This book will bring a state of the art overview of the research done in sustainable logistics. It will be structured along the four A's of sustainable logistics:- 1 Awareness: it is important that companies and policy makers are aware of the effects of their activities and policies. New methods to estimate the effects of the logistic activities and the change towards more sustainable ways will be covered. 2 Avoidance: transport can be avoided by a better collaboration between actors (vertically and horizontally. Papers covering this topic will be introduced here. 3 Acting and shifting the goods to more environmental friendly modes or to the non peak hours. 4 Anticipation of new technologies: the use of more environmental friendly vehicles (electric,.LNG,..) within the logistic chain.

"Simulation-based Case Studies in Logistics" presents an intensive learning course on the application of simulation as a decision support tool to tackle complex logistic problems. The book describes and illustrates different approaches to developing simulation models at the right abstraction level to be used efficiently by engineers when dealing with strategic, tactical or operational decisions in logistic systems. 11 simulation-based case studies in logistics and supply chain management are discussed, based on the results of applied research, covering application areas such as production logistics, warehousing, transportation, material flow management, and hospital logistics. "Simulation-based Case Studies in Logistics" is an essential text for postgraduate engineering students and researchers working in the area of logistics modeling and simulation.

The ISO 22000 Standard Procedures for Food Safety Management can help you quickly create a Food Safety Management System that ensures your company's compliance with the requirements established by the ISO 22000:2005 Standard. This important resource is thoroughly researched and reviewed by experts in the field, and it includes procedures and forms for food safety program components such as HACCP (Hazard Analysis Critical Control Point) Plans, Supplier Evaluations, Manufacturing, Traceability, Monitoring/Measurement, Internal Auditing, and Product Recall. Food safety is a growing concern worldwide. Organizations of all sizes and all along the food supply chain face increasing regulations and consumer concerns. Putting a practical and functional Food Safety Management System into place is critical in order to demonstrate the ability to control food safety hazards and ensure that products are safe for human consumption. In addition to the needed ISO 22000 and HACCP procedures and forms, the ISO 22000 Standard Procedures for Food Safety Management provides an informative introduction to food safety management, an explanation of the ISO2200 Standard, and a sample Food Safety Manual. Creating the required documentation can be a difficult and time consuming part of creating a Food Safety Management System. Fortunately there is no need to start from scratch... with the ISO 22000 Standard Procedures for Food Safety Management it has already been done for you

This management guide to labor productivity represents the author's experience of more than 40 years in the engineering field. Based on his work in over 100 plants and a dozen major corporations, John Martin presents his own personal approach to the specifics of labor productivity control, examining a variety of issues and operations that other books neglect. He fully details longstanding approaches to worker performance and the changes they have undergone, as well as management's responsibilities and industrial engineering functions, all of which are made applicable to manufacturing, processing, and service organizations.

Martin's approach is to examine control strategies that have proven ineffective or incomplete, and to describe alternate methods that he has observed to be workable. To do this, he first explores the basic principles of labor productivity, culled from a combination of historical and modern viewpoints, then follows with discussions of techniques used in general control processes and of various overall control functions. Among the specific topics addressed are work measurement considerations, performance rating and testing, developing and applying time study data, learning curve concepts and applications, wage incentive concepts and plans, and preparing and implementing a productivity control system. New concepts discussed include direct time study versus predetermined motion times, computer-aided application of MTM-1, and advanced applications of measured daywork. Designed as a hands-on reference work, "Labor Productivity Control" will be a valuable resource for manufacturing management personnel, practicing industrial engineers, management and line supervisors, and students in these fields.

With increased globalization and offshore sourcing, global supply chain management is becoming an important issue for many businesses as it involves a company's worldwide interests and suppliers rather than simply a local or national orientation. The storage systems significantly affect the level of quality of products, the customer's service level, and the global logistic cost. The mission of warehousing systems design, control and optimization is to effectively ship products in the right place, at the right time, and in the right quantity (i.e. in any configuration) without any damages or alterations, and minimizing costs. Warehousing in the Global Supply Chain presents and discusses a set of models, tools and real applications, including a few case studies rarely presented with a sufficient detail by other literature, to illustrate the main challenges in warehousing activities. This includes all warehouse operations (from receiving to shipping), problems and issues (e.g. storage allocation, assignment, layout, vehicle routing) for industrial and service systems as parts of global supply chains. Advanced and effective solving methods are also illustrated and the discussed case studies help the reader to quickly apply the proposed models and techniques/algorithms. Warehousing in the Global Supply Chain is useful to managers and practitioners of industry and service sectors for the determination and modeling of the critical issues concerning warehousing systems planning and design. It is a valuable source of information for engineering students, doctoral and post-doctoral students, and researchers of academic institutions who are searching for advanced modeling approaches and solving techniques to complex logistic decision making problems. Warehousing in the Global Supply Chain presents and discusses a set of models, tools and real applications, including a few case studies rarely presented with a sufficient detail by other literature, to illustrate the main challenges in warehousing activities. This includes all warehouse operations (from receiving to shipping), problems and issues (e.g. storage allocation, assignment, layout, vehicle routing) for industrial and service systems as parts of global supply chains. Advanced and effective solving methods are also illustrated and the discussed case studies help the reader to quickly apply the proposed models and techniques/algorithms. Warehousing in the Global Supply Chain is useful to managers and practitioners of industry and service sectors for the determination and modeling of the critical issues concerning warehousing systems planning and design. It is a valuable source of information for engineering students, doctoral and post-doctoral students, and researchers of academic institutions who are searching for advanced modeling approaches and solving techniques to complex logistic decision making problems.

The resource transfer problem (RTP) is a modeling and solution framework for integrated complex scheduling and rich vehicle routing problems. It allows the modeling of a wide variety of scheduling problems, vehicle routing problems, their combination with integrated problems, as well as various specific requirements and restrictions arising in practical scheduling and vehicle routing. Based on the unifying resource transfer problem framework, this book proposes a generic constraint propagation approach that exploits the specific structure of scheduling and routing problems.

The EPA investigation of a 1994 chemical plant tragedy concluded that "the explosion resulted from a lack of written safe operating procedures..." While good written procedures can't guarantee zero accidents, they can reduce the number of accidents caused by human error. This new book shows how to remedy this problem through selecting and implementing actions that promote safe, efficient operations and maintenance, improve quality, continuity, profitability and cost control, build upon and record process experience, and promote the concept that operating and maintenance procedures are vital plant components. It includes practical samples of procedure formats, checklists and many references.

This book lays the foundations for quality modeling and analysis in the context of supply chains through a synthesis of the economics, operations management, as well as operations research/management science literature on quality. The reality of today's supply chain networks, given their global reach from sourcing locations to points of demand, is further challenged by such issues as the growth in outsourcing as well as the information asymmetry associated with what producers know about the quality of their products and what consumers know. Although much of the related literature has focused on the micro aspects of supply chain networks, considering two or three decision-makers, it is essential to capture the scale of supply chain networks in a holistic manner that occurs in practice in order to be able to evaluate and analyze the competition and the impacts on supply chain quality in a quantifiable manner. This volume provides an overview of the fundamental methodologies utilized in this book, including optimization theory, game theory, variational inequality theory, and projected dynamical systems theory. It then focuses on major issues in today's supply chains with respect to quality, beginning with information asymmetry, followed by product differentiation and branding, the outsourcing of production, from components to final products, to quality in freight service provision. The book is filled with numerous real-life examples in order to emphasize the generality and pragmatism of the models and tools. The novelty of the framework lies in a network economics perspective through which the authors identify the underlying network structure of the various supply chains, coupled with the behavior of the decision-makers, ranging from suppliers and manufacturers to freight service providers. What is meant by quality is rigorously defined and quantified. The authors explore the underlying dynamics associated with the competitive processes along with the equilibrium solutions. As appropriate, the supply chain decision-makers compete in terms of quantity and quality, or in price and quality. The relevance of the various models that are developed to specific industrial sectors, including pharmaceuticals and high technology products, is clearly made. Qualitative analyses are provided, along with effective, and, easy to implement, computational procedures. Finally, the impacts of policy interventions, in the form of minimum quality standards, and their ramifications, in terms of product prices, quality levels, as well as profits are explored. The book is filled with many network figures, graphs, and tables with data.

This book covers all major areas of operation, pollution control, safety, modernization, diversification, and resource management for cost control in the industrial production of chemicals. The author details the importance of obtaining the right type of raw materials and equipment for maximum plant efficiency and discusses revival of plants that have been idle for long periods. He also presents important issues concerning product quality, energy recovery, safety, pollution control and improving profitability by proper management of resources. The book is ideal for shop floor engineers, middle level management, and owners of small- and medium-scale facilities in many countries as it serves as a guide for keeping the plant operations running in adverse situations, for reducing energy consumption; improving profitability, resource allocation, and workforce planning.

Technology and U.S. global competitiveness is a major concern today, and yet there is no study that surveys the key issues describing federal and state policies in the United States. What new technologies are likely to increase our national productivity and international competitiveness in the future? Editors Lambright and Rahm have gathered together a group of experts to provide varying perspectives and recommendations for students, scholars, experts, and policymakers to consider. The edited collection describes federal and state programs, institutions, and changing policy issues given the new world order of technology and competitiveness. Part I analyzes federal competitiveness policy, the decontrolling of technology transfer, the role of the National Institute of Standards and Technology, and the emerging role of the Department of Defense in Technology Transfer. Part II covers turbulent state programs in the 1990s, state space technology programs, and basic research and development. Part III deals with recent theoretical and organizational approaches to U.S. technology policy, changing international relations and U.S.-Japanese competitiveness, and corporate culture in small high tech firms.

A concise guide for managers who are striving to develop the critical skills required for success after a quality initiative has been implemented in their organization. Useful worksheets and other assessment tools help managers deepen their understanding of TQM, identify the specific areas of competency where improvement is needed, and create a plan of action for building skills in those areas."The down-to-earth guide on transforming companies to total quality management! TQManager offers practical hands-on advice and an invaluable self-assessment tool for every manager who must lead the change to total quality."--Bill Wiggenhorn, president, Motorola University

The main focus of this edited volume is on three major areas of statistical quality control: statistical process control (SPC), acceptance sampling and design of experiments. The majority of the papers deal with statistical process control, while acceptance sampling and design of experiments are also treated to a lesser extent. The book is organized into four thematic parts, with Part I addressing statistical process control. Part II is devoted to acceptance sampling. Part III covers the design of experiments, while Part IV discusses related fields. The twenty-three papers in this volume stem from The 11th International Workshop on Intelligent Statistical Quality Control, which was held in Sydney, Australia from August 20 to August 23, 2013. The event was hosted by Professor Ross Sparks, CSIRO Mathematics, Informatics and Statistics, North Ryde, Australia and was jointly organized by Professors S. Knoth, W. Schmid and Ross Sparks. The papers presented here were carefully selected and reviewed by the scientific program committee, before being revised and adapted for this volume.

This present report, as a second volume of the series entitled "Contemporary Logistics in China: an Introduction," follows the same general conceptual organization, yet with updated analysis and discussion of logistics development, under the backdrop of the aftermath of the international financial crisis, the acceleration of the transformation of development mode and the strategic adjustment of the economic structure.

Risk analysis is crucial in stochastic supply chain models. Over the past few years, the pace has quickened for research attempting to explore risk analysis issues in supply chain management problems, while the majority of recent papers focus on conceptual framework or computational numerical analysis. Pioneered by Nobel laureate Markowitz in the 1950s, the mean-risk (MR) formulation became a fundamental theory for risk management in finance. Despite the significance and popularity of MR-related approaches in finance, their applications in studying multi-echelon supply chain management problems have only been seriously explored in recent years. While the MR approach has already been shown to be useful in conducting risk analysis in stochastic supply chain models, there is no comprehensive reference source that provides the state-of-the-art findings on this important model for supply chain management. Thus it is significant to have a book that reviews and extends the MR related works for supply chain risk analysis. This book is organized into five chapters. Chapter 1 introduces the topic, offers a timely review of various related areas, and explains why the MR approach is important for conducting supply chain risk analysis. Chapter 2 examines the single period inventory model with the mean-variance and mean-semi-deviation approaches. Extensive discussions on the efficient frontiers are also reported. Chapter 3 explores the infinite horizon multi-period inventory model with a mean-variance approach. Chapter 4 investigates the supply chain coordination problem with a versatile target sales rebate contract and a risk averse retailer possessing the mean-variance optimization objective. Chapter 5 concludes the book and discusses various promising future research directions and extensions. Every chapter can be taken as a self-contained article, and the notation within each chapter is consistently employed.

This handbook represents a milestone in the progression of Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA). Written by experts who are often major contributors to DEA theory, it includes a collection of chapters that represent the current state-of-the-art in DEA research. Topics include distance functions and their value duals, cross-efficiency measures in DEA, integer DEA, weight restrictions and production trade-offs, facet analysis in DEA, scale elasticity, benchmarking and context-dependent DEA, fuzzy DEA, non-homogenous units, partial input-output relations, super efficiency, treatment of undesirable measures, translation invariance, stochastic nonparametric envelopment of data, and global frontier index. Focusing only on new models/approaches of DEA, the book includes contributions from Juan Aparicio, Mette Asmild, Yao Chen, Wade D. Cook, Juan Du, Rolf Fare, Julie Harrison, Raha Imanirad, Andrew Johnson, Chiang Kao, Abolfazl Keshvari, Timo Kuosmanen, Sungmook Lim, Wenbin Liu, Dimitri Margaritis, Reza Kazemi Matin, Ole B. Olesen, Jesus T. Pastor, Niels Chr. Petersen, Victor V. Podinovski, Paul Rouse, Antti Saastamoinen, Biresh K. Sahoo, Kaoru Tone, and Zhongbao Zhou.

The development of Operations Research (OR) requires constant improvements, such as the integration of research results with business applications and innovative educational practice. The full deployment and commercial exploitation of goods and services generally need the construction of strong synergies between educational institutions and businesses. The IO2015 -XVII Congress of APDIO aims at strengthening the knowledge triangle in education, research and innovation, in order to maximize the contribution of OR for sustainable growth, the promoting of a knowledge-based economy, and the smart use of finite resources. The IO2015-XVII Congress of APDIO is a privileged meeting point for the promotion and dissemination of OR and related disciplines, through the exchange of ideas among teachers, researchers, students , and professionals with different background, but all sharing a common desire that is the development of OR.

The best way to deal with losses and threats of any kind is to prevent them from ever happening. This requires comprehensive, clear, and focused security plans. Business Security Procedures to Protect Assets and Employees includes policies, procedures, and forms developed by a security expert that can be used for any kind of business or organization. Important topics covered include security basics, training and managing a security department, conducting investigations, protecting information, emergency and disaster response procedures, executive protection, and workplace violence. Using the information in Business Security Procedures to Protect Assets and Employees, you can create and continually update your own security plan to prevent and deal with losses from internal and external sources. Protect your assets, your employees, and your customers. There is no need to start from scratch; with Business Security Procedures to Protect Assets and Employees its already been done for you.

This contributed volume combines conceptual and strategic research articles dealing with the "why" and "to what end" of sustainable operations in humanitarian logistics, as well as operational research contributions regarding the "how" from the United Nations as well as from researchers and organizations from different countries (Germany, Australia, Singapore, Netherlands, Italy, Denmark, Jordan). The target audience primarily comprises research experts, decision makers and practitioners in the field, but the book may also be beneficial for graduate students.

Reverse logistics concerns the integration of used and obsolete products back into the supply chain as valuable resources. Economic, marketing, and legislative drivers increasingly are leading companies to take back and recover their products after use. The arising product flows pose novel challenges for supply chain management.

This book addresses decision making in reverse logistics. It covers a wide range of aspects, related to distribution, production and inventory management, and supply chain management. For each topic, it highlights key managerial issues in real-life examples and explains which quantitative models are available for addressing them. By treating a broad range of issues in a unified way, the book offers the reader a comprehensive view on the field of reverse logistics.

This contributed volume presents selected research papers from the 8th workshop on Logistics and Supply Chain Management, which was held in October 2013 in Berkeley, California. It focuses on the topical issue of quantitative approaches in logistics and supply chain management, mainly covering facility location and location routing; vehicle routing and scheduling; courier, express and parcel service network design; healthcare logistics as well as logistics risk management. The target audience primarily comprises research experts and practitioners in the field, but the book will also be beneficial to graduate students.

This book examines the ways in which quality management methods, tools, and practices help improve an organization's performance and achieve sustainable competitive advantages. This volume includes quality techniques and tools such as the EFQM Model, SERVPERF model, E-S-Qual scale and the ISO 9001 certification and provide a wide variety of empirical studies in different economic sectors. In the current economic environment, characterized by economic turmoil and fierce competition, quality management has become a key strategy for organizations to overcome today's challenges. Organizations benefits from implementing quality management systems by following two approaches. First, they implement quality practices aimed at ensuring customer satisfaction by considering consumer expectations and establishing strategies accordingly. Second, organizations improve processes by establishing efficient and effective process management systems that improve productivity, lower costs, reduce unnecessary expenses, eliminate all non-value added activities, and ultimately maximize excellence and customer satisfaction. Quality management thereby provides tools, techniques, and methods for continuous process improvement in both the professional and academic worlds, which, when implemented by organizations in times of crisis, enable more effective administration of activities undertaken by managers. Containing contributions from various academics and scholars, this new book provides cutting edge research, methods and techniques providing a reference manual for academics, scholars, practitioners and policy-makers.

Tailoring information systems development to operations management and business strategy is an important way to bolster the effectiveness and efficiency of any institution s managerial success. Innovations in Information Systems for Business Functionality and Operations Management offers a vital compendium of the latest research in IS/IT applications to business and operations management. With experts from around the world giving contributions in the form of case studies, methodologies, best practices, frameworks, and research, this critical collection of cutting-edge and state-of-the-art technological references will serve practitioners and academics alike.

This book reports a literature review on kaizen, its industrial applications, critical success factors, benefits gained, journals that publish about it, main authors (research groups) and universities. Kaizen is treated in this book in three stages: planning, implementation and control. The authors provide a questionnaire designed with activities in every stage, highlighting the benefits gained in each stage. The study has been applied to more than 400 managers and leaders in continuous improvement in Mexican maquiladoras. A univariate analysis is provided to the activities in every stage. Moreover, structural equation models associating those activities with the benefits gained are presented for a statistical validation. Such a relationship between activities and benefits helps managers to identify the most important factor affecting their benefits and financial income.

This book provides extensive information on the key technical design disciplines, education programs, international best practices and modes of delivery that are aimed at preparing a trans-disciplinary design workforce for the future. It also presents a comprehensive overview of the scope of, and state of the art in, design education. The book highlights signature design education programs from around the globe and across all levels, in both traditional and distance learning settings. Additionally, it discusses professional societies for designers and design educators, as well as the current standards for professional registration, and program accreditation. Reflecting recent advances and emerging trends, it offers a valuable handbook for design practitioners and managers, curriculum designers and program leaders alike. It will also be of interest to students and academics looking to develop a career related to the more technical aspects of design.

This book discusses challenges and solutions for the required information processing and management within the context of multi-disciplinary engineering of production systems. The authors consider methods, architectures, and technologies applicable in use cases according to the viewpoints of product engineering and production system engineering, and regarding the triangle of (1) product to be produced by a (2) production process executed on (3) a production system resource. With this book industrial production systems engineering researchers will get a better understanding of the challenges and requirements of multi-disciplinary engineering that will guide them in future research and development activities. Engineers and managers from engineering domains will be able to get a better understanding of the benefits and limitations of applicable methods, architectures, and technologies for selected use cases. IT researchers will be enabled to identify research issues related to the development of new methods, architectures, and technologies for multi-disciplinary engineering, pushing forward the current state of the art.