Globalization has created an increase in the number of business opportunities presented to enterprises. A competitive market places demands on businesses to think differently and follow new approaches to managing their business goals and remaining acceptable to suppliers and service providers. Effective Open Innovation Strategies in Modern Business: Emerging Research and Opportunities is a comprehensive resource that focuses on the importance of interdisciplinary concepts in open innovation projects. Using case illustrations, the book examines concepts such as virtual reality, knowledge harvesting, and business process reengineering in relation to open innovation initiatives. As a publication exploring the areas of management and information technology disciplines, this resource is useful for corporate executives, business managers, entrepreneurs, business professionals, and graduate-level students seeking current research on business innovation techniques and approaches.

This book gathers selected contributions by top Portuguese and international researchers in the field of Operations Research, presented at the 19th Congress of APDIO (Portuguese Association of Operational Research). The papers address a broad range of complex real-world problems, which are approached using recent theoretical techniques. Of particular interest are the applications of e.g. linear, nonlinear and mixed-integer programming, multiobjective optimization, metaheuristics and hybrid heuristics, multicriteria decision analysis, data envelopment analysis, clustering techniques and decision support systems, in such varied contexts as: supply chain management, scheduling problems, production management, logistics, energy, finance and healthcare. This conference, organized by APDIO and held in Aveiro, Portugal in September 2018, offered an ideal opportunity to discuss the latest developments in this field and to build new bridges between academic researchers and practitioners. Summarizing the outcomes, this book offers a valuable tool for all researchers, students and practitioners who wish to learn about the latest trends in this field.

The Second Edition of this book presents the state of the art in this important field. Marketing decision models constitute a core component of the marketing discipline and the area is changing rapidly, not only due to fundamental advances in methodology and model building, but also because of the recent developments in information technology, the Internet and social media. This Handbook contains eighteen chapters that cover the most recent developments of marketing decision models in different domains of marketing. Compared to the previous edition, thirteen chapters are entirely new, while the remaining chapters represent complete updates and extensions of the previous edition. This new edition of the Handbook has chapters on models for substantive marketing problems, such as customer relationship management, customer loyalty management, website design, Internet advertising, social media, and social networks. In addition, it contains chapters on recent methodological developments that are gaining popularity in the area of marketing decision models, such as structural modeling, learning dynamics, choice modeling, eye-tracking and measurement. The introductory chapter discusses the main developments of the last decade and discusses perspectives for future developments.

This book explores the challenges that confront leaders in government and industry when making decisions in the areas of environmental health and safety. Today, decision making demands transparency, robustness, and resiliency. However thoughtfully they are devised, decisions made by governments and enterprises can often trigger immediate, passionate public response. Expertise Under Scrutiny shows how leaders can establish organizational decision making processes that yield valid, workable choices even in fast-changing and uncertain conditions. The first part of the book examines the organizational decision making process, describing the often-contentious environment in which important environmental health and safety decisions are made, and received. The authors review the roles of actors and experts in the decision making process. The book goes on to address such topics as: * The roles of actors and experts in the decision making process * Ethics and analytics as drivers of good decisions * Why managing problems in safety, security, environment, and health Part II offers an outline for adopting a formal decision support structure, including the use of decision support tools. It includes a chapter devoted to ELECTRE (ELimination and Choice Expressing Reality), a multi-criteria decision analysis system. The book concludes with an insightful appraisal and analysis of the expertise, structure and resources needed for navigating well-supported, risk-informed decisions in our 21st Century world. Expertise Under Scrutiny benefits a broad audience of students, academics, researchers, and working professionals in management and related disciplines, especially in the field of environmental health and safety.

Supply Chain Optimization captures the latest results in a segment of current research activity in supply chain management. This research area focuses on applying optimization techniques to supply chain management problems. The research papers that make up the volume provide a snapshot of state-of-the-art optimization methods within the field. This book presents rigorous modelling approaches for supply chain operations problems with a goal of improving supply chain performance (or the performance of some segment thereof). It contains high-quality works from leading researchers in the field whose expertise fits within this scope. The book provides a diverse blend of research topics and novel modelling and solution approaches for difficult classes of supply chain operations, planning, and design problems.

MICHEL GENDREAU AND PATRICE MARCOTTE As an academic, Michael Florian has always stood at the forefront of transportation research. This is reflected in the miscellaneous contributions that make the chapters of this book, which are related in some way or another to Michael's interests in both the theoretical and practical aspects of his field. These interests span the areas of Traffic Assignment, Network Equilibrium, Shortest Paths, Railroad problems, De mand models, Variational Inequalities, Intelligent Transportation Systems, etc. The contributions are briefly outlined below. BASSANINI, LA BELLA AND NASTASI determine a track pricing policy for railroad companies through the solution of a generalized Nash game. BEN-AKIVA, BIER LAIRE, KOUTSOPOULOS AND MISHALANI discuss simulation-based estimators of the interactions between supply and demand within a real-time transportation system. BOYCE, BALASUBRAMANIAM AND TIAN analyze the impact of marginal cost pricing on urban traffic in the Chicago region. BROTCORNE, DE WOLF, GENDREAU AND LABBE present a discrete model of dynamic traffic assignment where flow departure is endogenous and the First-In-First-Out condition is strictly enforced. CASCETTA AND IMP ROTA give a rigorous treatment of the problem of estimating travel demand from observed data, both in the static and dynamic cases. CRAINIC, DUFOUR, FLo RIAN AND LARIN show how to obtain path information that is consistent with the link information provided by a nonlinear multimodal model. ERLANDER derives the logit model from an efficiency principle rather than from the classical random utility approach."

There is synergy between the diverse methodologies of Operations Research and Management Science, and the many problems it seeks to solve. Operation Research/Management Science at Work is an example of that synergy. The principal aim of this book is to examine selected recent research in and applications of Operational Research/Management Science. The focus is on research that is of industry interest and covers a wide range of topics from major fields of OR/MS in a systematic and coherent fashion. Each application is chosen to demonstrate the elegance of their implementations. The book meets the needs of applied researchers who are interested in applications of OR/MS algorithms. Moreover, real world problems together with their solutions and implementations are the applications that have been selected for the volume. The Asia Pacific region has embraced business applications of decision support systems in recent years. Many of these applications have the state of the art OR/MS techniques in this region embedded in them. Hence, the increased use of OR/MS techniques in this region provides opportunities for identifying methodological advances that are taking place as a result of the unique nature of the applications. These also provide opportunities for exploring synergies and interfaces that exist between OR/MS, both in terms of applications and theoretical advances.

This work brings together some of the most up to date research in the application of operations research and mathematical modeling te- niques to problems arising in supply chain management and e-Commerce. While research in the broad area of supply chain management enc- passes a wide range of topics and methodologies, we believe this book provides a good snapshot of current quantitative modeling approaches, issues, and trends within the field. Each chapter is a self-contained study of a timely and relevant research problem in supply chain mana- ment. The individual works place a heavy emphasis on the application of modeling techniques to real world management problems. In many instances, the actual results from applying these techniques in practice are highlighted. In addition, each chapter provides important mana- rial insights that apply to general supply chain management practice. The book is divided into three parts. The first part contains ch- ters that address the new and rapidly growing role of the internet and e-Commerce in supply chain management. Topics include e-Business applications and potentials; customer service issues in the presence of multiple sales channels, varying from purely Internet-based to traditional physical outlets; and risk management issues in e-Business in B2B m- kets.

This book inclusively and systematically presents the fundamental methods, models and techniques of practical application of grey data analysis, bringing together the authors' many years of theoretical exploration, real-life application, and teaching. It also reflects the majority of recent theoretical and applied advances in the theory achieved by scholars from across the world, providing readers a vivid overall picture of this new theory and its pioneering research activities. The book includes 12 chapters, covering the introduction to grey systems, a novel framework of grey system theory, grey numbers and their operations, sequence operators and grey data mining, grey incidence analysis models, grey clustering evaluation models, series of GM models, combined grey models, techniques for grey systems forecasting, grey models for decision-making, techniques for grey control, etc. It also includes a software package that allows practitioners to conveniently and practically employ the theory and methods presented in this book. All methods and models presented here were chosen for their practical applicability and have been widely employed in various research works. I still remember 1983, when I first participated in a course on Grey System Theory. The mimeographed teaching materials had a blue cover and were presented as a book. It was like finding a treasure: This fascinating book really inspired me as a young intellectual going through a period of confusion and lack of academic direction. It shone with pearls of wisdom and offered a beacon in the mist for a man trying to find his way in academic research. This book became the guiding light in my life journey, inspiring me to forge an indissoluble bond with Grey System Theory. --Sifeng Liu

The contributions of this volume stem from the "Fifth International Conference on the Dynamics of Information Systems" held in Gainesville, FL in February 2013, and discuss state-of the-art techniques in handling problems and solutions in the broad field of information systems. Dynamics of Information Systems: Computational and Mathematical Challenges presents diverse aspects of modern information systems with an emphasis on interconnected network systems and related topics, such as signal and message reconstruction, network connectivity, stochastic network analysis, cyber and computer security, community and cohesive structures in complex networks. Information systems are a vital part of modern societies. They are essential to our daily actions, including social networking, business and bank transactions, as well as sensor communications. The rapid increase in these capabilities has enabled us with more powerful systems, readily available to sense, control, disperse, and analyze information.

This book is devoted to a novel approach for dimensionality reduction based on the famous nearest neighbor method that is a powerful classification and regression approach. It starts with an introduction to machine learning concepts and a real-world application from the energy domain. Then, unsupervised nearest neighbors (UNN) is introduced as efficient iterative method for dimensionality reduction. Various UNN models are developed step by step, reaching from a simple iterative strategy for discrete latent spaces to a stochastic kernel-based algorithm for learning submanifolds with independent parameterizations. Extensions that allow the embedding of incomplete and noisy patterns are introduced. Various optimization approaches are compared, from evolutionary to swarm-based heuristics. Experimental comparisons to related methodologies taking into account artificial test data sets and also real-world data demonstrate the behavior of UNN in practical scenarios. The book contains numerous color figures to illustrate the introduced concepts and to highlight the experimental results.

This book describes a wide range real-case applications of Multi-Criteria Decision Making (MCDM) in maritime related subjects including shipping, port, maritime logistics, cruise ports, waterfront developments, and shipping finance, etc. In such areas, researchers, students and industrialists, in general, felt struggling to find a step-by-step guide on how to apply MCDM to formulate effective solutions to solving real problems in practice. This book focuses on the in-depth analysis and applications of the most well-known MDCM methodologies in the aforementioned areas. It brings together an eclectic collection of twelve chapters which seek to respond to these challenges. The book begins with an introduction and is followed by an overview of major MCDM techniques. The next chapter examines the theory of analytic hierarchy process (AHP) in detail and investigates a fuzzy AHP (FAHP) approach and its capability and rationale in dealing with decision problems of ambiguous information. Chapter 4 proposes a generic methodology to identify the key factors influencing green shipping and to establish an evaluation system for the assessment of shipping greenness. In Chapter 5, the authors describe a new function of fuzzy Evidential Reasoning (ER) to improve the vessel selection process in which multiple criteria with insufficient and ambiguous information are evaluated and synthesized. Chapter 6 presents a novel methodology by using an Artificial Potential Field (APF) model and the ER approach to estimate the collision probabilities of monitoring targets for coastal radar surveillance. Chapter 7 develops the inland port performance assessment model (IPPAM) using a hybrid of AHP, ER and a utility function. The next chapter showcases a challenging approach to address the risk and uncertainty in LNG transfer operations, by utilizing a Stochastic Utility Additives (UTA) method with the help of the philosophy of aggregation-disaggregation coupled with a robustness control procedure. Chapter 9 uses Entropy and Grey Relation Analysis (GRA) to analyze the relative weights of financial ratios through the case studies of the four major shipping companies in Korea and Taiwan: Evergreen, Yang Ming, Hanjin and Hyundai Merchant Marine. Chapter 10 systemically applies modern heuristics to solving MCDM problems in the fields of operation optimisation in container terminals. Arguing that bunkering port selection is typically a multi-criteria group decision problem, and in many practical situations, decision makers cannot form proper judgments using incomplete and uncertain information in an environment with exact and crisp values, in Chapter 11, the authors propose a hybrid Fuzzy-Delphi-TOPSIS based methodology with a sensitivity analysis. Finally, Chapter 12deals with a new conceptual port performance indicators (PPIs) interdependency model using a hybrid approach of a fuzzy logic based evidential reasoning (FER) and a decision making trial and evaluation laboratory (DEMATEL).

The author is one of the prominent researchers in the field of Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA), a powerful data analysis tool that can be used in performance evaluation and benchmarking. This book is based upon the author's years of research and teaching experiences. It is difficult to evaluate an organization's performance when multiple performance metrics are present. The difficulties are further enhanced when the relationships among the performance metrics are complex and involve unknown tradeoffs. This book introduces Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) as a multiple-measure performance evaluation and benchmarking tool. The focus of performance evaluation and benchmarking is shifted from characterizing performance in terms of single measures to evaluating performance as a multidimensional systems perspective. Conventional and new DEA approaches are presented and discussed using Excel spreadsheets - one of the most effective ways to analyze and evaluate decision alternatives. The user can easily develop and customize new DEA models based upon these spreadsheets. DEA models and approaches are presented to deal with performance evaluation problems in a variety of contexts. For example, a context-dependent DEA measures the relative attractiveness of similar operations/processes/products. Sensitivity analysis techniques can be easily applied, and used to identify critical performance measures. Two-stage network efficiency models can be utilized to study performance of supply chain. DEA benchmarking models extend DEA's ability in performance evaluation. Various cross efficiency approaches are presented to provide peer evaluation scores. This book also provides an easy-to-use DEA software - DEAFrontier. This DEAFrontier is an Add-In for Microsoft (R) Excel and provides a custom menu of DEA approaches. This version of DEAFrontier is for use with Excel 97-2013 under Windows and can solve up to 50 DMUs, subject to the capacity of Excel Solver. It is an extremely powerful tool that can assist decision-makers in benchmarking and analyzing complex operational performance issues in manufacturing organizations as well as evaluating processes in banking, retail, franchising, health care, public services and many other industries.

FIRST PART Preparation of the Investment 1. Investments in the Company 19 The decline of stability . . 19 The change in direction of studies on the investment process. 25 Basic elements for arithmetical study of selection 29 Thc study of selection from non-numerical elements. 37 2. Programming Investment Activity 49 Classical programming techniques. 49 Handling of an investment programme. 56 Incorporation of costs into investment projects . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 66 Estimating financial needs throughout the process. 72 3. Financial Risk of Investment 85 Financial aspects of the investment process. 85 Determination of the financial capacity of the investment . . 89 From pre-diagnosis to diagnosis. 102 Numerical determination of the financial risk of an investment. 106 4. Analysis of financial products for the investment 113 Aspects prior to product analysis. 113 Analysis by means of the clan concept . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 117 Obtaining affinities and thc use of codes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 123 Grouping the characteristics of the products by means of the Moore closing. 126 From product grouping to affinities . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 134 10 / Index SECOND PART Selection 5. A first approximation to selection models 145 Updating of monetary currents 145 Incorporation of the lack of precision of interests rates . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 153 The hypothesis of known net values and fuzzy rate of interest . . . . . . 157 6. Selection of investments in an economy with inflation 165 Estimate of monetary currents at constant prices . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 165 Estimate of monetary currents at prices for each period . . . . . . . 172 The hypothesis of different rates of inflation . . . . 180 7.

This book represents a continuation of an uninterrupted record of international research pertaining to high technology small firms (HTSFs) over a period that has witnessed a rebirth of interest in the growth problems of the small firm, and is a further addition to a portfolio of specialist work by academics and practitioners on the issues facing new technology-based firms (NTBFs).
The book begins with a conceptual overview on the broad theme of innovation in NTBFs, providing a theoretical perspective on the problems of innovation at the end of the twentieth century and setting in context the more specific contributions to follow. A continuing theme of HTSF research is innovation management, and seven chapters are included under this heading focusing on topics such as university spin-out companies and the role of non-executive directors. The successful management of innovation in NTBFs is clearly critical to their survival and growth. Another key and recurrent area of interest to researchers concerned with the problems of NTBFs is finance, with three chapters here addressing the funding problems faced by NTBFs during often lengthy periods of product development. The book concludes with a set of contributions which deal with the increasingly important issues of clustering and location as they affect NTBFs.
The chapters included in this book represent a strong set of themes indicative of what key workers in the area of NTBF development are thinking at the turn of the millennium. These issues of effective management, funding and networking are key themes that will continue in the new millennium.

For both public and private managers, the book Optimization Methods for a Stakeholder Society is today's key to answer the problem of a sustainable development world. This world has to take into account the meaning of all stakeholders involved and has to reconcile a number of objectives, such as economic growth, employment and preservation of the ecosystem. Traditional methods, such as cost-benefit, are outmoded as they translate all these objectives into monetary costs, a materialistic approach. On the contrary, objectives have rather to stick to their own units, eventually indicators.
The author is in favor of the use of nonlinear methods in multi-objective optimization. Therefore, several nonlinear approaches are proposed, illustrated with many applications from different fields such as: privatization in the public sector, regional versus national economic policy in a country, location of a seaport, arms procurement, industrialization of a developing country, updating or replacement of old industry, pre- and post-evaluation of projects, performance management, marketing and distribution.

Analysis, Control and Optimization of Complex Dynamic Systems gathers in a single volume a spectrum of complex dynamic systems related papers written by experts in their fields, and strongly representative of current research trends. Complex systems present important challenges, in great part due to their sheer size which makes it difficult to grasp their dynamic behavior, optimize their operations, or study their reliability. Yet, we live in a world where, due to increasing inter-dependencies and networking of systems, complexity has become the norm. With this in mind, the volume comprises two parts. The first part is dedicated to a spectrum of complex problems of decision and control encountered in the area of production and inventory systems. The second part is dedicated to large scale or multi-agent system problems occurring in other areas of engineering such as telecommunication and electric power networks, as well as more generic context.

The International Conference on Health Care Systems Engineering (HCSE) provided a timely opportunity to discuss statistical analysis and operations management issues in health care delivery systems. The conference took place in Milan between May 22nd and 24th, 2013. Scientists and practitioners discussed new ideas, methods and technologies for improving the operation of health care organizations. The event and this resulting volume emphasize research in the field of health care systems engineering developed in close collaboration with clinicians. Topics applicable to researchers and practitioners include: hospital drug logistics, operating theatres, modelling and simulation in patient care and healthcare organizations, home care services.

This book covers the broad range of research in stochastic models and optimization. Applications covered include networks, financial engineering, production planning and supply chain management. Each contribution is aimed at graduate students working in operations research, probability, and statistics.

Although several monographs and edited volumes have discussed scheduling in general, most of these works survey the field by contributing a single chapter to production systems like flow shops. "Flow Shop Scheduling: Theoretical Results, Algorithms, and Applications" is solely dedicated to bringing together a huge body of knowledge on the subject, along distinct design features, in order to help scholars and practitioners easily identify problems of interest. This monograph has been organized into ten distinct flow shop systems and explores their connections. The chapters cover flow shop systems including two-machine, flexible, stochastic, and more. Outside of the traditional flow shops that require a job never revisits any stage, this book also examines the reentrant flow shop, in which a job may cycle back and be reprocessed at the same station or sequence of stations, multiple times.
The authors have made the material accessible to a broad readership, using simplified notation and revealing unifying concepts. The results unique to flow shop research should provide the seed for research in other areas of scheduling and in optimization in general.

This book presents innovative theories, methodologies, and techniques in the field of risk management and decision making. It introduces new research developments and provides a comprehensive image of their potential applications to readers interested in the area. The collection includes: computational intelligence applications in decision making, multi-criteria decision making under risk, risk modelling,forecasting and evaluation, public security and community safety, risk management in supply chain and other business decision making, political risk management and disaster response systems. The book is directed to academic and applied researchers working on risk management, decision making, and management information systems.

Promptly growing demand for telecommunication services and information interchange has led to the fact that communication became one of the most dynamical branches of an infrastructure of a modern society. The book introduces to the bases of classical MDP theory; problems of a finding optimal CAC in models are investigated and various problems of improvement of characteristics of traditional and multimedia wireless communication networks are considered together with both classical and new methods of theory MDP which allow defining optimal strategy of access in teletraffic systems. The book will be useful to specialists in the field of telecommunication systems and also to students and post-graduate students of corresponding specialties.

This book reports on the development and validation of a generic defeasible logic programming framework for carrying out argumentative reasoning in Semantic Web applications (GF@SWA). The proposed methodology is unique in providing a solution for representing incomplete and/or contradictory information coming from different sources, and reasoning with it. GF@SWA is able to represent this type of information, perform argumentation-driven hybrid reasoning to resolve conflicts, and generate graphical representations of the integrated information, thus assisting decision makers in decision making processes. GF@SWA represents the first argumentative reasoning engine for carrying out automated reasoning in the Semantic Web context and is expected to have a significant impact on future business applications. The book provides the readers with a detailed and clear exposition of different argumentation-based reasoning techniques, and of their importance and use in Semantic Web applications. It addresses both academics and professionals, and will be of primary interest to researchers, students and practitioners in the area of Web-based intelligent decision support systems and their application in various domains.

Models & Methods for Project Selection systematically examines in this book treatment the latest work in the field of project selection modeling. The models presented are drawn from mathematical programming, decision theory, and finance. These models are examined in two categorical streams: the management science stream and the financial model stream. The book describes the assumptions and limitations of each model and provides appropriate solution methodologies. Its organization follows three main themes:
*Criteria for Choice: Chapters 1-3 investigate the effect of the choice of optimization criteria on the results of the portfolio optimization problem.
*Risk and Uncertainty: Chapters 4-7 deal with uncertainty in the project selection problem.
*Non-Linearity and Interdependence: These chapters deal with problems of non-linearity and interdependence as they arise in the project selection problem. Chapters 8, 9 and 10 present solution methodologies, which can be used to solve these most general project selection models.