As an overview of reliability performance and specification in new product development, Product Reliability is suitable for managers responsible for new product development. The methodology for making decisions relating to reliability performance and specification will be of use to engineers involved in product design and development. This book can be used as a text for graduate courses on design, manufacturing, new product development and operations management and in various engineering disciplines.

"Recent Advances in Reliability and Quality in Design" presents the latest theories and methods of reliability and quality, with emphasis on reliability and quality in design and modelling. Each chapter is written by active researchers and professionals with international reputations, providing material which bridges the gap between theory and practice to trigger new practices and research challenges.

Postgraduates, researchers, and practitioners in reliability engineering, maintenance engineering, quality engineering, operations research, industrial and systems engineering, mechanical engineering, computer engineering, management, and statistics will find this book a state-of-the-art survey of reliability and quality in design and practices.

Each year billions of dollars are being spent to develop, manufacture, and operate transportation systems such as aircraft, ships, trains, and motor vehicles throughout the world. During their operation thousands of lives are lost annually due to various types accidents. Needless to say, approximately 70 to 90 percent of transportation crashes are the result of human error to a certain degree. Moreover, it may be added that human errors contribute significantly to most transportation crashes across all modes of transportation.

Human Reliability and Error in Transportation Systems is the first book to cover the subject of human reliability across all types of transportation system. The material will be accessible to readers with no previous knowledge in the field, and is supported with a full explanation of the necessary mathematical concepts together with numerous examples and test problems.

The Maintenance Management Framework describes and reviews the concept, process and framework of modern maintenance management of complex systems; concentrating specifically on modern modelling tools (deterministic and empirical) for maintenance planning and scheduling. It will be bought by engineers and professionals involved in maintenance management, maintenance engineering, operations management, quality, etc. as well as graduate students and researchers in this field.

In recent years, supply chain planning has emerged as one of the most challenging problems in the industry. As a consequence, the planning focus is shifting from the management of plant-speci?c operations to a holistic view of the various logistics and productionstages, that is an approach in which suppliers, productionplants and customers are considered as constituents of an integrated network. A major dr- ing force behind this development lies in the globalization of the world economy, which has facilitated the co-operation between different partners working together in world-wide logistics networks. Hence, considerable cost savings can be gained from optimizing the structure and the operations of complex supply networks li- ing plants, suppliers, distribution centres and customers. Consequently, to improve the performance of the entire logistic chain, more sophisticated planning systems and more effective decision support are needed. Clearly, successful applications of supply chain management have driven the development of advanced planning systems (APS), which are concerned with s- porting decision-making activities at the strategic, tactical and operational decision level. These software packages basically rely on the application of quantitative methods, which are used to model the underlying complex decision problems c- sidering the limited availability of resources and the need to react on time to customer orders. The core module at the mid-term level of APS comprises op- ational supply chain planning. In many industries, productionstages are assigned to differentplantsand distribution centreshave been established at geographicallyd- persed locations.

"He who stops getting better has stopped being good. " Hans Schneider, General Manager of the Siemens Amberg Electronics Factory, Industrial Excellence Award overall winner 2007 There is a general perception that inflexible labor markets and high labor costs are contributing to a massive displacement of manufacturing jobs and investment from Western Europe to Eastern Europe and Asia. The debate in Western Europe is highly charged, but sometimes ill-informed. It is true that some low-skilled jobs are moving into low labor cost countries. On the other hand, many more highly skilled jobs are actually being created in the highly developed countries. The total impact on Western economies is much more complicated, and there is some evidence of important benefits. In this book, we showcase examples of excellent industrial management that has managed to create substantial job growth in manufacturing. This book is based on 14 years' observation of the Industrial Excellence Award (IEA) in Germany and France, the first ten years of which we summarized in our previous book, Industrial Excellence (Springer 2003), and on an additional five years of obser- tion between 2002 and 2007. We have seen that management's first and noble responsibility to society is to achieve competitiveness. Competitive organizations create growth and jobs, even in Western Europe. Competitiveness requires clearly articulated strategic positioning, together with excellent execution, and mobili- tion of all employees to apply their abilities and to pull in one direction.

This book gives unique insights into the Supply Chain Event Management (SCEM) of world-leading companies. Aims, methods, instruments as well as resources and budgets in SCEM are discussed. The book offers real case studies from Top 100 companies. The reader will gain a strong understanding of the way to deal with problems along the supply chain and how to avoid them. SCEM allows timelines to be met with decreased cost and risks.

For the majority of industrial companies, customizing products and services is among the most critical means to deliver true customer value and achieve superior competitive advantage. This book presents an operational procedure for the design of product configuration systems in industrial companies. It is based on the experience gained from more than forty product configuration projects in companies providing customers with tailored products and services.

Product design is characterized by a steady increase in complexity. The main focus of this book is a structural approach on complexity management. This means, system structures are considered in order to address the challenge of complexity in all aspects of product design. Structures arise from the complex dependencies of system elements. Thus, the identification of system structures provides access to the understanding of system behavior in practical applications. The book presents a methodology that enables the analysis, control and optimization of complex structures, and the applicability of domain-spanning problems. The methodology allows significant improvements on handling system complexity by creating improved system understanding on the one hand and optimizing product design that is robust for system adaptations on the other hand. Developers can thereby enhance project coordination and improve communication between team members and as a result shorten development time. The practical application of the methodology is described by means of two detailed examples.

In todays industries, New Product Development (NPD) is often the focal point of competition. Companies that are able effectively to develop, produce and introduce new products are the key competitors in markets where variety and time-to-market play an increasingly important role. This examination into the organisation of Integrated Product Development aims to answer the question: Which integration mechanisms lead to effective co-ordination and overlap of New Product Development activities in which situations? The mechanisms, strat egies and goals, knowledge and skills, and organisational arrangements are presented, and their impact on the results of NPD projects and relationships is discussed. An in-depth understanding of the background and theory is provided, using detailed case s tudies to illustrate both the human and organisational issues in practice.

1. 1 Motivation and Scope of Research Container terminals in seaports constitute interfaces between sea and land tra- port of goods in global transport chains. These logistics facilities face an increasing demandof service capacity, as is re ected by a tremendousgrowthin the worldwide container transshipments per year. For example, the top 20 terminals in the world showed an average relative increase of 14% with respect to the number of handled container units from 2006 to 2007, see Port of Hamburg Marketing (2008). In spite of this development, competition is high among container terminals within the same region. A terminal's customers, rst and foremost the vessel op- ators, expect a high level of service quality where reliability is one of the most importantdimensions, seeWiegmansetal. (2001). Regardingtheserviceofavessel, reliability means to realize all transshipment operations within its projected service time interval. The reliability of terminal operations impacts the reliability of v- sels in meeting their liner schedules. According to Notteboom (2006) unexpected waiting times of vessels before berthing and unexpected low transshipment prod- tivity at terminals are responsible for about 86% of liner schedule disturbances, see Fig. 1. 1. Currently, many terminal operators counteract this situation by extending their transshipment capacities. They build new terminals or enlarge existing ter- nals and purchase new or upgrade existing equipment. Ilmer (2005) provides an overview of current projects for building terminal capacity in northern Europe.

This book consists of a collection of works on utilizing the automatic identification technology provided by Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) to address the problems of global counterfeiting of goods. The book presents current research, directed to securing supply chains against the efforts of counterfeit operators, carried out at the Auto-ID Labs around the globe. It assumes very little knowledge on the part of the reader on Networked RFID systems as the material provided in the introduction familiarizes the reader with concepts, underlying principles and vulnerabilities of modern RFID systems.

Logistic problems can rarely be solved satisfyingly within one single scientific discipline. This cross-sectional character is taken into account by the Research Cluster for Dynamics in Logistics with a combination of economical, information and production technical and enterprise-oriented research approaches. In doing so, the interdisciplinary cooperation between university, research institutes and enterprises for the solution of logistic problems is encouraged.

This book comprises the edited proceedings of the first International Conference on Dynamics in Logistics LDIC 2007. The scope of the conference was concerned with the identification, analysis, and description of the dynamics of logistic processes and networks. The spectrum reached from the planning and modelling of processes over innovative methods like autonomous control and knowledge management to the new technologies provided by radio frequency identification, mobile communication, and networking.

Two invited papers and of 42 contributed papers on various subjects give an state-of-art overview on dynamics in logistics. They include routing in dynamic logistic networks, RFID in logistics and manufacturing networks, supply chain control policies, sustainable collaboration, knowledge management and service models in logistics, container logistics, autonomous control in logistics, and logistic process modelling.

This book is a practical guide to the application of control benchmarking to real, complex, industrial processes. The variety of industrial case studies gives the benchmarking ideas presented a robust real-world attitude. The book deals with control engineering principles and economic and management aspects of benchmarking. It shows the reader how to avoid common problems in benchmarking and details the benefits of effective benchmarking.

Supply Chain Management and Cost Management are important developments helping companies to respond to increased global competition and demanding customer needs. Within the 23 chapters of the book, more than 35 authors provide insights into new concepts for cost control in supply chains. The frameworks presented are illustrated with case studies from the automotive, textile, white goods, and transportation industry as well as from retailing. Academics will benefit from the wide range of approaches presented, while practitioners will learn from the examples how their own company and the supply chains which they compete in, can be brought to lower costs and better performance.

This book sheds new light on long-established concepts of microeconomic production theory and combines general theoretical analysis with references to management tools. It deals with concepts of microeconomic production theory, using the fund-flow model of Nicholas Georgescu-Roegen as a basic reference. This long-neglected model allows for a representation of productive operations that can easily be accommodated to empirical application.

Explains processes and scenarios (process chains) for planning with SAP characteristics.

Uses the latest releases of SAP R/3 and APO (Advanced Planning & Optimization software).

The levels scenario, process and function are explained from the business case down to the implementation level and the relations between these levels are consistently pointed out throughout the book

Many illustrations help to understand the interdependencies between scenario, process and function

Aims to help avoiding costly dead ends and securing a smooth implementation and management of supply chains

Applications of Soft Computing have recently increased and methodological development has been strong. The book is a collection of new interesting industrial applications introduced by several research groups and industrial partners. It describes the principles and results of industrial applications of Soft Computing methods and introduces new possibilities to gain technical and economic benefits by using this methodology. The book shows how fuzzy logic and neural networks have been used in the Finnish paper and metallurgical industries putting emphasis on processes, applications and technical and economic results.

The book constitutes a unique combination of in-depth insights into the counterfeit market, best-practice strategies, novel management tools, and product protection technologies. It provides both the insights required to develop effective brand and product protection strategies, and the insights that are required to effectively respond to counterfeit trade. Key benefits are the unbiased analysis of the counterfeit market, the strong focus on assisting practitioners to deal with the challenge, and the high standard of research that supports the presented findings.

This scholarly yet accessible book provides an introduction to the main topics in production economics. The book successfully integrates two historically distinct perspectives on modeling technology: from microeconomics and engineering.

This book deals with collaborative planning, an approach to supply chain planning which aims to coordinate planning tasks of independent supply chain partners while respecting their local decision authority. It gives an introduction to collaborative planning, shows how it is embedded in the broader subject matter of supply chain management, and reviews findings of related literature. At its core, it provides a step-by-step description of a negotiation-based, practice-oriented approach to collaborative planning at the medium-term level of master planning between two supply-chain partners, a supplier and a single customer. Subsequently, this basic concept is extended to cover supply chains with multiple partners and planning on a rolling basis. Implications of collaborative planning on supply contracts are sketched out, and incentives for cooperative behavior by the supply-chain partners are analyzed by applying concepts of game theory.

One of the great challenges in flexible production and supply chains is the availability of necessary information at any time and place. Autonomous logistics processes can bring about fast and flexible adaptations to change. This book identifies autonomous logistics processes and details how they differ from conventionally managed processes. Coverage also describes the changes that autonomy will cause in order processing.

This book gives an alternative observational scheme to better understand knowledge creation and learning in project-based companies. It builds upon emergent new ways of looking at projects which is important - as any discipline stays alive by reflection and re-framing ideas as they are challenged, argued and clarified.

A starter to the concepts of modularization and mass customization.

Condensed and application-oriented approach for a broad audience in engineering, production, sales and marketing.

Provides an extensive configurator evaluation checklist for future users and a supplement of business cases.

Decisive potential in business is a question of process capability, rather than production capability. Process capability in business requires real-time systems for optimization. Business-IT needs to be developed from telecommunications and ERP to real-time services, which are not offered by the prevailing ERP systems. This book shows how modern information technology Manufacturing Execution Systems (MES) becomes the prerequisite for process capability of the company on the basis of many practical examples. It describes the requirements for optimized MES. It gives an overview of the efficiency potentials and different applications of MES.