This book uses sound theoretical frameworks and econometric techniques to rigorously analyze and explain the conditions of sustainable growth in agriculture. It further investigates how management of natural resources and technological advances can enhance productivity and ensure sustainable growth in agriculture. Optimal control theory, dynamic optimization problems and theory of risk and uncertainty are extensively used to create theoretical models for analyzing agricultural growth. The results demonstrate that crop diversification, rainwater harvesting and the use of organic fertilizers can ensure growth in agriculture from a dynamic perspective. Further, they show how excessive depletion of ground water, intensive farming and overuse of chemicals in connection with the adoption of modern technology in agriculture have placed tremendous strains on natural resources like land and water, and have called into question the sustainability of growth in the farming sector.

Elgar Research Agendas outline the future of research in a given area. Leading scholars are given the space to explore their subject in provocative ways, and map out the potential directions of travel. They are relevant but also visionary. Managing and organizing are now central phenomena in contemporary societies. It is essential they are studied from a variety of perspectives, and with equal attention paid to their past, their present, and their future. This book collects opinions of trailblazing scholars concerning the most important research topics, essential for study in the next 15-20 years. The opinions concern both traditional functions, such as accounting and marketing, personnel management and strategy, technology and communication, but also new challenges, such as diversity, equality, waste and cultural encounters. The collection is intended to be inspiration for young scholars and an invitation to a dialogue with practitioners. The book's contributions are written by well-established scholars. Each is a leader in their field and will remain important figures for the next twenty years and beyond. Each chapter starts with a short summary of the present situation but focuses on the future of the discipline. The contributors cover practically all subfields of what is called business administration, or management and organization studies and include contain topics that are new, such as invisible organizations or encounters between art, popular culture and organizing. Outlining the future and the state of the art, this comprehensive and innovative book is an essential resource for students and academics seeking to be at the forefront of future research in management and organization studies. Contributors include: Y. Benschop, T. Beyes, F. Cochoy, F. Cooren, H. Corvellec, J. Costas, A. Diedrich, M.-L. Djelic, G.S. Drori, C. Grey, M. Kornberger, M. Kostera, W.J. Orlikowski, M. Parker, P. Quattrone, C. Rhodes, S.V. Scott, J. Smolinski, J.-S. Vayre

This collection of high-quality articles in the field of combinatorics, geometry, algebraic topology and theoretical computer science is a tribute to Jiri Matousek, who passed away prematurely in March 2015. It is a collaborative effort by his colleagues and friends, who have paid particular attention to clarity of exposition - something Jirka would have approved of. The original research articles, surveys and expository articles, written by leading experts in their respective fields, map Jiri Matousek's numerous areas of mathematical interest.

This book presents advances and innovations in grouping genetic algorithms, enriched with new and unique heuristic optimization techniques. These algorithms are specially designed for solving industrial grouping problems where system entities are to be partitioned or clustered into efficient groups according to a set of guiding decision criteria. Examples of such problems are: vehicle routing problems, team formation problems, timetabling problems, assembly line balancing, group maintenance planning, modular design, and task assignment. A wide range of industrial grouping problems, drawn from diverse fields such as logistics, supply chain management, project management, manufacturing systems, engineering design and healthcare, are presented. Typical complex industrial grouping problems, with multiple decision criteria and constraints, are clearly described using illustrative diagrams and formulations. The problems are mapped into a common group structure that can conveniently be used as an input scheme to specific variants of grouping genetic algorithms. Unique heuristic grouping techniques are developed to handle grouping problems efficiently and effectively. Illustrative examples and computational results are presented in tables and graphs to demonstrate the efficiency and effectiveness of the algorithms. Researchers, decision analysts, software developers, and graduate students from various disciplines will find this in-depth reader-friendly exposition of advances and applications of grouping genetic algorithms an interesting, informative and valuable resource.

Since nonsmooth optimization problems arise in a diverse range of real-world applications, the potential impact of efficient methods for solving such problems is undeniable. Even solving difficult smooth problems sometimes requires the use of nonsmooth optimization methods, in order to either reduce the problem's scale or simplify its structure. Accordingly, the field of nonsmooth optimization is an important area of mathematical programming that is based on by now classical concepts of variational analysis and generalized derivatives, and has developed a rich and sophisticated set of mathematical tools at the intersection of theory and practice. This volume of ISNM is an outcome of the workshop "Nonsmooth Optimization and its Applications," which was held from May 15 to 19, 2017 at the Hausdorff Center for Mathematics, University of Bonn. The six research articles gathered here focus on recent results that highlight different aspects of nonsmooth and variational analysis, optimization methods, their convergence theory and applications.

This book examines current and emerging challenges in manufacturing related to the ideal of developing production processes with variability and agility on one level of the system, combined with structures ensuring stability and robustness on another level; close to what by other scholars has been discussed in terms of continuous innovation. However, this ideal has proven to be difficult to achieve in practice, and there is a need for enhanced and more sophisticated theoretical models dealing with the complexity surrounding organizational conditions to foster incremental as well as radical change in production systems, and, at the same time to ensure stability over time. As a theoretical frame of reference, a perspective on change where conflicting demands and conflicting activities, e.g., exploration and exploitation, are seen as intertwined and interdependent, is used throughout the book. The ideal from this perspective is to make use of such conflicting forces and to develop the change dynamics by keeping them in the same social system, not to structurally separate them in different departments or different initiatives. The main purpose of the book is to address an increased need for quality improvement through innovation and disruptive change in production. Traditional theories and managerial models of production systems are developed with a focus on stability and improvement. There is a need for enhanced models to reach an ability to develop new future production systems. The goal of the book is to provide nuances and new perspectives giving more realistic models of the production system to be able to increase the change potentiality of the organization and thus the long-term competiveness. Learning and organizational perspectives are in focus as enablers to increase the understanding of a production system as such. Long-term competitiveness through adaptability and the potential for radical improvement is of importance throughout the book. The use of dualities and the concept of ambidextrous organizations as a frame of understanding is the innovative strength for this area.

This book presents recently developed intelligent techniques with applications and theory in the area of quality management. The involved applications of intelligence include techniques such as fuzzy sets, neural networks, genetic algorithms, etc. The book consists of classical quality management topics dealing with intelligent techniques for solving the complex quality management problems. The book will serve as an excellent reference for quality managers, researchers, lecturers and postgraduate students in this area. The authors of the chapters are well-known researchers in the area of quality management.

This book offers a comprehensive overview of quality and quality management. It also explores total quality management, covering its human, technological and analytical imperatives. It also examines quality systems and system standards, highlighting essential features and avoiding a reproduction of the ISO 9000 standard, as well as people-related issues in implementing a quality system. A holistic understanding of quality considerations, which now permeate every aspect of human life, should guide related policies, plans and practices. The book describes the all-pervasive characteristics of quality, putting together diverse definitions of "quality," outlining its different dimensions, and linking it with reliability and innovation. It goes on to assess the quality of measurements in terms of precision, accuracy and uncertainty and discusses managing quality with a focus on business performance. This is followed by a chapter on improving process quality, which is the summum bonum of quality management, and a chapter addressing the crucial problem of measuring customer satisfaction through appropriate models and tools. Further, it covers non-traditional subjects such as quality of life, quality of working life, quality assurance and improvement in education, with special reference to higher education, quality in research and development and characterizes the quality-related policies and practices in Indian industry. The last chapter provides a broad sketch of some recent advances in statistical methods for quality management. Along with the research community, the book's content is also useful for practitioners and industry watchers.

This book addresses the specialized topic of input-output models for sustainable industrial systems. While these models are well-established tools for economic analysis, their underlying mathematical structure is also applicable to the analysis and optimization of a wide range of systems that are characterized by linear interdependencies among their components. This means that input-output models can be used for diverse networks, such as processes within industrial plants, industrial plants in a supply chain, or departmental units within an organization. The models can also be readily extended to interactions between man-made systems and the environment, e.g. flows of natural resources and/or pollutants. Furthermore, model variants with excess degrees of freedom can be formulated to allow optimization and decision-making to be integrated within the framework. This book examines how input-output models can be applied to sustainable industrial systems. Each major variant is discussed separately in a dedicated chapter, and representative case studies and supporting LINGO code are also included.

This volume provides a complete record of presentations made at Industrial Engineering, Management Science and Applications 2015 (ICIMSA 2015), and provides the reader with a snapshot of current knowledge and state-of-the-art results in industrial engineering, management science and applications. The goal of ICIMSA is to provide an excellent international forum for researchers and practitioners from both academia and industry to share cutting-edge developments in the field and to exchange and distribute the latest research and theories from the international community. The conference is held every year, making it an ideal platform for people to share their views and experiences in industrial engineering, management science and applications related fields.

This book highlights what it takes to be successful in identifying and executing environmental responsibility from an operational perspective. It provides cutting-edge research from globally recognized field experts. It is a useful resource for practitioners to explore why and how firms engage in environmentally responsible operations, but also a valuable resource for academics as an introductory reference that provides direct exposure to key environmental operational problems faced by many firms today. This book can also be used as an introductory reading for students with varying educational backgrounds - from business school students interested in environmental issues to environmental scientists interested in obtaining a business perspective - as it provides a broad scope of key issues at the interface of operations management and environmental and social responsibility. Environmentally Responsible Supply Chains is structured in a modular fashion, with each chapter introducing and analyzing a specific timely topic, allowing readers to identify the chapters that relate to their interests. More specifically, the book distinguishes between two key drivers of environmentally responsibility: Profit and Regulatory compliance. The book is divided into five sections. The first three sections of the book explore profit driven environmental responsibility, and provide examples as to where the motives for environmentally responsible business practices come from, where business opportunities are, and what operational perspectives are key to profitability. The last two sections of the book focus on regulation as a driver of environmental responsibility and identify motives, opportunities, or operational perspectives as to effective regulatory compliance. Ultimately the book introduces the reader to the fundamentals of sustainable operations and highlights the latest research on the topic.

The book provides a thorough treatment of set functions, games and capacities as well as integrals with respect to capacities and games, in a mathematical rigorous presentation and in view of application to decision making. After a short chapter introducing some required basic knowledge (linear programming, polyhedra, ordered sets) and notation, the first part of the book consists of three long chapters developing the mathematical aspects. This part is not related to a particular application field and, by its neutral mathematical style, is useful to the widest audience. It gathers many results and notions which are scattered in the literature of various domains (game theory, decision, combinatorial optimization and operations research). The second part consists of three chapters, applying the previous notions in decision making and modelling: decision under uncertainty, decision with multiple criteria, possibility theory and Dempster-Shafer theory.

This book systematically studies the stochastic non-cooperative differential game theory of generalized linear Markov jump systems and its application in the field of finance and insurance. The book is an in-depth research book of the continuous time and discrete time linear quadratic stochastic differential game, in order to establish a relatively complete framework of dynamic non-cooperative differential game theory. It uses the method of dynamic programming principle and Riccati equation, and derives it into all kinds of existence conditions and calculating method of the equilibrium strategies of dynamic non-cooperative differential game. Based on the game theory method, this book studies the corresponding robust control problem, especially the existence condition and design method of the optimal robust control strategy. The book discusses the theoretical results and its applications in the risk control, option pricing, and the optimal investment problem in the field of finance and insurance, enriching the achievements of differential game research. This book can be used as a reference book for non-cooperative differential game study, for graduate students majored in economic management, science and engineering of institutions of higher learning.

This book shows how common operation management methods and algorithms can be extended to deal with vague or imprecise information in decision-making problems. It describes how to combine decision trees, clustering, multi-attribute decision-making algorithms and Monte Carlo Simulation with the mathematical description of imprecise or vague information, and how to visualize such information. Moreover, it discusses a broad spectrum of real-life management problems including forecasting the apparent consumption of steel products, planning and scheduling of production processes, project portfolio selection and economic-risk estimation. It is a concise, yet comprehensive, reference source for researchers in decision-making and decision-makers in business organizations alike.

Decision-making is an important task no matter the industry. Operations research, as a discipline, helps alleviate decision-making problems through the extraction of reliable information related to the task at hand in order to come to a viable solution. Integrating stochastic processes into operations research and management can further aid in the decision-making process for industrial and management problems. Stochastic Processes and Models in Operations Research emphasizes mathematical tools and equations relevant for solving complex problems within business and industrial settings. This research-based publication aims to assist scholars, researchers, operations managers, and graduate-level students by providing comprehensive exposure to the concepts, trends, and technologies relevant to stochastic process modeling to solve operations research problems.

To ensure the security and economy of future power system operation in the context of a high degree of renewable energy penetration, this thesis proposes a new distributed algorithm called generalized master-slave-splitting (G-MSS) theory and a new transmission-distribution coordinated energy management (TDCEM) method that is based on the G-MSS theory. The thesis studies the mathematical properties of the G-MSS theory in detail. Based on the G-MSS theory, a distributed TDCEM method - which involves distributed security analysis, distributed voltage stability analysis, distributed economic dispatch and distributed optimal power flow for an integrated transmission-distribution system - is then developed for the first time. The thesis demonstrates that the proposed TDCEM method significantly contributes to more reliable and optimal operation in power systems. The book will benefit researchers, scientists and engineers in the field of power system operation and optimization.

The book gives a systematic and detailed description of a new integrated product and process development approach for sheet metal manufacturing. Special attention is given to manufacturing that unites multidisciplinary competences of product design, material science, and production engineering, as well as mathematical optimization and computer based information technology. The case study of integral sheet metal structures is used by the authors to introduce the results related to the recent manufacturing technologies of linear flow splitting, bend splitting, and corresponding integrated process chains for sheet metal structures.

This book introduces the reader to the field of multiobjective optimization through problems with simple structures, namely those in which the objective function and constraints are linear. Fundamental notions as well as state-of-the-art advances are presented in a comprehensive way and illustrated with the help of numerous examples. Three of the most popular methods for solving multiobjective linear problems are explained, and exercises are provided at the end of each chapter, helping students to grasp and apply key concepts and methods to more complex problems. The book was motivated by the fact that the majority of the practical problems we encounter in management science, engineering or operations research involve conflicting criteria and therefore it is more convenient to formulate them as multicriteria optimization models, the solution concepts and methods of which cannot be treated using traditional mathematical programming approaches.

This textbook offers a comprehensive analysis of traditional and newly emerging challenges affecting international logistics management from practical, theoretical and policy perspectives. Principles of International Logistics provides an in-depth exploration of the role of intermodal transportation, and the policy-oriented issues of market liberalization, regulatory policies, quality of institutions and supply chain orientation. Key Features: Detailed discussion of the role of the different modes of transport including air, land and maritime transportation Evaluation of international logistics and its economic significance, giving students a strong understanding of the basic principles of logistics Practically-oriented examples and cases drawn from developed and developing countries in Asia, Europe, South America and Africa to allow students to apply their knowledge in practice Coverage of new and emerging international issues such as new technologies and their application to logistics, placing traditional logistics concepts into modern context Principles of International Logistics will be an essential text for undergraduate students of international logistics, logistics management and global supply chains, and an excellent supplementary text for those studying operations and supply chain management more broadly.

This book is the seventh volume in a series entitled "Contemporary Logistics in China," authored by researchers from the Logistics Center at Nankai University. In the spirit of the six preceding annual volumes, this book carries on the ideal of providing a systematic exposition on the logistics development in China for the English-speaking community at large. Specially, this volume captures China's logistics development at a crucial turning point. On the one hand, it reflects the new horizon advocated by the Government's One-Belt-One-Road Initiative global cooperation strategy; on the other, it explores the Internet revolution, which has had major impacts on e-commerce and urban logistics in China. Subjects covered in this volume encompass the macro-factors pertaining to logistics development, region-specific plans, industry-wide transformation, globally-oriented moves, and current hot topics. The expositions on and analyses of these subjects are based on the latest available sources and statistical data. As with the previous volumes, the ultimate aim of this book is to present a timely portrait of the rapid growth of China's logistics market and the status quo of its logistics industry. In so doing, the book offers an in-depth analysis of critical issues involved in the ongoing dynamic and multi-faceted development, and provides a valuable reference resource for interested readers in the academic and professional fields.

This proceedings volume highlights the role and importance of Operational Research (OR) in the digital era and the underlying ICT challenges. The selected papers cover recent advances in all branches of operational research, mathematical modeling and decision making. It covers a wide range of key areas from digital economy, to supply chain management, and also finance. The book adopts an applied perspective that covers the contributions of OR in the broad field of business and economics linked with the discipline of computer science. The chapters are based on papers presented at the 6th International Symposium & 28th National Conference on Operational Research. Although the conference is organized by the Hellenic Operational Research Society (HELORS), the contributions in this book promotes international co-operation among researchers and practitioners working in the field.