Supply Chain Management Under Fuzziness presents recently developed fuzzy models and techniques for supply chain management. These include: fuzzy PROMETHEE, fuzzy AHP, fuzzy ANP, fuzzy VIKOR, fuzzy DEMATEL, fuzzy clustering, fuzzy linear programming, and fuzzy inference systems. The book covers both practical applications and new developments concerning these methods. This book offers an excellent resource for researchers and practitioners in supply chain management and logistics, and will provide them with new suggestions and directions for future research. Moreover, it will support graduate students in their university courses, such as specialized courses on supply chains and logistics, as well as related courses in the fields of industrial engineering, engineering management and business administration.

This book presents strategies and practices to allow everyday companies to cope with the fundamentally changing landscape of business models and to take advantage of the huge business opportunities arising from the advent of big data. It develops several case studies from companies in traditional industries like LEGO, Yamato and Mediq, but also examines small start-ups like Space Tango, which is partnering with major multinationals to develop new business models using big data. The book argues that businesses need to adapt and embark on their big data journey, helps them take the first step, and guides them along their way. It presents successful examples and deducts essential takeaway lessons from them, equipping executives to capitalize on big data and enabling them to make intelligent decisions in the big data transformation, giving their companies an essential competitive edge.

Dynamic Learning Networks: Models and Cases In Action represents an attempt to provide a network perspective of organizational learning to drive dynamic competition through extended firm learning processes. This edited volume contributed by worldwide experts in this field, provide academics and company managers with an extended view of organizational learning networks from real cases and different perspectives.

Dynamic Learning Networks: Models and Cases In Action is based on the workshop, Managing Uncertainty and Competition through Dynamic Learning Networks. It was organized by the E-Business Management Section of Scuola Superiore ISUFI University of Salento (Italy) and held in Ostuni (Italy) 3rd - 5th July 2008.

Dynamic Learning Networks: Models and Cases In Action is designed for a professional audience, composed of researchers and practitioners working in corporate learning. This volume is also suitable for advanced-level students in computer science.

Continuous technological innovation amidst the increasing complexity of organizational structures and operations has created the need to achieve a new level of skillful performance and innovative procedures within the information resources management sector. ""Best Practices and Conceptual Innovations in Information Resources Management: Utilizing Technologies to Enable Global Progressions"" provides authoritative insight into emerging developments in information resources management and how these technologies are shaping the way the world does business, creates policies, and advances organizational practices. With chapters delving into pertinent aspects of such disciplines as knowledge management, open source software, systems engineering, project management, and IT governance, this book offers audiences solutions for improved organizational functioning.

strategy, but we also focus on execution. We talk about organizational design, and also refect on leadership practices. Our assumption is that in a dynamic world, leaders at all levels, have to constantly switch gears, wear different hats, and na- gate at different altitudes. They have to think about the "total" enterprise, not in terms of compartmentalized silos or felds of functional expertise. Much like a g- eral contractor, they have to draw on specialized expertise, as and when needed, yet keep the big picture in mind. Our hope is that our diagnostic tools can help teams develop a shared frame of reference and generate cross-functional dialogue. The third driving force behind this second edition is the gradual convergence between the worlds of entrepreneurial start-ups and challenges facing established corporations. Innovation, agility, and initiative are no longer the exclusive preserve of start-ups. Established companies are looking for ways to re-invent themselves, to innovate, to think creatively, and to make their enterprises more fexible, agile and entrepreneurial. We have had the good fortune to sit at the intersection of these two worlds. We hope our ideas can beneft both groups. We set out to provide a "buffet table," a menu of options that can be helpful for the two ends of the spectrum.

The first volume of this handbook explores different aspects of sustainable luxury textiles and fashion, broadly based on the following topics: Sustainability and business management, Value chain management, Use of materials and Sustainable production processes.

Along with the increasing deregulation of European utility markets the dynamics of and the competitive pressure in the utility industries have steadily increased over the last years. These changes in the regulatory framework towards an integrated market environment have resulted in new challenges for the management of power and gas companies and in a substantial need for strategic reorientation. In the context of these developments the Handbook Utility Management reflects current challenges in the utility industries and provides solutions from a managerial perspective. The inclusion of latest insights from top managers, renowned researchers, professionals in utility-related investment banking and consulting, and professionals in public and supranational organizations on all value chain activities within the industry makes the Handbook an indispensable asset for both professionals and researchers.

Ontologies form an indispensable part of the Semantic Web standard stack. While the Semantic Web is still our vision into the future, ontologies have already found a myriad of applications such as document retrieval, image retrieval, agent interoperability and document annotation. Ontology Learning and Knowledge Discovery Using the Web: Challenges and Recent Advances provides relevant theoretical foundations, and disseminates new research findings and expert views on the remaining challenges in ontology learning. This book is invaluable resource as a library or personal reference for graduate students, researchers, and industrial practitioners. Readers who are in the process of looking for future research directions, and carving out their own niche area will find this book particularly useful due to the detailed scope and wide coverage of the book, which informs any discussion of artificial intelligence, knowledge acquisition, knowledge representation and reasoning, text mining, information extraction, and ontology learning.

The increasing globalization, the battle for talents, and global trends are changing the work patterns in organisations around the globe. Enterprises are working across country and cultural borders alongside complex supply and demand networks. Global incidents such as the financial crisis in 2008 and the recent COVID-19 pandemic have forced global organizations to find innovative ways to continue to connect globally and maintain a competitive advantage. Therefore, innovative enterprises have established global and virtual organisations including members of the value chain on supply and demand side. This book outlines these new work and leadership styles, and agile organisations, which are necessary to work virtually and globally. It provides case studies and experiences from different global organizations in different industries and sectors with a focus on value-adding processes and services.

A decade ago, a writer from Fortune magazine wrote in the preface to Kim Woo Chong's book, Every Street is Paved with Gold, that Kim, the Daewoo empire's founder, "personifies the drive and imagination that makes East Asia a dynamic center of economic growth." Kim fled South Korea in late 1999, shortly after his empire crashed. From his initial exile post in Frankfurt, he submitted his resignation from all the Daewoo group's companies. He has left no clue about his whereabouts since then.Kim Woo Chong's meteoric rise as one of Asia's most powerful tycoons, and his equally spectacular fall, symbolize the Asian miracle and the prolonged crisis that threatended to destroy it in 1997 and that still hangs over the economic landscape. The system's flaws became apparent in mid-1999, when Kim acknowledged that his companies, which had acquired a global reach in a debt-fueled expansion binge, could not pay their creditors. By the time the banks that took over the Daewoo group had calculated $80 billion in liabilities, Kim was changing addresses in Europe. For Asia, lessons from the crisis indicate that traditional methods of operation through debt financing and over-investing will fail. This lesson and others are explored in Asian Post-Crisis Management.

Contributers: Usha C.V. Haley • Masaaki Kotabe & Shruti Gupta • Yasuhiro Arikawa & Hideaki Miyajima • George T. Haley • Brij N. Kumar, Yunshi Mao & Susanne Birgit Ensslinger • Nancy E. Landrum & David M. Boje • Xue Li, John Kidd, & Frank-Jürgen Richter • Malcolm Cooper • Yi Feng & Baizhu Chen • Howard V. Perlmutter • Sek Hong Ng & Malcolm Warner • Thomas Clarke • Keun Lee • Caroline Benton & Yoshiya Teramoto • Fred Robins • Michael A. Santoro & Chang-su Kim • Beverly Kitching • Hock-Beng Cheah & Melanie Cheah

This book gathers extended versions of the best papers presented at the Global Joint Conference on Industrial Engineering and Its Application Areas (GJCIE), held in Vienna on July 20-21, 2017. They offer a snapshot of the current state of the art in three main related fields of research, namely industrial engineering, engineering and technology management, and healthcare systems engineering management. The book is intended to integrate theory and practice and to merge different perspectives, from the academic to the industrial and governmental one.

Hope has always said to Americans tomorrow will be better than today. Always, until now. Because if you are a computer programmer, engineer, accountant, manager or a factory worker, you are filled with fear, instead of hope, for your job may disappear overnight. If you are a small sized entrepreneur, the big company you've serviced from the beginning of your existence may call in the middle of the night to inform you they will no longer buy from you; they are buying from overseas. And these are the stories unfolding in communities across America. Fear, not hope, is stalking many an American.

The information superhighway that was supposed to have been the road to high-paying jobs for Americans has instead turned into one on which offshore outsourcing is killing many jobs. If it is allowed to continue, America's foundation built over many generations will be weakened.

To save existing jobs in America and create new ones, Dr. Abraham Turkson has suggested new ideas to reduce costs to make businesses in America more competitive, provide private healthcare for all Americans, and stop oil imports. And none of the suggestions involves raising taxes. Hope must be reborn across America.

NOTE: This client booklet is to be used in conjunction with the MSCI (Adult) Facilitators Guide and is not useful for any other purpose. Career development in the 21st century presents many challenges and opportunities. Throughout your life you will make countless decisions and experience numerous transitions. Each decision may be subject to a range of influences, for example people we know may give us an opinion, we may be attracted to a particular place or a particular salary, or we may simply want a change. No two people will have the same pattern of influences. The My System of Career Influences MSCI (Adult) is a qualitative career assessment reflection process based on recent developments in theory and practice. It uses a constructivist view and encourages a narrative and story-based approach to your career development. It has been used successfully with employees by career development practitioners working in a range of businesses and organisations from large to small and in one-on-one career counselling sessions as well as in a group setting.

This book deals with complex variants of Travelling Salesman Problem (TSP) and Vehicle Routing Problem (VRP) within the manufacturing and service industries. The objective is to develop heuristics for these supply chain problems in order to offer practical solutions to improve operational efficiency. These heuristics are evaluated using benchmark and derived data-sets. Case studies pertaining to logistics in different industries including textile machinery manufacturing and banking are also included to demonstrate the created heuristics. High competition in today's global market has forced the organizations to invest in and focus on their logistics system. The critical function of logistics is the transportation within and across various supply chain entities. Both supply and distribution procedure require effective transportation management. A small improvement in routing problems can lead to huge logistics savings in absolute terms. This book should appeal to executives, researchers and consultants seeking supply chain management solutions.

This title proposes that video communications tools are a form of infrastructure that enhance the creation of new knowledge which transcends space and time in business activities. It illustrates that the dynamic relationship of four elements of ICT capability promote the formation of business networks and the development of knowledge communities.

This book is a contribution to contemporary debates on social research with a unique focus on the relationship between methods and the crafting of knowledge. Nine experienced researchers from different disciplines have come together to explore what really matters to them in the process of doing qualitative research.

While the public policy community has turned to entrepreneurship to maintain, restore, or generate economic prosperity, the economics profession has been remarkably taciturn in providing guidance for public policy for understanding the links between entrepreneurship and economic growth as well as for framing and weighing policy issues and decisions. The purpose of this volume is to provide a lens through which public policy decisions involving entrepreneurship can be guided and analyzed. In particular, this volume provides insights from leading research concerning the links between entrepreneurship, innovation, and economic growth that shed light on implications for public policy. The book makes clear both how and why small firms and entrepreneurship have emerged as crucial to economic growth, employment, and competitiveness as well as the mandate for public policy in the entrepreneurial society.

The "EffizienzCluster LogistikRuhr" was a winner in the Leading Edge Science Cluster competition run by the German federal Ministry of Education and Research. The mission and aim of the "EffizienzCluster LogistikRuhr" is to facilitate tomorrow's individuality - in the sense of individual goods supply, mobility, and production - using 75 percent of today's resources. Efficiency - both in economical and ecological terms - is enabled by state-of-the-art and innovative logistical solutions including transportation, production and intralogistics. These proceedings "Efficiency and Logistics" give first answers from 27 research projects as an insight into the current state of research of Europe's leading research and development cluster in logistics and as a contribution to the discussion on how logistics as a science can help to cope with foreseeable resource shortage and sustainability as global challenges.

Enterprise Networks and Logistics for Agile Manufacturing presents a focused collection of quality chapters on state-of-the-art research efforts in the areas of enterprise networks and logistics, as well as their practical applications towards agile manufacturing. With the increasing decentralisation of manufacturing systems and outsourcing of processes, more robust and practical approaches and systems are needed to support agile manufacturing operations. Enterprise Networks and Logistics for Agile Manufacturing consists of two major sections: the first presents a broad-based review of the key areas of research in enterprise networks and logistics; the second focuses on an in-depth treatment of a particular methodology or system relevant to the book title. Examples include: * sustainable green supply chain; * value creation and supplier selection; * extended enterprise network management; * reverse logistics; and * innovative supply chain systems. The authors take into account the need to pose intellectual challenges while retaining a balanced approach in terms of scope versus depth and theory versus applications. Enterprise Networks and Logistics for Agile Manufacturing can be beneficial to academic researchers, practicing engineers and managers, and graduate students with an interest in any manufacturing sectors. It can enable them to better understand the present state and future trends of research in this important area, in order to position themselves strategically for future challenges as we enter the era of agile and distributed manufacturing.

This book demonstrates how traditional knowledge can be connected to the modern world. Human knowledge of housing, health and agriculture dates back thousands of years, with old wisdom developing and becoming modern. But in the past few decades, global communities have increasingly become aware that some of this valuable knowledge has fallen by the wayside. This has sparked systematic efforts at the local, national and global levels to connect this neglected knowledge to the modern world. It discusses the origin of the topic, its importance, recent developments in India and abroad, and what is being done and still needs to be done in order to preserve India's traditional knowledge. The discussions address a broad range of fields and organizations: from Basmati rice to Ayurvedic cosmetics; from traditional irrigation and folk music to modern drug discovery and climate change adaptation; and from the Biodiversity Convention to the WHO, WTO and WIPO.

This volume brings together a multidisciplinary group of scholars from diverse fields including computer science, engineering, archival science, law, business, psychology, economics, medicine and more to discuss the trade-offs between different "layers" in designing the use of blockchain/Distributed Ledger Technology (DLT) for social trust, trust in data and records, and trust in systems. Blockchain technology has emerged as a solution to the problem of trust in data and records, as well as trust in social, political and economic institutions, due to its profound potential as a digital trust infrastructure. Blockchain is a DLT in which confirmed and validated sets of transactions are stored in blocks that are chained together to make tampering more difficult and render records immutable. This book is dedicated to exploring and disseminating the latest findings on the relationships between socio-political and economic data, record-keeping, and technical aspects of blockchain.

In many decision problems, e.g. from the area of production and logistics manage ment, the evaluation of alternatives and the determination of an optimal or at least suboptimal solution is an important but dif?cult task. For most such problems no ef?cient algorithm is known and classical approaches of Operations Research like Mixed Integer Linear Programming or Dynamic Pro gramming are often of limited use due to excessive computation time. Therefore, dedicated heuristic solution approaches have been developed which aim at providing good solutions in reasonable time for a given problem. However, such methods have two major drawbacks: First, they are tailored to a speci?c prob lem and their adaption to other problems is dif?cult and in many cases even impos sible. Second, they are typically designed to "build" one single solution in the most effective way, whereas most decision problems have a vast number of feasible solu tions. Hence usually the chances are high that there exist better ones. To overcome these limitations, problem independent search strategies, in particular metaheuris tics, have been proposed. This book provides an elementary step by step introduction to metaheuristics focusing on the search concepts they are based on. The ?rst part demonstrates un derlying concepts of search strategies using a simple example optimization problem.

This book presents new insights and successful solutions to the operational problems of automated container terminals and cargo systems. It comprises reports on the state of the art, applications of quantitative methods, as well as case studies and simulation results. Its contributions are written by leading experts from academia and business and address practitioners and researchers in logistics, transportation, and management.

Environmental issues continue to burden governments and economies throughout the post-communist countries of Central and Eastern Europe and the newly independent states of the former Soviet Union. Severe environmental degradation is endemic to the region, the existing environmental infrastructure is often inadequate, significant new investment is perhaps decades away, and there is little knowledge of advanced techniques for impact assessment, project evaluation, and project financing. The first two papers of Environmental Infrastructure Management survey available cost-effective technology for solid waste treatment and air pollution control, providing guidance for possible incremental additions to existing infrastructure. There is also a discussion of transferable pollution credits as an instrument in regulating air quality. The discussion of economic incentives also embraces user fees and other pollution control instruments. A range of methods is presented for the evaluation and comparison of alternative projects where data are poor or scarce. Canadian experience with specific capital budgeting techniques is given comprehensive attention. Debt financing strategies are addressed in the context of present-day Ukraine. Finally, an outline is given of a general framework for making decisions about environmental projects, including the use of environmental impact assessments.