesses are not as conservative in their use of ICT as the literature suggests, with examples of innovative uses of ICT in small businesses provided. Lessons for the effective use of ICT by small businesses are presented. The research design, methods adopted, presentation of findings through the vignettes, and 'take away' lessons have been written in manner to appeal to a broad range of readers including academics, researchers, students and policy makers in the discipline.

This book focuses on understanding the status quo of sustainable practices in industry operations from an emerging economy perspective, presenting various practices in India. In order to offer a balance between theory and practice, it provides guidelines for applying models to achieve the goal of sustainability in this competitive environment. The chapters include theoretical perspectives, models and empirical evidence on sustainable practices from Indian industries. The book also presents a scholarly perspective on sustainable operations from various researchers and practitioners in India for a global audience in academia and industry.

A successful and competent administrative manager is integral to anyprofitable and efficient organisation or office. Administrative Management has been written specifically for people working in the field of administrative management, as well as those studying Administrative Management at higher education institutions.

The content is specific to the South African market, and it is the only local textbook on this topic. This fourth edition of Administrative Management contains new examples and updated data, and discusses the latest trends in this subject.

Contents Include:

• The role of administrative management within an organisation
• Information systems, office systems and the management of information
• Written and electronic communication
• Meetings and meeting procedures
• Office layout, environment, equipment and furniture
• The virtual workplace
• Office procedures, workflow and productivity
• Planning, organising, leading, control and problem-solving
• Managing cultural diversity
• Business ethics
• Risk management and loss control

This book provides aspirant administrative managers with a good foundation, and offers practising managers the insight that will enable them to manage the administration needs of an organisation more timeously and efficiently, making them invaluable to that organisation.

This book constitutes the thoroughly refereed proceedings of the 8th International Joint Conference on Knowledge Discovery, Knowledge Engineering and Knowledge Management, IC3K 2016, held in Porto, Portugal, in November 2016.The 18 full papers presented were carefully reviewed and selected from 186 submissions. The papers are organized in topical sections on knowledge discovery and information retrieval; knowledge engineering and ontology development; and knowledge management and information sharing.

This book is open access under a CC BY NC ND license. It addresses the most recent developments in cloud computing such as HPC in the Cloud, heterogeneous cloud, self-organising and self-management, and discusses the business implications of cloud computing adoption. Establishing the need for a new architecture for cloud computing, it discusses a novel cloud management and delivery architecture based on the principles of self-organisation and self-management. This focus shifts the deployment and optimisation effort from the consumer to the software stack running on the cloud infrastructure. It also outlines validation challenges and introduces a novel generalised extensible simulation framework to illustrate the effectiveness, performance and scalability of self-organising and self-managing delivery models on hyperscale cloud infrastructures. It concludes with a number of potential use cases for self-organising, self-managing clouds and the impact on those businesses.

Sustainability Accounting and Integrated Reporting deals with organizations' assessment, articulation and disclosure of their social and environmental impact on various groups in society. There is increasingly an understanding that financial information does not sufficiently discharge organizational accountability to members of society who are demanding an account of the social and environmental impacts of companies' and other organizations' activities. As a result, organizations report ever more social and environmental information, and there are simultaneous movements towards providing the information in an integrated fashion, showing how social and environmental activities influence each other, members of society and the financial aims of the organization. The book Sustainability Accounting and Integrated Reporting provides a broad and comprehensive review of the field, focusing on the interconnection between different elements of these topics, often dealt with in isolation. The book examines the accounting involved in the collection and analysis of data, control processes over the data, how information is reported to external parties, and the assurance of the information being reported. The book thereby provides an overview useful to practitioners (including sustainability managers, consultants, members of the accounting profession, and other assurance providers), academics, and students.

The papers in volume 6 of Research in Competence-Based Management identify, elaborate theoretically, and investigate empirically a number of new kinds of dynamics in industries and product markets. In so doing, the papers develop some important new competence perspectives on both traditional and contemporary industry dynamics. Most approaches to developing competence theory have adopted an "inside-out" approach, i.e. micro-level analyses of sources of organizational competence lead to theory that predicts industry-level interactions and outcomes. The papers in this volume, however, largely adopt an "outside-in" approach to theory development that suggests how further understanding of firm-level competences may be enabled through macro-level analyses of the resources and capabilities organizations must develop to participate in new kinds of industry and product-market dynamics.

Gender diversity as a corporate governance mechanism is high on the agenda for regulators, firms, and researchers. Particularly, gender board composition has received a great deal of attention in recent years. The theoretical foundations of the benefits associated with the inclusion of female directors on boards, how to measure gender diversity in the boardroom, and its real impact on board decisions and firm strategies remain hotly debated. Drawing on empirical data, this book summarises the current situation regarding gender board diversity and provides a concise overview of the most important concerns about this topic. This will be a vital tool to guide the future debate on gender diversity and corporate governance for researchers and advanced students, as well as regulators, policy makers and board members.

This book analyses the organisation cultures that promote Japanese Lesson Study, identifies the soul of lesson study, which is missing in other cultures, and discusses the conditions for successfully transplanting the Lesson Study to other cultures. Adopting Nonaka and Tateuchi's (1995) SECI knowledge creation model as the analytical lens, it explores the tacit and explicit knowledge convention and creation processes in lesson study. Unpacking the mechanism of the knowledge management process and practices could assist policy makers and school administrators, educators in contextualising lesson study to their school systems. The book provides an accessible discussion of the benefits and challenges of introducing lesson study, and presents three new research dimensions to analyse it: reviewing the historical development of lesson study in terms of the pendulum swings between professional accountability and state accountability in developing the school-based curriculum and the national curriculum; examining lesson study as a knowledge management tool for creating pedagogical knowledge for curriculum implementation: and studying the "kaizen kata" embedded in the PDCA cycles of lesson study as an organization routine for school improvement.

Using an experimental approach, Maximilian Eberl evaluates the role of implicit learning (CBM/AAT) for the modification of organizational routines. Taking a vertical perspective on the (collective) entities in organizations shows an increasing role of impulsive processes the lower the level gets. The horizontal perspective demonstrates the potential of implicit learning for the replication of routines. Finally, the time perspective highlights the contributions of implicit learning strategies for change in and of routines, as well as the contributions of implicit learning to deal with the path-dependence of routines.

This book is published open access under a CC BY 4.0 license. This book addresses how organizations can deal with human fallibility in order to create space for excellence at work. Some mistakes in work settings put lives at risk, while others create openings for innovative breakthroughs. In order to deal constructively with fallibility, an organization needs a communication climate where it is normal to voice opinions, admit mistakes, and ask for help in critical situations. The book builds on interviews with practitioners in healthcare, aviation, IT, public governance, and industry. It connects narratives from these fields with theories from organizational psychology and philosophy, as well as from positive organizational scholarship. In the final chapter, an overall ethics of fallibility at work is outlined. Fallibility at Work contributes to research in multiple academic disciplines, but also reaches out to practitioners who are interested in the connections between error and excellence in organizations.