This book explores methods and techniques to predict and eventually prevent financial distress in corporations. It analyzes the effects of the global financial crisis on Italian manufacturing companies and, more specifically, whether the crisis has increased the number of firms that are likely to fail. In the first chapter, the authors widely discuss the Corporate Financial Distress as well as the process and costs incurred. The second chapter is based on a review of the most used statistical models, splitting them into accounting-based and market-based models. The following chapter is dedicated to the methodology and the empirical analysis on Italian manufacturing companies from different industries. The last chapter presents practical evidence from Italian manufacturing companies during the recent financial crisis.

This edited collection explores the historical dimensions, cultural practices, socio-economic mechanisms and political agendas that shape the notion of a national cuisine inside and outside of Japan. Japanese food is often perceived as pure, natural, healthy and timeless, and these words not only fuel a hype surrounding Japanese food and lifestyle worldwide, but also a domestic retro-movement that finds health and authenticity in 'traditional' ingredients, dishes and foodways. The authors in this volume bring together research from the fields of history, cultural and religious studies, food studies as well as political science and international relations, and aim to shed light on relevant aspects of culinary nationalism in Japan while unearthing the underlying patterns and processes in the construction of food identities.

Providing the bridge between analysis and design functions, this extensively rewritten and updated Third Edition of a time-tested text helps students recognize and approach design problems with the most recent and appropriate theories and techniques-detailing the product and system design process from conceptual, economic, and ethical considerations to modeling, decision making, and testing. Enables the engineering educator to satisfy the requirements of the Accreditation Board for Engineering and Technology (ABET) for the design component of engineering curricula and contains end-of-chapter review exercises, incisive discussions, and helpful practice projects that give students the hands-on design experience essential for product and system innovation Reinforced with practical examples throughout, the Third Edition features expanded coverage of product liability-examining warning labeling, design review and checking, and guidelines for the engineer as expert witness engineering standards-introducing a simple and quick method of locating U.S. and foreign standards patents-describing modern search procedures, changes in patent law, and other forms of intellectual property and their protection system design-exploring nonengineering aspects of system use, such as legal, medical, and sociological implications computer-aided design (CAD)-furnishing a new list of commercially available general purpose programs and an improved review of finite element analysis and expert systems optimum design-presenting novel computer search techniques and elucidating optimization with computer-aided engineering (CAE) systems reliability-highlighting equations for calculating reliability and effects of early and end-of-life failures as well as advantages of Weibull functions and more Enhanced with over 200 tables, drawings, and photographs-numerous new to this edition-Design of Devices and Systems, Third Edition serves as an excellent textb

This volume applies a mix of qualitative and quantitative research and case studies to analyze the role that the craft beverage industry plays within society at large. It targets important themes such as environmental conservation and social responsibility, as well as the psychology of the craft beer drinker and their impact on tourism marketing. This volume advances marketing, hospitality, and leisure studies research for academics, industry experts, and emerging entrepreneurs.

This book provides a critical insight into sustainability and fashion in a retailing and marketing context. Examining a truly global industry, Sustainability in Fashion offers international application with a view to contextualising important developments within the industry. Contributors use their diverse backgrounds and expertise to provide a contemporary approach in examining key theoretical concepts, constructs and developments. Topics include consumer behaviour, communications, circular economy and supply chain management. The individual chapters focus on sustainability and provide a range of fashion sector examples from high street to luxury apparel.

Leverage the flexibility and power of SAP MII to integrate your business operations with your manufacturing processes. You'll explore important new features of the product and see how to apply best practices to connect all the stakeholders in your business. This book starts with an overview of SAP's manufacturing integration and intelligence application and explains why it is so important. You'll then see how it is applied in various manufacturing sectors. The biggest challenge in manufacturing industries is to reduce the manual work and human intervention so that the process becomes automatic. SAP MII explains how to bridge the gap between management and production and bring sound vital information to the shop floor in real time. With this book you'll see how to ensure existing manufacturing and information systems share a common interface for all users in your enterprise. What You'll Learn Understand the functional aspects of SAP MII Implement SAP MII in different Manufacturing sectors Explore new technical features of SAP MII 12.x Integrate scenarios with SAP MII Discover practice guidelines Who This Book is for All levels of SAP manufacturing professionals.

This book examines the decade from 2004 to 2013 during which people in China witnessed both a skyrocketing number of food safety crises, and aggregating regulatory initiatives attempting to control these crises. Multiple cycles of "crisis - regulatory efforts" indicated the systemic failure of this food safety regime. The book explains this failure in the "social foundations" for the regulatory governance of food safety. It locates the proximate causes in the regulatory segmentation, which is supported by the differential impacts of the food regulatory regime on various consumer groups. The approach of regulatory segmentation does not only explain the failure of the food safety regime by digging out its social foundation, but is also crucial to the understanding of the regulatory state in China.

This second volume on detox fashion covers five key aspects relevant to the topic sustainable chemistry and wet processes: Sustainable Chemicals: A Model for Practical Substitution; Sustainable Wet Processing; Coloration and Functional Finishing of Cotton with Plant Extracts; Call for an Environmental Impact Assessment of Bio-based Dyeing-an Overview; and Enzymes: Biocatalysts for Cleaning Up the Textile and Apparel Sector. The book also presents interesting solutions at the level of the supply chain with regard to sustainable chemistry and wet processes.

This third volume on detox fashion highlights sustainable wastewater treatment methods, as well as techniques used by and the adoption of detox strategies by different brands in the textile sector. These aspects are addressed in three central chapters: Sustainable Wastewater Treatment Technologies; Review of the Utilization of Plant-based Natural Coagulants as Alternatives to Textile Wastewater Treatment; and New Waste Management through Collaborative Business Models for Sustainable Innovation.

This comprehensive reference covers the impact of dietary phosphorus in phosphorus physiology, public health and the pathogenesis of disease. Divided into three parts, the first section is an overview of the history of phosphorus and the regulation of phosphorus homeostasis. The second section focuses on specific matters related to phosphorus in the food supply. Clinical applications of the material presented in the preceding sections are pulled together in the third section - including the importance of both phosphorus excess and phosphorus deficiency for the pathogenesis of a wide variety of disease including kidney, cardiovascular, bone and oncologic diseases. Clinical Aspects of Natural and Added Phosphorus in Foods is an indispensable resource for understanding the growing importance of dietary phosphorus content in health and disease, enhancing patient care and moving forward the field of phosphorus science.

Innovation is how businesses stay ahead of the competition and adapt to market conditions that change in unpredictable and uncertain ways. In the first decade of the twenty-first century, high-end cuisine underwent a profound transformation. Once an industry that prioritized consistency and reliability, it turned into one where constant change was a competitive necessity. A top restaurant's reputation and success have become so closely bound up with its ability to innovate that a new organizational form, the culinary research and development team, has emerged. The best of these R&D teams continually expand the frontiers of food-they invent a constant stream of new dishes, new cooking processes and methods, and even new ways of experiencing food. How do they achieve this nonstop novelty? And what can culinary research and development teach us about how organizations innovate? Vaughn Tan opens up the black box of elite culinary R&D to provide essential insights. Drawing on years of unprecedented access to the best and most influential culinary R&D teams in the world, he reveals how they exemplify what he calls the uncertainty mindset. Such a mindset intentionally incorporates uncertainty into organization design rather than simply trying to reduce risk. It changes how organizations hire, set goals, and motivate team members and leads organizations to work in highly unconventional ways. A revelatory look at the R&D kitchen, The Uncertainty Mindset upends conventional wisdom about how to organize for innovation and offers practical insights for businesses trying to become innovative and adaptable.

These conference proceedings provide a comprehensive overview of and in-depth technical information on all possible bioenergy resources (solid, liquid, and gaseous), including cutting-edge themes such as advanced fuels and biogas. The book includes current state-of-the-art topics ranging from feedstocks and cost-effective conversion processes to biofuels economic analysis and environmental policy, and features case studies and quizzes for each section derived from the implementation of actual hands-on biofuel projects to aid learning. It offers readers a starting point on this challenging and exciting path. The central concepts are defined and explained in the context of process applications under various topics. By focussing on the pertinent fundamental principles in the environment and energy sciences and by repeatedly emphasizing the importance of their correlation, it offers a strong foundation for future study and practice. Learning about fundamental properties and mechanisms on an ongoing basis is absolutely essential for long-term professional viability in a technically vibrant area such as nanotechnology. The book has been written for undergraduate and graduate students in chemical, energy and environment engineering. However, selected sections can provide the basis for courses in civil, mechanical or electrical engineering. It includes a self-contained presentation of the key concepts of energy resources, solar thermal and photovoltaic systems, nuclear energy, biomass conversion technology and agricultural-waste processing. Throughout it interweaves descriptive material on sustainable development, clean coal technology, green technology, solid-waste management and lifecycle assessments. It offers an introduction to these topics rather than comprehensive coverage of the themes and their in-depth fundamentals.

This two-volume set examines the strong connection between craft beverages and tourism, presenting cutting-edge research in partnership with breweries, distilleries, and cideries. While wine, food, and culinary tourism have traditionally dominated destination markets, interest in craft beverages has gained momentum across the US and overseas with local markets quickly recognizing the growing craft beverage movement. Through the eyes of tourism scholars, brewers, and travelers, these two volumes explore the landscape of craft beer opportunities in non-traditional settings, and recognize the potential for future economic, socio-cultural, and environmental sustainability. Craft Beverages and Tourism, Volume 1: The Rise of Breweries and Distilleries in the United States is an inclusive and overarching examination of the US craft beverage phenomenon within a larger context of international beverage tourism. It outlines the current practice and research scope of craft beer, cider, and spirits as well as the sustainable development of destinations revolving around craft beverage. Through literature reviews, case studies, and general exploration, this volume advances marketing, hospitality, and leisure studies research for academics, industry experts, and emerging entrepreneurs.

This book offers a critical analysis of recent developments in the automotive industry of East-Central Europe (ECE). Economists, industry specialists and national governments have considered the rapid development of the automotive industry in ECE in the past twenty years an unqualified success. This rapid growth has been based on large inflows of foreign direct investment (FDI) from Western Europe, North America, Japan and South Korea, and it significantly contributed to GDP growth, created thousands of new jobs, and completely transformed the previously existing automotive industry in the region. This volume offers an analysis that goes beyond uncritical celebratory accounts of this rapid growth. It is based on original, detailed firm-level research conducted by the author in Czechia and Slovakia between 2009 and 2015 that covered assembly firms and the networks of component suppliers. Theoretically and conceptually, the analysis will draw on the global production networks and global value chains perspectives. Drawing on the original empirical data and on additional available information, this volume concentrates on several important questions related to the development of the automotive industry in ECE in the 2000s:* The role of FDI in the rapid development of the automotive industry after 1990 and particularly in the 2000s.* The upgrading of the automotive industry in East-Central Europe through FDI* The position of ECE in the automotive industry research and development (R&D)* The effects of the 2008-2009 economic crisis in the automotive industry of ECE.* The role of state in the rapid development of the automotive industry in ECE in the 1990s and 2000s.* The effects of FDI on domestic firms in the form of linkages between foreign-owned and domestic firms and spillovers from foreign-owned to domestic firms.

This publication examines the legal aspects of the spare parts market from an IP perspective: specifically whether design protection for spare parts of a complex product extends to the spare part aftermarket, or whether that market should remain open to competition. The stakeholders' equally weighty arguments that must be balanced against are, on the one hand, the property interest in an earned IP right in the design of the part; and on the other, enhanced competition, likely reflected in lower prices. The mounting tension between these two positions is manifest an increased number of lawsuits in both the US and the EU. This book provides a discussion of the legal issues involved in this debate from a global perspective, with special focus on the EU and the US. Part I contextualizes the legal debate by discussing the historical background, the competitive situation and the respective stakeholder positions. Part II examines the relevant legal questions on a comparative basis, evaluating the likelihood of its adoption in the jurisdictions examined. Concluding that adoption is unlikely, Part III proposes a number of possible considerations meant to further compromise. Part IV concludes with a future outlook, specifically in light of the impact of technological development on this market.

This authored monograph provides in-depth analysis and methods for aligning electricity demand of manufacturing systems to VRE supply. The book broaches both long-term system changes and real-time manufacturing execution and control, and the author presents a concept with different options for improved energy flexibility including battery, compressed air and embodied energy storage. The reader will also find a detailed application procedure as well as an implementation into a simulation prototype software. The book concludes with two case studies. The target audience primarily comprises research experts in the field of green manufacturing systems.

This book helps readers understand the concepts of marketed and marketable surplus, as well as the role of the government and marketing agencies, including those in the private sector, in improving market efficiency. It also examines the impact of various socioeconomic, technological, institutional, infrastructure, and price factors on the marketed surplus of major crops. While Indian agriculture has become increasingly market-oriented and monetized, the importance of market orientation of agriculture is also being recognized at the international level. The proportion of agricultural production that is marketed by farmers has increased significantly over the last few decades in India: in the early 1950s, about 30-35 per cent of food grains output was marketed, which has now increased to more than 70 per cent. In this context, the marketed surplus is proportionately higher in the case of commercial crops than subsistence crops. Recognizing its importance, the Government of India initiated a nation-wide survey to estimate marketable surplus and post-harvest losses in the early 1970s, which continued up to the late 1990s. As Indian agriculture, has undergone significant transformation, and no reliable estimates of marketed and marketable surplus are available, the study was conducted to estimate the marketed and marketable surplus of major food crops in leading producing states, and to examine important factors which determine the level of marketed surplus for various categories of farms. The results of this study offer a valuable resource for designing effective food procurement, distribution and price policies. Further, they provide reliable estimates of household farm retention pattern for self-consumption, seed, feed, wages and other payments in kind, which can be used as the basis for planning infrastructure development of storage and distribution. This essential information can help policy-makers determine how much marketed surplus is generated by the different categories of farmers and how marketable surplus would respond to changes in diverse economic and non-economic variables, allowing them to design policies accordingly.

This book provides an in-depth study of controlled languages used in technical documents from both a theoretical and practical perspective. It first explores the history of controlled languages employed by the manufacturing industry to shape and constrain the information in technical documents. The author then offers a comparative analysis of existing controlled languages and distills the best-practice features of those language systems. He concludes by offering innovative models that can be used to develop and trial a new controlled language. This book will be of interest to linguists working in technical and professional communication, as well as writers and practitioners involved in the production of technical documents for companies in multiple industries and geographical locations.

This book proposes measures to promote regional industrial development in East Asia from the perspective of three industries: agriculture, food, and tourism. The authors argue that for regional agriculture to develop, collaboration with the food industry is essential. Further, by linking tourism, economic collaboration between the three industries is strengthened. The first part of the book introduces a basic model for the formation of the agriculture, food, and tourism industry cluster. Contributions from leading academics in agricultural economics then go on to discuss the relevance of this multi-industry cluster in countries such as Japan, the Republic of Korea, and Cambodia, amongst others. The final part sets out new approaches for further development in the cluster through quantitative analyses of the 'economies of sequence' concept. Readers will discover that from establishing linkages between different industries and other economic sectors, important positive externalities can be generated and these processes can be triggered on the local or cluster level.

Since the Industrial Revolution, cities and industry have grown together; towns and metropolitan regions have evolved around factories and expanding industries. New Industrial Urbanism explores the evolving and future relationships between cities and places of production, focusing on the spatial implications and physical design of integrating contemporary manufacturing into the city. The book examines recent developments that have led to dramatic shifts in the manufacturing sector - from large-scale mass production methods to small-scale distributed systems; from polluting and consumptive production methods to a cleaner and more sustainable process; from broad demand for unskilled labor to a growing need for a more educated and specialized workforce - to show how cities see new investment and increased employment opportunities. Looking ahead to the quest to make cities more competitive and resilient, New Industrial Urbanism provides lessons from cases around the world and suggests adopting New Industrial Urbanism as an action framework that reconnects what has been separated: people, places, and production. Moving the conversation beyond the reflexively-negative characterizations of industry, more than two centuries after the start of the Industrial Revolution, this book calls to re-consider the ways in which industry creates places, sustains jobs, and supports environmental sustainability in our cities. This book is available as Open Acess through https://www.taylorfrancis.com/.

This publication addresses the global challenges of food and water security in a rapidly changing and complex world. The essays highlight the links between bio-physical and socio-cultural processes, making connections between local and global scales, and focusing on the everyday practices of eating and drinking, essential for human survival. Written by international experts, each contribution is research-based but accessible to the general public.

The world needs nutrition-driven agriculture that operates within planetary boundaries. But a recent OECD report on New Zealands environmental performance shows how our agricultural sectors continual push at those boundaries poses grave risks. Meantime, a range of health indices show that how and what we eat makes many of us ill. Plus, valuable revenue and jobs are lost because we dont champion the great food we do produce. Robust policies, new solutions and best practice for sustainable food production and consumption are needed. Thirty-one experts give their views on how New Zealand can lead the way.

While systems biology and pharmacodynamics have evolved in parallel, there are significant interrelationships that can enhance drug discovery and enable optimized therapy for each patient. Systems pharmacology is the relatively new discipline that is the interface between these two methods. This book is the first to cover the expertise from systems biology and pharmacodynamics researchers, describing how systems pharmacology may be developed and refined further to show practical applications in drug development. There is a growing awareness that pharmaceutical companies should reduce the high attrition in the pipeline due to insufficient efficacy or toxicity found in proof-of-concept and/or Phase II studies. Systems Pharmacology and Pharmacodynamics discusses the framework for integrating information obtained from understanding physiological/pathological pathways (normal body function system vs. perturbed system due to disease) and pharmacological targets in order to predict clinical efficacy and adverse events through iterations between mathematical modeling and experimentation.