Lean is a type of organizational change brought about through improvement methods based on cost reduction mechanism. The assumption is that by reducing costs, the organizations can work better and more efficiently. All changes in lean-based organizations are directed at reducing these costs by identifying and eliminating waste. The thinking is that cost reduction will increase efficiency since, basically, it removes process inefficiencies and decreases cycle time. Why are targets directed at cost reduction? Because costs are a crucial factor for sustainable business organization. Lean thinking cuts the value of scale production by looking at the existing waste in a process. Production remains the same, but the costs of goods production are reduced due to the elimination of waste in the process. As a result, companies do not have to increase their production if it is not required, giving companies an increase in average profits due to lean and the elimination of identified waste. The focus on cost reduction can be included in the overall lean concept since cost wasting is only a part of the existing waste. In other words, other waste can be converted into costs or perceived as a value. This book starts the mental process of organization change through lean thinking. It provides the background and history of lean, and then gets into how the lean process works. The author also discusses why an organization should implement lean as a method to increase quality and engage workers in the process, thereby increasing efficiency and, ultimately, profitability. Through case studies and examples from Indonesia, the author describes how to create a value stream to identify waste and discusses the concept of a pull system and its impact on the process.

Knowledge management is far-reaching. It can dramatically reduce costs such as costs of office work repetition, human resource retirement, information reuse, etc. Rather than "reinventing the wheel" and having it be a costly and inefficient activity, systematic reuse of knowledge can show substantial cost benefits immediately. This book shows how to develop process-oriented methodologies, covers both interorganizational and enterprises models, discusses how knowledge management can dramatically reduce costs and increase speed of response, presents a wide range of quantitative methods applied to various knowledge engineering problems, and offers several graphical presentations of models and processes. Academicians and practitioners in the area of knowledge management and engineering, especially managers in industries will fine this book useful. The material might also be useful in knowledge management graduate studies.

With the emergence of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in the business world, a new era of Business Intelligence (BI) has been ushered in to create real-world business solutions using analytics. BI developers and practitioners now have tools and technologies to create systems and solutions to guide effective decision making. Decisions can be made on the basis of more reliable and accurate information and intelligence, which can lead to valuable, actionable insights for business. Previously, BI professionals were stymied by bad or incomplete data, poorly architected solutions, or even just outright incapable systems or resources. With the advent of AI, BI has new possibilities for effectiveness. This is a long-awaited phase for practitioners and developers and, moreover, for executives and leaders relying on knowledgeable and intelligent decision making for their organizations. Beginning with an outline of the traditional methods for implementing BI in the enterprise and how BI has evolved into using self-service analytics, data discovery, and most recently AI, AI Meets BI first lays out the three typical architectures of the first, second, and third generations of BI. It then takes an in-depth look at various types of analytics and highlights how each of these can be implemented using AI-enabled algorithms and deep learning models. The crux of the book is four industry use cases. They describe how an enterprise can access, assess, and perform analytics on data by way of discovering data, defining key metrics that enable the same, defining governance rules, and activating metadata for AI/ML recommendations. Explaining the implementation specifics of each of these four use cases by way of using various AI-enabled machine learning and deep learning algorithms, this book provides complete code for each of the implementations, along with the output of the code, supplemented by visuals that aid in BI-enabled decision making. Concluding with a brief discussion of the cognitive computing aspects of AI, the book looks at future trends, including augmented analytics, automated and autonomous BI, and security and governance of AI-powered BI.

Businesses today are faced with a highly competitive market and fast-changing technologies. In order to meet demanding customers' needs, they rely on high quality software. A new field of study, soft computing techniques, is needed to estimate the efforts invested in component-based software. Component-Based Systems: Estimating Efforts Using Soft Computing Techniques is an important resource that uses computer-based models for estimating efforts of software. It provides an overview of component-based software engineering, while addressing uncertainty involved in effort estimation and expert opinions. This book will also instruct the reader how to develop mathematical models. This book is an excellent source of information for students and researchers to learn soft computing models, their applications in software management, and will help software developers, managers, and those in the industry to apply soft computing techniques to estimate efforts.

Sustainability enables the development of products with minimal environment impact coupled with economical and societal benefits. This book provides an understanding of theoretical and practical perspectives pertaining to Sustainable manufacturing. This book focuses on fundamentals, providing insights, concepts, tools, methods, case studies, and practical perspectives taken from research. The book will be of interest to students, researchers and industry practitioners.

Businesses today are faced with a highly competitive market and fast-changing technologies. In order to meet demanding customers' needs, they rely on high quality software. A new field of study, soft computing techniques, is needed to estimate the efforts invested in component-based software. Component-Based Systems: Estimating Efforts Using Soft Computing Techniques is an important resource that uses computer-based models for estimating efforts of software. It provides an overview of component-based software engineering, while addressing uncertainty involved in effort estimation and expert opinions. This book will also instruct the reader how to develop mathematical models. This book is an excellent source of information for students and researchers to learn soft computing models, their applications in software management, and will help software developers, managers, and those in the industry to apply soft computing techniques to estimate efforts.

This is a comprehensive book on infrastructure development and construction management. It is written keeping in mind the curricula of construction management programmes in India and abroad. It covers infrastructure development, the construction industry in India, financial analysis of the real estate industry in India, economic analysis of projects, tendering and bidding, contracts and contract management, FIDIC conditions of contract, construction disputes and claims, arbitration, conciliation and dispute resolution, international construction project exports and identifying, analysing and managing construction project risk. Thus, this book covers most of the construction management activities that are carried out at different stages of a construction project. This is an essential book for students of construction management, construction professionals, academicians and researchers.

People do their best work when they are motivated. This may sound obvious, but while people managers instinctively agree with the centrality of motivation at work and its impact on employee engagement, their practices do not follow. With so much "real work" to do every day, how can managers also carve out time to learn, engage, build relationships, tap motivation, encourage development, and inspire? The problem is a false dichotomy between the world of business and that of people development. What if managers were able to systematically transform everyday business issues into meaningful, developmental coaching opportunities with employees at the same time? This proven coaching approach radically shifts conversations away from either-or propositions and uses an entirely different lens: transforming business challenges by connecting them directly to employee motivation to achieve the desired business result while dramatically increasing employee engagement. And all this comes none too soon as leaders must rethink the way they lead given the modern realities of organizational life. Among them: A rapidly changing workplace and increasing uncertainty that requires a fundamental shift in the leader's approach, including the distribution of authority and the expectation that employees take responsibility for their own learning Pervasive and persistent employee disengagement, characterized by employees who no longer accept the organization's priorities at the expense of their own, where organizations that continue to dictate terms will find ongoing challenges with costly employee turnover and lack of engagement During the past decade, the Developmental Coaching Model has been taught across the globe in nine languages and has been enthusiastically embraced by thousands of managers while dissolving the invisible barriers that block individual and organizational development and business success.

Digitalization is on everyone's lips as new technology changes business landscapes and conventional companies are outperformed by younger digital and agile contestants. In this volatile environment it seems more relevant than ever before to understand the aspects and business logic behind the elusive phenomenon called "digitalization". Never before have there been such great opportunities to unleash the full potential of technology within organizations to create long-standing competitive advantage. This book explains the strategy and practice of how to lead and control the people side of digital change in a dynamic world of uncertainty and social complexity, and as such the book snares the elusive phenomena of digitalization Digitalization drives behavioral change and calls for a new way of thinking among senior executives. In practice, reaping the benefits of digital technology is not as easy as it first appears to be. This book provides a map to navigate in the volatile business landscape where change occurs continuously because of digital technology. It provides an historical frame of the evolution of digital technology, decodes digitalization's negative influence on the external aspects of customer satisfaction, discusses and explains the strategic and leadership consequences of different forms of digital change, and finally demonstrates how leading digital change can be put into practice. Illustrative case studies and examples are provided throughout as well as models and frameworks. This is a valuable resource for researchers, academics, and students in the fields of organizational studies, organizational change, technology and innovation management, and digitalization.

Since the early 1980s, Japanese firms have massively globalized their production operations and have shown superb competitive powers in global markets. This meant, however, they had to establish their unique Japanese-style management and production system locally, taking into account different conditions in countries that had not originally nurtured their unique system. In each case, firms found ways to balance applications and adaptations, resulting in a hybridization of their management and production systems. These experiences abroad dictated changes to the traditional system-in order to retain its basic logic and competitiveness, the essentials of the system needed to be redefined.
Hybrid Factories in the United States elucidates the real advantages and weaknesses of the Japanese-style management and production system (JMPS) in the United States and elsewhere in the globalized economy. To assess the success of the "hybridization" dynamics of JMPS abroad, the editor and authors developed their own "hybrid-analysis" model, which has been used successfully around and globe for decades, and has been recognized as a major research framework for elucidating the study of international transferability of management and production systems in general. In very concrete ways and attentive to regional differences, the authors' hybrid-analysis methods identify which aspects of JMPS will inevitably change and which should be sustained. Tetsuji Kawamura and his team have provided a crucial and comprehensive resource not only for anyone interested in the Japanese story, but also for those concerned about the future of American manufacturing industries, for the investigation of Japanese transplants provides an invaluable perspective of the real dimensions of major management innovations of U.S. industries.

An easy-to-read and highly informative book on an extremely important subject.Provides a road map for establishing a system for the identification and elimination of poor-quality costs.Gives management at all levels an important tool for maximization of profit eliminating the concept of optimum operating quality-cost point.

The best organizations, and even the best departments within organizations, have a roadmap: a clear vision of where they would like to be and the means by which they will get there. This roadmap drives the everyday activity of the company as well as any change it makes both internally and externally. And it is what drives projects. In fact, it is arguable that success in business is almost wholly reliant on an ability to implement change effectively - whether it is a computer system that gives you the edge on your competitor, bringing a new product to market, adopting new ways of working, or completely redefining the approach your company takes. Success and survival in business relies on change and the way that business implements change is through projects. Therefore, if you work in the world of business, sooner or later the chances are that you will be involved in a project, as a stakeholder, advisor, sponsor or possibly running it - as the project manager. In The Everyday Project Manager, author and project management expert Jeremy Nicholls shares the key attributes and skills of successful project management and describes the practical skills that will enhance project delivery regardless of your level of experience. The skills and concepts detailed in this book can be easily understood and implemented. They are "everyday" (that is, commonplace) skills, but they are skills and the concepts that the best project managers use every day. Each chapter details the concepts, practices, and tools that readers will use to build their proficiency in every phase of delivering a project efficiently and effectively.

Aware that a single crisis event can devastate their business, managers must be prepared for the worst from an expansive array of threats. The Routledge Companion to Risk, Crisis and Security in Business comprises a professional and scholarly collection of work in this critical field. Risks come in many varieties, and there is a growing concern for organizations to respond to the challenge. Businesses can be severely impacted by natural and man-made disasters including: floods, earthquakes, tsunami, environmental threats, terrorism, supply chain risks, pandemics, and white-collar crime. An organization's resilience is dependent not only on their own system security and infrastructure, but also on the wider infrastructure providing health and safety, utilities, transportation, and communication. Developments in risk security and management knowledge offer a path towards resilience and recovery through effective leadership in crisis situations. The growing body of knowledge in research and methodologies is a basis for decisions to safeguard people and assets, and to ensure the survivability of an organization from a crisis. Not only can businesses become more secure through risk management, but an effective program can also facilitate innovation and afford new opportunities. With chapters written by an international selection of leading experts, this book fills a crucial gap in our current knowledge of risk, crisis and security in business by exploring a broad spectrum of topics in the field. Edited by a globally-recognized expert on risk, this book is a vital reference for researchers, professionals and students with an interest in current scholarship in this expanding discipline.

The field of Information Systems has been evolving since the first application of computers in organizations in the early 1950s. Focusing on information systems analysis and design up to and including the 1980s, the field has expanded enormously, with our assumptions about information and knowledge being challenged, along with both intended and unintended consequences of information technology. This prestige reference work offers students and researchers a critical reflection on major topics and current scholarship in the evolving field of Information Systems. This single-volume survey of the field is organized into four parts. The first section deals with Disciplinary and Methodological Foundations. The second section deals with Development, Adoption and Use of MIS - topics that formed the centrepiece of the field of IS in the last century. The third section deals with Managing Organizational IS, Knowledge and Innovation, while the final section considers emerging and continuing issues and controversies in the field - IS in Society and a Global Context. Each chapter provides a balanced overview of current knowledge, identifying issues and discussing relevant debates. This prestigious book is required reading for any student or researcher in Management Information Systems, academics and students covering the breadth of the field, and established researchers seeking a single-volume repository on the current state of knowledge, current debates and relevant literature.

Performance management is key to the ongoing success of any organisation, allowing it to meet its strategic objectives by designing and implementing management control systems. This book goes beyond the usual discussion of performance management in accounting and finance, to consider strategic management, human behaviour and performance management in different countries and contexts. With a global mix of world-renowned researchers, this book systematically covers the what, the who, the where and the why of performance management and control (PMC) systems. A comprehensive, state-of-the-art collection edited by a leading expert in the field, this book is a vital resource for all scholars, students and researchers with an interest in business, management and accounting.

This book offers a fresh method of assessing and managing risks in SMEs, by adopting a multidisciplinary approach. In small and medium companies, the risk management process cannot be often formalised and procedures are usually integrated unconsciously into the decision-making process. Therefore, to enhance the flexibility of these companies, increase their market share and allow them to grow and manage risks more effectively, the first step is to improve the way decisions are made. Consequently, it is fundamental for those companies to improve the awareness about the way reasonable decisions are made, which can be achieved only through a proper knowledge and the definition of the Risk Appetite Framework. Therefore, by improving knowledge, the risk appetite and awareness in the decision making, companies will implicitly start developing a risk consciousness, which can be translated into a sound risk approach. SMEs need to understand the importance of an effective internal control system. Hence, the central point is the necessity to start reconsidering the company as a unique entity, by adopting a holistic approach. The book explores whether small and medium companies should adopt a formalised risk management process and, more importantly, the role that the development of an appropriate risk mindfulness and approach to expand existing functions plays in these entities. It suggests an appropriate way of thinking about risk, starting with the amalgamation of both past and present theories, and enabling SMEs to find a solution to improve the effectiveness of their risk management strategies.

There are books on outsourcing, but most are by academics or consultants. Few address multi-sourcing. The author of Successful Outsourcing and Multi-Sourcing, is a practitioner who headed an operation that handles over 500 million customer contacts a year with less than 30 staff, through both outsourcing and multi-sourcing. Multi-sourcing occurs where each individual function is contracted directly by the client rather than using a large system integrator or prime contractor. This approach lowers costs, reduces reliance on suppliers, speeds up change and generates a greater degree of innovation. The downside is it places much more of the risk on the client and needs specialist skills to run effectively. As well as a focus on multi-sourcing, the book addresses the question of why a business should outsource in the first place and how decisions to do this should be strategic, rather than it being something that happens by accident. Chapters then illuminate the benefits of single-sourcing; the benefits of multi-sourcing; how best to decide what outsourcing model to choose; how to transition to outsourcing; and what steps to take to maximise benefit and minimise risk. Downsides are clearly spelled out and alternatives to outsourcing are examined, including partial outsourcing and insourcing. This book serves as a valuable source of practical guidance for organisations looking at outsourcing strategy, outsourcing professionals, and those teaching or studying business topics.

Action Research for Professional Selling by Peter McDonnell and Jean McNiff is for people working, or hoping to work in sales, who wish to improve their capacity for selling, and who may be involved in providing or participating in a structured sales training programme. It provides a basis for professional selling that connects the sales process to different philosophical models for understanding human interactions and contains much practical advice for selling in a tough economic environment. Action research is used across the professions as a powerful methodology for improving performance and outcomes and will enable sales practitioners to generate their practical theories of selling. The book answers calls for evidence-based practice in sales education, placing special emphasis on the strength of a values-based approach over the outmoded manipulative models of the past (many of which are still in evidence). It is essential to develop your understanding of what you are doing, and be able to explain it, and the book shows you how to do this through researching your practice in action. It focuses seriously on selling as a field of research offering an innovative, practical approach to selling, underpinned by strong theoretical and philosophical frameworks.

This book is aimed at manufacturing and planning managers who struggle to bring a greater degree of stability and more effective use of assets to their operations, not realizing the degree to which production scheduling affects those objectives. It has been reported that 75% of the problems on the manufacturing floor are caused by activities outside the plant floor. Poor production scheduling strategies and systems are often the biggest contributors to the 75%. The book explains in detail that no scheduling strategy, and especially no transition to a different and better scheduling strategy, will succeed without strong commitment and guidance from senior leadership. Leadership must understand their active role in the transition, that people will feel uncomfortable and even threatened by change, and that they will need to be measured by different standards. Effective scheduling requires that following the schedule and production to plan is more important than trying to maximize each day's throughput. The book explains the advantages of a structured, regularly repeating schedule: how it can increase throughput, right-size inventory based on cycles and variabilities and therefore make it more usable, and improve customer delivery. It will explain the trade-offs between throughput, inventory, and delivery performance, how those trade-offs are actually decided in production scheduling, and how an appropriate scheduling strategy can make the trade-offs and their ramifications visible. It discusses several popular structured scheduling concepts, their similarities, and differences, to allow the readers to decide which might fit best in their environments. In addition, the authors discuss what makes an appropriate scheduling software system, and why a package designed for structured scheduling offers capabilities well beyond the Excel workbooks used by many companies, and how it offers much more design capability and ease of use than the finite scheduling modules in SAP or Oracle. Finally, the authors offer a proven roadmap for implementation, critical success factors necessary to achieve the full potential, and give examples of operations that have done this well. In addition, a guide for leaders and managers post-implementation is provided to help them fully exploit the advantages of a structured, repeating scheduling strategy.

The use of new information and communication technologies both inside the courts and in private online dispute resolution services is quickly changing everyday conflict management. However, the implications of the increasingly disruptive role of technology in dispute resolution remain largely undiscussed. In this book, assistant professor of law and digitalisation Riikka Koulu examines the multifaceted phenomenon of dispute resolution technology, focusing specifically on private enforcement, which modern technology enables on an unforeseen scale. The increase in private enforcement confounds legal structures and challenges the nation-state's monopoly on violence. And, in this respect, the author argues that the technology-driven privatisation of enforcement - from direct enforcement of e-commerce platforms to self-executing smart contracts in the blockchain - brings the ethics of law's coercive nature out into the open. This development constitutes a new, and dangerous, grey area of conflict management, which calls for transparency and public debate on the ethical implications of dispute resolution technology.

Resource Allocation (RA) involves the distribution and utilization of available resources in the system. Because resource availability is usually scarce and expensive, it becomes important to find optimal solutions to such problems. Thus RA problems represent an important class of problems faced by mathematical programmers. This book focuses on development of models and heuristics for six new and complex sub-classes of RA problems in Supply Chain (SC) networks, focusing on bi-objectives, dynamic input data, and multiple performance measures based allocation and integrated allocation, and routing with complex constraints. It considers six set of variants of the RA problems normally encountered in practice but have not yet been studied. These variants of the classical RA are complex and pertaining to both manufacturing and service industry.

Root Cause Analysis, or RCA, "What is it?" Everyone uses the term, but everyone does it differently. How can we have any uniformity in our approach, much less accurately compare our results, if we're applying different definitions? At a high level, we will explain the difference between RCA and Shallow Cause Analysis, because that is the difference between allowing a failure to recur or dramatically reducing the risk of recurrence. In this book, we will get down to basics about RCA, the fundamentals of blocking and tackling, and explain the common steps of any investigative occupation. Common investigation steps include: Preserving evidence (data)/not allowing hearsay to fly as fact Organizing an appropriate team/minimizing potential bias Analyzing the events/reconstructing the incident based on actual evidence Communicating findings and recommendations/ensuring effective recommendations are actually developed and implemented Tracking bottom-line results/ensuring that identified, meaningful metrics were attained We explore, "Why don't things always go as planned?" When our actual plans deviate from our intended plans, we usually experience some type of undesirable or unintended outcome. We analyze the anatomy of a failure (undesirable outcome) and provide a step-by-step guide to conducting a comprehensive RCA based on our 3+ decades of applying RCA as we have successfully practiced it in the field. This book is written as a how-to guide to effectively apply the PROACT (R) RCA methodology to any undesirable outcome, is directed at practitioners who have to do the real work, focuses on the core elements of any investigation, and provides a field-proven case as a model for effective application. This book is for anyone charged with having a thorough understanding of why something went wrong, such as those in EH&S, maintenance, reliability, quality, engineering, and operations to name just a few.

This book discusses the evolution of security and privacy issues and brings related technological tools, techniques, and solutions into one single source. The book will take readers on a journey to understanding the security issues and possible solutions involving various threats, attacks, and defense mechanisms, which include IoT, cloud computing, Big Data, lightweight cryptography for blockchain, and data-intensive techniques, and how it can be applied to various applications for general and specific use. Graduate and postgraduate students, researchers, and those working in this industry will find this book easy to understand and use for security applications and privacy issues.

The concept of Halal defines what adheres to Islamic law and is so comprehensive that it goes beyond food to include processes. The Halal industry has allowed many business firms a competitive advantage and is integral in its support for industries from food, tourism, banking and hospitality to medical. This book gives an overview of what Halal is in logistics and supply chain management, and discusses related issues and challenges in Southeast Asia. The book also examines Halal logistics and supply chain in reference to global trends and practices. It attempts to integrate theoretical and methodological aspects of Halal logistics and supply chain study in different geographical areas across industries. This will be a useful reference for those who wish to understand the Halal ecosystem and Halal logistics supply chain development.

Get in Gear: The Seven Gears that Drive Strategy to Results (978-0-367-47149-1, 335422) Shelving Guide: Business and Management/Leadership/Strategy Only 10% to 25% of organizations get it right when it comes to achieving the expected results from their strategic planning. This means 75% to 90% of them are leaving results on the table and wasting their time on things that don't matter. Almost a decade ago, a major steel manufacturer approached Sean Ryan and his team to help them think through how to better convert strategy to results. This was the catalyst for the seven gears that translate strategy to results found in Strategy-Execution-Results (SXR (TM)). Why Gears? Gears transmit energy. The more aligned they are and the less friction in their chain, the better they function. Leaders can easily identify the gear creating the most friction and then take action to better align that gear with the strategy generating better results. This creates momentum to improve the alignment and performance of other gears. This approach also emphasizes the ways everyone in the organization has some influence over every gear. Based on Sean Ryan's consulting and training with organizations from start-ups to the Fortune 100, he's found that these performance gears drive better results. You'll employ them to align your goals with your strategy, create visible scorecards to know whether or not you're on track, and identify the critical behaviors and actions that will drive performance. Readers will use this book to point their efforts toward getting meaningful results from their strategy. As noted in the Harvard Business Review: "The prize for closing the strategy-performance gap is huge: increasing performance by at least 50% for most organizations." After moving beyond their initial amazement of just how misaligned they were, they'll be able to quickly apply the seven gears to sell better and more, drive down costs, improve quality and safety, and recruit talent for the future. In addition, there's nothing in this book that has not been applied in actual business settings. While companies could use the SXR (TM) Framework to overhaul their organization top to bottom, they'll also appreciate that they don't have to change everything at once to make progress. Upon understanding each of the gears and how to create Follow-up and Follow-through, they'll be able to improve any gear to start seeing strategic outcomes. You've got it in Gear, now Stay in Gear. Join the Strategy-Execution-Results Community: www.wwici.com/Gearheads.