These conference proceedings include a collection of articles presented at the RailExchange conference in October 2017 at Newcastle University, UK. They will be useful for researchers in developing countries looking for opportunities of knowledge exchange. The RailExchange project aimed to develop sustainable railway education in Thailand, via international partnerships and industry collaborations based around stakeholders' expertise and experiences. It involved staff exchange (academics and researchers) between Mahidol and Newcastle University for joint research and curriculum development and also organizing railway conferences and workshops in both Thailand and the UK. The papers published here focus on rail-related issues and present a perspective of a widely understood 'exchange' in academia and industry environments. 'Exchange' is perceived as rail knowledge exchange between partners, rail staff exchange between academia and/or industry, research exchange between teams, student-lecturer knowledge exchange, academia-industry collaboration, etc. In addition, more general rail-related papers are also included.

With this book, distinguished and notable contributors wish to honor Professor Charles S. Tapiero s scientific achievements. Although it covers only a few of the directions Professor Tapiero has taken in his work, it presents important modern developments in theory and in diverse applications, as studied by his colleagues and followers, further advancing the topics Tapiero has been investigating. The book is divided into three parts featuring original contributions covering the following areas: general modeling and analysis; applications to marketing, economy and finance; and applications to operations and manufacturing.

Professor Tapiero is among the most active researchers in control theory; in the late sixties, he started to enthusiastically promote optimal control theory along with differential games, successfully applying it to diverse problems ranging from classical operations research models to finance, risk and insurance, marketing, transportation and operations management, conflict management and game theory, engineering, regional and urban sciences, environmental economics, and organizational behavior. Over the years, Professor Tapiero has produced over 300 papers and communications and 14 books, which have had a major impact on modern theoretical and applied research. Notable among his numerous pioneering scientific contributions are the use of graph theory in the behavioral sciences, the modeling of advertising as a random walk, the resolution of stochastic zero-sum differential games, the modeling of quality control as a stochastic competitive game, and the development of impulsive control methods in management. Charles Tapiero s creativity applies both in formulating original issues, modeling complex phenomena and solving complex mathematical problems."

Information is considered essential in every business model, which is why staying abreast of the latest resources can help combat many challenges and aid businesses in creating a synthesis between people and information, keeping up with evolving technologies, and keeping data accurate and secure. The Handbook of Research on Knowledge Management for Contemporary Business Environments is a critical scholarly publication that examines the management of knowledge resources in modern business contexts. Including a wide range of topics such as information systems, sustainable competitive advantage, and knowledge sharing, this publication is a vital reference source for managers, academicians, researchers, and students seeking current research on strategies that are able to manage the information in more than one context for present and future generations.

Innovation Networks in Knowledge-based Firms explores corporate strategic management in an information and communication technology (ICT) environment, and illustrates the significance of new business models based on 'boundary innovation' management through broadband networks as fixed and mobile wireless infrastructures. The author bridges theory and practice and provides international scope; he seeks to make transparent the mechanisms behind the processes that generate product and service innovation in ICT industries, such as search and advertising (Yahoo, Google), music distribution (Apple iPod) and gaming (Sony Playstation, Nintendo DS). He develops new business models based on 'boundary innovation' management and explains the innovation networks formed via three types of knowledge innovator - platform, process, and content. These knowledge innovators play an important role in merging different technologies (including ICT) and business models to develop new business value chains and new industries that span various industrial fields. Highlighting new theoretical and managerial insights and implications in the realm of ICT, this book will be invaluable to academics, students and practitioners with an interest in business, management, ICT and high-tech industries.

This book describes different approaches for solving industrial problems like product design, process optimization, quality enhancement, productivity improvement and cost minimization. Several optimization techniques are described. The book covers case studies on the applications of classical as well as evolutionary and swarm optimization tools for solving industrial issues. The content is very helpful for industry personnel, particularly engineers from the Operation, R&D and Quality Assurance sectors, and also the academic researchers of different engineering and/or business administration background.

This book highlights some of the latest research advances and cutting-edge analyses of real-world case studies on Industrial Engineering and Operations Management from diverse international contexts, while also identifying business applications for the latest findings and innovations in operations management and the decision sciences. It gathers a selection of the best papers presented at the XXII International Conference on Industrial Engineering and Industrial Management, which was promoted by ADINGOR (Asociacion para el Desarrollo de la Ingenieria de Organizacion) and held at the Escola Politecnica Superior of the Universitat de Girona, Spain, on July 12th and 13th, 2018.

This book examines recent developments in semantic systems that can respond to situations and environments and events. The contributors to this book cover how to design, implement and utilize disruptive technologies. The editor discusses the two fundamental sets of disruptive technologies: the development of semantic technologies including description logics, ontologies and agent frameworks; and the development of semantic information rendering and graphical forms of displays of high-density time-sensitive data to improve situational awareness. Beyond practical illustrations of emerging technologies, the editor proposes to utilize an incremental development method called knowledge scaffolding -a proven educational psychology technique for learning a subject matter thoroughly. The goal of this book is to help readers learn about managing information resources, from the ground up and reinforcing the learning as they read on.

Organizational strategies in the public sector are constantly changing and growing. In order for organizations to remain successful and competitive, they must ensure that the stream of knowledge is managed effectively. Building a Competitive Public Sector with Knowledge Management Strategy explores different practices and theories of knowledge management, providing an efficient way of sustaining knowledge to improve organizational learning and enhance company performance. By intelligently analyzing current research, this publication is beneficial to managers, practitioners, and researchers interested in increasing their knowledge management strategies in the public sector.

This book examines education in entrepreneurship through an action-learning environment that uses educational innovation tools. It explores various education tools, technology tools and pedagogical methods being implemented into university curriculums around the world. Entrepreneurship in society is rapidly gaining popularity as entrepreneurial activities aimed to create social value are fundamental in the development of an innovative, sustainable economy. This notion has been encouraging universities to incorporate entrepreneurship-related competencies into the curriculums of almost all subjects. Thus, developing an action-learning environment with educational innovation tools, technology tools and pedagogical methods is becoming increasingly important to universities. Students must be fully prepared to face the many challenges in the world and to help develop an innovative and sustainable economy. Universities should therefore promote active learning through innovation so that students can become active participants in their learning. Featuring contributions and case studies from academics, researchers and practitioners from around the world, the is book provides international perspective into entrepreneurship education and innovation.

The book focuses on efficiency analysis in enterprises and describes a broader supply-chain context to support improved sustainability. The research and its outcomes presented here provide theoretical and empirical studies on efficiency analysis in the supply chain, including operational, economic, environmental and social aspects. This book sheds new light on the efficiency-assessment framework for practitioners and includes essential tips on how to improve the sustainability of supply-chains operations.

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.

The book shows how simulation's long history and close ties to industry since the third industrial revolution have led to its growing importance in Industry 4.0. The book emphasises the role of simulation in the new industrial revolution, and its application as a key aspect of making Industry 4.0 a reality - and thus achieving the complete digitisation of manufacturing and business. It presents various perspectives on simulation and demonstrates its applications, from augmented or virtual reality to process engineering, and from quantum computing to intelligent management. Simulation for Industry 4.0 is a guide and milestone for the simulation community, as well as those readers working to achieve the goals of Industry 4.0. The connections between simulation and Industry 4.0 drawn here will be of interest not only to beginners, but also to practitioners and researchers as a point of departure in the subject, and as a guide for new lines of study.

Outsourcing has evoked innumerable emotions globally, spanning the spectrum of excitement to consternation. From job losses and cheap labor to cost savings and innovation, services globalization seems to have delivered on the promise. Or has it really? Sustained pursuit of collaborative models and global service supply chains seems to have furthered the goal of capitalism, a bandwagon endorsed by corporations and (of late) emerging nation governments as well. The promise of jobs is too alluring to reject; the rhetoric of commoditization too onerous to deny; technological advances too pervasive to dismiss; shifts in economic well-being too potent to ignore. Consequently such pursuits have seemingly put sustainable development on a collision course with economic growth. How has sourcing contributed to this? How could sourcing models enable nations create sustained socio-economic value? Do commercial pursuits have room to co-exist with social well-being? This book is one humble attempt at deciphering this complex maze.

Managing Towards Supply Chain Maturity takes a view of the crucial issues involved in supply chain management, namely risk, information and social capital management. Over the last dozen or so years, the outsourcing and offshoring processes have grown in importance. It is now more and more the case that enterprises concentrate on their key competences while transferring operations or specific tasks to other countries. Modern supply chains are becoming supply networks; hence there is a need for conscious and concerted implementation of methods to manage risk, information and social capital. These issues are very important for the efficiency and competitiveness of supply chains and are discussed in detail. The discussion includes the results of research and introduces the concept of risk, information and social capital management that will ensure supply chain excellence and maturity according to the Poirier's model that has been taken as the point of reference for this study. From a managerial point of view this study can play a significant role in determining the best risk and information management practices in the context of the outsourcing and offshoring of business processes.

The Crisis-Prone Society offers preventative measures that can be taken by business professionals and scholars alike to alleviate the growing potential for crises today. These measures are distilled by close analysis of our recent social history of disasters.

This book guides readers through the broad field of generic and industry-specific management system standards, as well as through the arsenal of tools that are needed to effectively implement them. It covers a wide spectrum, from the classic standard ISO 9001 for quality management to standards for environmental safety, information security, energy efficiency, business continuity, laboratory management, etc. A dedicated chapter addresses international management standards for compliance, anti-bribery and social responsibility management. In turn, a major portion of the book focuses on relevant tools that students and practitioners need to be familiar with: 8D reports, acceptance sampling, failure tree analysis, FMEA, control charts, correlation analysis, designing experiments, estimating parameters and confidence intervals, event tree analysis, HAZOP, Ishikawa diagrams, Monte Carlo simulation, regression analysis, reliability theory, data sampling and surveys, testing hypotheses, and much more. An overview of the necessary mathematical concepts is also provided to help readers understand the technicalities of the tools discussed. A down-to-earth yet thorough approach is employed throughout the book to help practitioners and management students alike easily grasp the various topics.

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."

The volume comprises the proceedings of the third International Conference on Dynamics in Logistics LDIC 2012. The scope of the conference targeted the identification, analysis, and description of the dynamics of logistic processes and networks. The spectrum ranged from the modeling and planning of processes and innovative methods like autonomous control and knowledge management to the new technologies provided by radio frequency identification, mobile communication, and networking. The growing dynamics in the area of logistics poses completely new challenges: Logistic processes and networks must rapidly and flexibly adapt to continuously changing conditions. LDIC 2012 provided a venue for researchers from academia and industry interested in the technical advances in dynamics in logistics. The conference addressed research in logistics from a wide range of fields, e.g. engineering, computer science and operations research. The volume consists of two invited papers and of 49 contributed papers divided into various subjects including transport logistics, routing in dynamic logistic networks, modeling, simulation, optimization and collaboration in logistics, identification technologies, mathematical modeling in transport and production logistics, information, communication, risk and failure in logistic systems, autonomous control in logistic processes, global supply chains and industrial applications, and the Internet of Things in the context of logistics.

This book broadly explains the requirement to focus on core components in a business and provides a case study of open-pit mining operations throughout the book to understand the management perspective of large organizations. With globalized approaches of large businesses and the rising requirement of understanding the needs of modern organizations, it is necessary to focus on key areas of businesses to ensure sustainability of operations. Organizations look into achieving a high return on investments and short-term measures in increasing sales or revenue is considered unsuitable. It is a necessity to look for sustainability and continuous methods of innovation to boost efficiency. This book provides a case study based on large organizations and uses qualitative methodologies where data was collected using in-depth interviews of respondents from various mining companies in the top and middle-level management from different parts of the world, detailing the state of the art of information systems currently used in large scale open-pit miming (LSOPM). This book provides a sound knowledge of cutting-edge factors to the reader for managing the business to attain operational excellence and long-term sustainability, and caters to a broad spectrum of management and technical readers.

Managing and transferring knowledge - at the right time, in the right place and with the right quality for customers - enables companies to survive in times of fierce competition. The focus of this work is therefore on Knowledge Management and Customer Relationship Management. The theoretical part comprises several approaches to knowledge, its transfer and the barriers to be overcome when sharing knowledge. This is followed by a description of CRM and CKM (Customer Knowledge Management), outlining how crucial their successful use is. The practical part explores on the one hand the dependence on knowledge and on the other hand its availability for a good customer relationship. It includes a case study that investigates both the administrative and the operational area of a concrete company. The survey results are then discussed in detail, key success factors identified and mistakes pointed out. After this critical analysis, final recommendations are given that every company can benefit from.

IT Security governance is becoming an increasingly important issue for all levels of a company. IT systems are continuously exposed to a wide range of threats, which can result in huge risks that threaten to compromise the confidentiality, integrity, and availability of information. This book will be of use to those studying information security, as well as those in industry.

This book promotes and describes the application of objective and effective decision making in asset management based on mathematical models and practical techniques that can be easily implemented in organizations. This comprehensive and timely publication will be an essential reference source, building on available literature in the field of asset management while laying the groundwork for further research breakthroughs in this field. The text provides the resources necessary for managers, technology developers, scientists and engineers to adopt and implement better decision making based on models and techniques that contribute to recognizing risks and uncertainties and, in general terms, to the important role of asset management to increase competitiveness in organizations.

Behavioral research is making a significant impact on many academic disciplines. Its status as the source of some of the most profound research in the social sciences is unparalleled. Therefore, it is not surprising that interest in Behavior and Operational Research (OR) is burgeoning, even though understanding the relationship between knowledge, behavior and action has been an academic preoccupation in OR since the beginning of the discipline. This book introduces the idea of Behavioral OR, where the theoretical and empirical developments in the behavioral field are making an impression on OR academics and practitioners alike. The book provides a much needed overview that connects together theory, methodology and practice and offers the "state of the art" on Behavioral Operational Research theory and practice. The book not only includes chapters by leading academics, but also includes rich and insightful real-life case studies by practitioners.

As the business community trends toward placing a greater priority and value conception on organizational knowledge management and memory, organizations worldwide are sharing an increasing urgency in the need for proven technologies and research-based practices to guide their efforts to preserve and realize competitive advantage from their organizational knowledge assets. ""Knowledge Management, Organizational Memory and Transfer Behavior: Global Approaches and Advancements"" is a comprehensive, international collection of first-rate research into the field of knowledge management. This book captures an in-depth knowledge base for academia and industry on the most current and useful concepts, applications, and processes relevant to the successful management of knowledge assets.