On the verge of the global information society, enterprises are competing for markets that are becoming global and driven by customer demand, and where growing specialisation is pushing them to focus on core competencies and look for partnerships to provide products and services. Simultaneously the public demands environmentally sustainable industries and urges manufacturers to mind the whole life span of their products and production resources. Information infrastructure systems are anticipated to offer services enabling and catalyzing the strategies of manufacturing companies responding to these challenges: they support the formation of extended enterprises, the mastering of full product and process life cycles, and the digitalization of the development process. Information infrastructure systems would accommodate access to and transformation of information as required by the various authorized stakeholders involved in the life phases of products or production resources. Services should be available to select and present all relevant information for situations involving any kind of players, during any life phase of a product or artifact, at any moment and at any place.

What does excellent manufacturing management mean? Management texts to date have emphasized that it is, above methods such as SPC or TQM, a matter of "intangibles" and "culture". This book takes the myth out of management excellence; it can be learned and practiced: 1. Manage the four core processes, strategy formulation and deployment, product innovation, process development, and the supply chain, and 2. Pay attention to the seven dimensions of management quality, direction setting, integration, delegation, communication, participation, measurement, and employee development. Thus, we argue that an excellent manufacturing manager can move to a plant in a different industry and become, after an appropriate time to learn its specific technologies, an excellent manufacturing manager there as well. This book explains management quality and demonstrates how it is implemented, with nine plant tours through world-class factories from different industries.

As retail businesses migrate to the digital realm, internal information theft incidents continue to threaten on-line and off-line retail operations. The evolving propagation of internal information theft has surpassed the traditional techniques of crime prevention practices. Many business organizations search for internal information theft prevention guides that fit into their retail business operation, only to be inundated with generic and theoretical models. This book examines applicable methods for retail businesses to effectively prevent internal information theft. Information Theft Prevention offers readers a comprehensive understanding of the current status of the retail sector information theft prevention models in relation to the internationally recognized benchmark of information security. It presents simple and effective management processes for ensuring better information system security, fostering a proactive approach to internal information theft prevention. Furthermore, it builds on well-defined retail business cases to identify applicable solutions for businesses today. Integrating the retail business operations and information system security practices, the book identifies ways to coordinate efforts across a business in order to achieve the best results. IT security managers and professionals, financial frauds consultants, cyber security professionals and crime prevention professionals will find this book a valuable resource for identifying and creating tools to prevent internal information theft.

The ERP Implementation cycle is characterized by complexity, uncertainty and a long timescale. It is about people and issues that affect the business - it is a multi-disciplinary effort. This book will provide you with the practical information you will need in relation to the many issues and events within the implementation cycle. After reading this book you will be fully equipped and alerted to what is involved in an ERP implementation. ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) can be described as an integrated enterprise-wide information system. As well as handling many of the transactions found within a business it has the potential for meeting many of the information requirements of busy personnel. If used in the right hands, it may provide the business with a competitive edge. Much can go wrong during the implementation since there are many issues to deal with. From the content of this book you will gain an understanding of what can go wrong - you will be prepared in advance, and will be equipped to take preventative steps to smooth the progress of implementation. This book: Covers the multidisciplinary subject of ERP implementation Looks at a range of relevant topics including ERP market-place development, vendor selection, project management, process design and post GoLive improvements Reveals a range of issues which an implementer should be alert to right at the outset before the go-ahead is given to proceed with an implementation Features material on vendor selection, project management, training, business process re-engineering (BPR) and continuous improvement

Assessing Business Excellence presents a strategic framework for business excellence and total quality management and shows how you can be actively involved in continuous improvement by systematically reviewing your business activities and results against holistic business excellence frameworks. For all practitioners who seek to use total quality management to improve their organization's effectiveness, efficiency and responsiveness, this title is the essential route map to business excellence. From two leading expert authors comes a book where the most recognized quality award criteria are used to explore the concepts of business excellence and self-assessment. This book: * Introduces the major business excellence and total quality frameworks including The Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award and the European Quality Award and ISO9000:2000 * Compares the frameworks and identifies their strengths and limitations * Introduces the self-assessment process * Explores the main approaches to self-assessment * Illustrates the practical benefits of self-assessment through case examples

This book explains the systematic structure and practical use of the new SQC application that systematically and organizationally enhances the corporate management key for the 21st century. Departing from the conventional statistical application of SQC, this book explains the SQC application for scientific problem solving and its structural framework in which SQC is utilized for discovering the cause and effect relation from the gap between a theory and the actual, eliciting a new fact and finding, and establishing a general solution that contributes to development of innovative technology. It also reports case studies in which management technology issues were solved at a manufacturer, Toyota Motor Corporation, and verifies that: 1. Application of Science SQC promotion cycle that enables creative human resources development enhances problem solving skills of the staff and business process quality, and contributes to establishing core technology; 2. Science SQC is applicable to a wide range of business types including planning, design, engineering, production, sales, and administration. In the earlier thesis, "SQC Application for Developing Individual Techniques (1992)," the author introduced an example of "SQC Renaissance" in which SQC was effectively utilized for solving engineers' immediate problems. Further, in the thesis, "Science SQC-Innovation of Business Process Quality 2OOO)," the author proposed approaches and procedures of scientific application of SQC (Science SQC) and verified their effectiveness by introducing case studies that solved contemporary engineering problems.

Created by Lean practitioners with real-world, results-proven track records, this book is designed to help struggling managers and leaders, interested in the benefits of Lean but bereft of budgets to hire full-time consultants, start substantial change in their enterprises and begin to reap the benefits of Lean. At once a how-to manual and a strategic management guide, the book lays out, in simple English, all the steps for implementing Lean, from formulating a strategy and managing organizational change, to establishing a kanban-driven, level-loaded production system. Presenting strategies that will fit in most existing budgets, Lean for the Cash-Strapped Leader: The Path to Growth and Profitability uses easy-to-read language with flashes of humor to reveal proven methods that will help your organization initiate change and begin reaping the rewards of a Lean operations system in any industry. The book avoids acronyms, complex Lean terminology, and academic froth to convey the essential instructions, detail, and information you need. Identifying powerful methods for initiating a Lean value stream that require minimal investment, the book is designed to help owners of small businesses and senior managers of larger ones make their enterprises more efficient, more productive, and ultimately more profitable. Along the way, the book gives detailed attention to the need for the "soft message" that underwrites and supports the actions required for a business to achieve the transformation that Lean can bring. Lean for the Cash-Strapped Leader emphasizes the messaging and the degree of management involvement required to achieve a successful Lean result. Learn more about the book at: http://www.leanforthecashstrappedleader.com/

Designed by practitioners for practitioners, Supply Chain Management and Logistics: Innovative Strategies and Practical Solutions provides a wide-spectrum resource on many different aspects involved in supply chain management, including contemporary applications. With contributions from leading experts from all over the world, the book includes innovative strategies and practical solutions that address problems encountered by enterprise in management of supply chain and logistics. It details general techniques and specific approaches to a broad range of important, inspiring, and unanswered questions in the field. The book is organized around four major research themes in supply chain management: 1) supply chain strategy and coordination, 2) supply chain network optimization, 3) inventory management in supply chain, and 4) financial decisions in supply chain. The sequence of these themes helps transition from an enterprise-wide framework to network design to operational management to financial aspects of the supply chain. Each individual theme also addresses the answer to a challenging question as to how to go about applying quantitative tools to real-life operations, resulting in practical solutions. As the world moves toward more competitive and open markets, effective supply chain management is of critical importance to the success or failure of an enterprise. Despite a large amount of research achieved in the past decades on the supply chain management topic, many researchers and practitioners are still devoting considerable efforts on the emerging new problems. Designed to give you a collection of topics that bridge the gap between the academic arena and industrial practice, the book supplies a contemporary and up-to-date review on the advanced theory, applications, and practices of supply chain management, making it a rich resource for the design, analysis, and implementation of supply chain management problems arising in a wide range of industries.

This book will explore a new approach to airport planning that better captures the complexities and velocity of change in our contemporary world. As a result, it will lead to higher performing airports for users, business partners, investors and other stakeholders. This is especially pertinent since airports will need to come back better from the Covid-19 pandemic. The book explains the importance of articulating a clear strategy, based on a rigorous analysis of the competitive landscape while avoiding the pitfalls of ambiguity and 'virtue signalling'. Having done so, demand forecasts can be developed that resemble S-curves, not simple straight lines, that reflect strategic opportunities and threats from which a master plan can be developed to allocate land and capital in a way that maximizes return on assets and social licence. The second distinctive feature of this book is the premise that planning an airport as an island, a fortress even, does not work anymore given how interconnected airports are with other components of the transportation system, the economies and communities they serve and the rapid pace of social and technological change. In summary, the book argues that airport planning needs to move beyond its traditional boundaries. The book is replete with real examples from airports of all sizes around the world and includes practical advice and tools for executives and managers. It is recommended reading for individuals working in the airport business or the broader air transport industry, members of airports' board of directors, who may be new to the business, elected officials, policy makers and urban planners in jurisdictions hosting or adjacent to airports, regulators, economic development professionals and, finally, students.

This cutting edge study explores alternative methods and tools to obtain value for money while maintaining quality in construction projects, especially large and complex ones. Extensive references throughout will help the reader develop a deeper understanding of the methodology, and self-study questions help to keep you on track. Ideal as a reference for practitioners and the perfect intro for students of construction or real estate.

First published in 1983, this study investigates and compares three leading firms in the British iron and steel industry between 1914 and 1939, analysing their strategies, boardroom politics, and their responses to the problems posed by the Great War and by the vicissitudes of the 1920s and '30s. Jonathan Boswell illuminates certain issues that are of perennial importance for students of business: rationality and 'error' in decision-making, ethics, centralisation versus decentralisation, and the question of cyclical phases. The central theme throughout is the pursuit of three partly conflicting objectives: growth, efficiency and social action. The trade-offs between these three pursuits are used to examine significant contrasts in corporate strategies and behaviour, including towards government and public opinion. Boswell's rejection of economic determinism; his insistence that managerial influences fall into definable long-run patterns; and his theses on managerial specialisation and long-term policy biases confront fundamental issues for theories of the firm.

The Management of Event Operations: project management, planning and customer satisfaction provides an introduction to the management of operations for the event planner and venue provider. Taking an holistic view of an event enterprise, it links the traditional topics within operations management to present a coherent and hands-on approach specifically for the events manager. The approach is pragmatic and is dictated by practical consequences and considerations, which are so important to an event manager who balances many views and needs from diverse stakeholders.

This cutting edge study explores alternative methods and tools to obtain value for money while maintaining quality in construction projects, especially large and complex ones. Extensive references throughout will help the reader develop a deeper understanding of the methodology, and self-study questions help to keep you on track. Ideal as a reference for practitioners and the perfect intro for students of construction or real estate.

This book takes as its starting point the need to improve sustainability performance across the triple bottom line and reach global sustainable development goals. As such, it places sustainability at the heart of developing and explaining relevant theory, concepts and models in operations and supply chain management. Whereas previous textbooks on operations and supply chain management have focused on augmenting existing models of operations and supply chain management by simply adding on selected sustainability issues, this textbook places sustainability at the heart of operations and supply chain management. Sustainable Operations and Supply Chain Management consolidates the tools, concepts and methods of operations and supply chain management relevant for reaching sustainable development goals. This book includes not only descriptions of the theories and models but also practical cases based on the most recent developments in different industry sectors, including user electronics, healthcare, fashion and energy. Relevant student exercises are also included for use in the classroom or in personal study. This book provides an ideal introduction for Bachelor or Masters-level students, whether they are on general management and business degrees, or are focused on areas such as engineering management, technology management or sustainability management. Furthermore, university-level teachers and lecturers will find the material presented in this book a valuable basis for structuring their courses on operations and supply chain management in the context of sustainability.

This book provides an introduction to incorporating preference information in Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) with a special emphasis in Value Efficiency Analysis. In addition to theoretical considerations, numerous illustrative examples are included. Hence, the book can be used as a teaching text as well. Only a modest mathematical background is needed to understand the main principles. The only prerequisites are a) familiarity with linear algebra, especially matrix calculus; b) knowledge of the simplex method; and c) familiarity with the use of computer software. The book is organized as follows. Chapter 1 provides motivation and introduces the basic concepts. Chapter 2 provides the basic ideas and models of Data Envelopment Analysis. The efficient frontier and production possibility set concepts play an important role in all considerations. That's why these concepts are considered more closely in Chapter 3. Since the approaches introduced in this study are inspired by Multiple Objective Linear Programming, the basic concepts of this field are reviewed in Chapter 4. Chapter 5 also compares and contrasts Data Envelopment Analysis and Multiple Objective Linear Programming, providing some cornerstones for approaches presented later in the book. Chapter 6 discusses the traditional approaches to take into account preference information in DEA. In Chapter 7, Value Efficiency is introduced, and Chapter 8 discusses practical aspects. Some extensions are presented in Chapter 9, and in Chapter 10 Value Efficiency is extended to cover the case when a production possibility set is not convex. Three implemented applications are reviewed in Chapter 11.

The Male Body as Advertisement: Masculinities in Hispanic Media offers a multidisciplinary view of the body of men, of its practices and attributes, of its features, and, most importantly, of its use as a persuasive and expressive resource. Just as it occurred with the female body, the male body has become an object of desire in some instances and an object of expression in others. This collection of essays represents several developments in the field of communication studies. It is the first time that a study on the body of men in the Hispanic media has been carried out using film, television, internet, billboards, and so forth. This book also equates men to women in the media world. Lacking its own tradition, the male body has followed in the footsteps of the female body. It has been objectified, stylized, and transformed into a weapon of persuasion to reach the modern man. The Male Body as Advertisement can be useful for students of communication, anthropology, sociology, gender studies, and cultural studies. It will serve graduate students as a bibliographic reference for research on the male body as well as undergraduate students whose programs address issues related to gender studies. This work is also written to reach a wider audience beyond the university.

"Success is often the culmination of a series of lesser known accomplishments." -Stephen A. Ruffa and Michael J. Perozziello

In the Muroc, California desert over fifty years ago, a team of contractors and government engineers along with a daring young test pilot named Chuck Yeager achieved the seemingly impossible and broke the sound barrier. It was a brilliant, selfless team effort; one that opened the doors for limitless advances in aviation.

Yet, once again, this industry is faced with an apparently insurmountable barrier; not one of performance, but of cost. To break this barrier, a team of manufacturing professionals led by the Department of Defense's Stephen Ruffa-was given unprecedented access by the giants of military and commercial aircraft engines and avionics production. Their mission? Go beyond the age old focus on flying farther, faster, and higher to discover how to effectively and permanently slash the cost of producing aircraft to allow this industry to continue its rapid pace of advancement.

The results of their study set the stage for a new approach that will again change the face of this industry. These findings lauded by leaders across the industry and comprehensively explored in Breaking the Cost Barrier prove that production variation, as opposed to more common targets like labor utilization and inventory levels, is the chief cause of escalating production costs.

More importantly, they reveal how companies can control spiraling production costs by first controlling the variability that has for too long been considered a necessary evil in manufacturing circles.

While much has been written about what "lean production" techniques are, Breaking the Cost Barrier is the first book to explain how to effectively put lean techniques into place. It presents the big picture on how you can understand and adopt the industry proven techniques used in the lean production environment and coordinate the best into one powerhouse variation management program. Case studies and examples showcase how these techniques can be applied to control production variability across industries and requirements.

Breaking the Cost Barrier provides far more than just another plug-and-play technique for increasing efficiency. Instead, it tells the step-by-step story of how one team of professionals, guided by the belief that an answer was closer than anyone realized, broke the code on production variability problems and introduced exciting, profitable, and easily adaptable variation management methods to one of the world's most important and noteworthy industries.

THE NATIONAL ASSOCIATION OF MANUFACTURERS is the nation's largest broad-based industrial trade association. The NAM is headquartered in Washington, D.C., and has regional offices across the country. For more information on the NAM, call David W. Walker, Vice President, Marketing and Member Services, at (202) 637-3186.

The dramatic account of how a team of aerospace professionals attacked production variation to slash costs by 25%

Variation Management the identification and control of variation in production processes-is critical to today's cost-conscious aerospace industry. Now, the story of how its underlying framework was discovered by a team of professionals in a cooperative effort with a range of organizations, from McDonnell Douglas and Pratt & Whitney to Westinghouse and even the U.S. government, is chronicled in the innovative and technique-packed Breaking the Cost Barrier.

This fast-paced, highly entertaining book gives you a behind-the-scenes look at how you can design and implement a system to successfully control production variability and leverage the power of that system for your own organization. It describes what many of the components of a variability control system are and what goals they should achieve, then demonstrates from the inside out why each comprises an important part in the puzzle.

How do policy makers and managers square the circle of increasing demand and expectations for the delivery and quality of services against a backdrop of reduced public funding from government and philanthropists? Leaders, executives and managers are increasingly focusing on service operations improvement. In terms of research, public services are immature within the discipline of operations management, and existing knowledge is limited to government departments and large bureaucratic institutions. Drawing on a range of theory and frameworks, this book develops the research agenda, and knowledge and understanding in public service operations management, addressing the most pressing dilemmas faced by leaders, executives and operations managers in the public services environment. It offers a new empirical analysis of the impact of contextual factors, including the migration of planning systems founded on MRP/ERP and the adoption of industrial based improvement practices such as TQM, lean thinking and Six Sigma. This will be of interest to researchers, educators and advanced students in public management, service operations management, health service management and public policy studies.

As the business environment continues to rapidly change, Dan Reid and Nada Sanders have developed an integrated approach that makes the introductory OM course accessible and engaging for all business majors. Beyond providing a solid foundation, this course covers emerging topics like Artificial Intelligence, Robotics, Data Analytics, and Sustainability and gives equal time to strategic and tactical decisions in both service and manufacturing organizations.

Heavy industrialization in the past few decades has caused several global environmental issues including poor air quality, climate change, and outdoor air pollution-related diseases. As such, consumer pressure coupled with strict governmental policies have influenced firms to adopt and implement green practices in their supply chain and business operations in order to improve socio-environmental sustainability. Global Perspectives on Green Business Administration and Sustainable Supply Chain Management is an essential reference book that discusses innovative green practices including recycling, remanufacturing, reduction in waste and adoption of renewable energy in manufacturing. It also examines environmentally friendly policies that have been adopted by many European and Western countries. Featuring coverage on a broad range of topics such as energy analysis, environmental protections, and logistics development, this book is ideally designed for managers, operations managers, executives, manufacturers, environmentalists, researchers, industry practitioners, academicians, and students.

Company democracy is often misunderstood in the business context as democracy is usually related to politics. In this book, the authors present a different dimension. They focus first on democracy from an organizational culture perspective and then offer employees opportunities to understand and apply democracy from the company floor level. The Company Democracy Model (CDM) is an industry-wide, practical methodology for knowledge management utilization under applied philosophical thinking. The model progresses through a framework in which an organizational evolutionary spiral method empowers the creation of knowledge-based democratic cultures for wise and effective strategic management and leadership. This new innovative methodology, supported with techniques and processes, can gain/create many ideas, insights, innovations, new products, and services that can benefit a company. One purpose of using the model is to create a robust conceptual framework as a theoretical basis for a business strategy that promotes sustainable, continuous, and democratic development. Another purpose is to emphasize the importance of intellectual capital and compare capital-related and human-related business issues in shaping a company's competitiveness, profitability, productivity, performance, and shared value. A third purpose is to use its symbolic infrastructure that builds solid democratic systems for viable business development and management. Finally, the described purposes give the reader new ideas to change and improve the design of business activities in a collective and modern democratic way.

This book explores some aspects of the interface between technology, competitiveness and the role of multinational enterprises in the world economy. This group of essays stresses the role of asset creation and usage, rather than reliance on natural factor endowments as a basis for national competitiveness and examines the role of multinational enterprises as vehicles for technological transfer, and the efficient co-ordination of economic activity across national boundaries.

This text identifies and discusses different technology innovation initiatives (TIIs) such as entrepreneurial capability, technology infrastructure capability, organizational culture and climate, and government initiatives. It further evaluates the relationship between various technology innovation initiatives and manufacturing performances using multi-criteria decision-making techniques such as fuzzy set theory (FST), structural equation modeling (SEM), and analytic hierarchy process (AHP). It will serve as an ideal reference text for graduate students and academic researchers in the field of industrial engineering, manufacturing engineering, mechanical engineering, automotive engineering. This book: * Discusses technology innovation initiatives such as entrepreneurial capability, technology infrastructure capability, and organizational culture. * Highlights technology innovation-strategy model in assisting manufacturing industries for enhancing their performance in today's competitive environment. * Examines the effect of technology innovation initiatives on the performance of manufacturing industries. * Covers multi-criteria decision-making techniques such as fuzzy set theory, structural equation modeling, and analytic hierarchy process. * Explores the validation of fuzzy-based technology innovation model through structural equation modeling.

How Can Reliability Analysis Impact Your Company's Bottom Line? While reliability investigations can be expensive, they can also add value to a product that far exceeds its cost. Affordable Reliability Engineering: Life-Cycle Cost Analysis for Sustainability & Logistical Support shows readers how to achieve the best cost for design development testing and evaluation and compare options for minimizing costs while keeping reliability above specifications. The text is based on the premise that all system sustainment costs result from part failure. It examines part failure in the design and sustainment of fielded parts and outlines a design criticality analysis procedure that reflects system design and sustainment. Achieve the Best Cost for Life-Cycle Sustainment Providing a framework for managers and engineers to develop and implement a reliability program for their organizations, the authors present the practicing professional with the tools needed to manage a system at a high reliability at the best cost. They introduce analytical methods that provide the methodology for integrating part reliability, failure, maintainability, and logistic math models. In addition, they include examples on how to run reliability simulations, highlight tools that are commercially available for such analysis, and explain the process required to ensure a design will meet specifications and minimize costs in the process. This text: Demonstrates how to use information gathered from reliability investigations Provides engineers and managers with an understanding of a reliability engineering program so that they can perform reliability analyses Seeks to resolve uncertainty and establish the value of reliability engineering Affordable Reliability Engineering: Life-Cycle Cost Analysis for Sustainability & Logistical Support focuses on reliability-centered maintenance and is an ideal resource for reliability engineers and managers. This text enables reliability professionals to determine the lowest life-cycle costs for part selection, design configuration options, and the implementation of maintenance practices, as well as spare parts strategies, and logistical resources.

Sex work is a subject of significant contestation across academic disciplines, as well as within legal, medical, moral, feminist, political and socio-cultural discourses. A large body of research exists, but much of this focuses on the sale of sex by women to men and ignores other performances, practices, meanings and embodiments in the contemporary sex industry. A queer agenda is important in order to challenge hetero-centric gender norms and to develop new insights into how gender, sex, power, crime, work, migration, space/place, health and intimacy are understood in the context of commercial sexual encounters. Queer Sex Work explores what it might mean to 'be', 'do' and 'think' queer(ly) in the study and practice of commercial sex. It brings together a multiplicity of empirical case studies - including erotic dance venues, online sex working, pornography, grey sexual economies, and BSDM - and offers a variety of perspectives from academic scholars, policy practitioners, activists and sex workers themselves. In so doing, the book advances a queer politics of sex work that aims to disrupt heteronormative logics whilst also making space for different voices in academic and political debates about commercial sex. This unique and multidisciplinary volume will be indispensable for scholars and students of the global sex trade and of gender, sexuality, feminism and queer theory more broadly, as well as policymakers, activists and practitioners interested in the politics and practice of sex work in local, national and international contexts.