Scheduling and multicriteria optimisation theory have been subject, separately, to numerous studies. Since the last twenty years, multicriteria scheduling problems have been subject to a growing interest. However, a gap between multicriteria scheduling approaches and multicriteria optimisation field exits. This book is an attempt to collect the elementary of multicriteria optimisation theory and the basic models and algorithms of multicriteria scheduling. It is composed of numerous illustrations, algorithms and examples which may help the reader in understanding the presented concepts. This book covers general concepts such as Pareto optimality, complexity theory, and general method for multicriteria optimisation, as well as dedicated scheduling problems and algorithms: just-in-time scheduling, flexibility and robustness, single machine problems, parallel machine problems, shop problems, etc. The second edition contains revisions and new material.

In important branches of manufacturing industries, especially those producing chemicals, polymers, semiconductors, ceramics, metals and alloys, analytical process control is already an integral part of the company. Far reaching decisions with respect to quality, ecology and economy are based on the respective analytical data. The goal of this practice-oriented book is to introduce chemists, engineers and technicians to the strategies, techniques and efficiency of modern process analytical chemistry. The author is especially aiming at those professionals in small and medium enterprises who have to carry out process control tasks in a "solo-run".

In the foreword to Supply Chain Structures, Professor Paul Zipkin notes three global changes that have enabled the recent vast developments in the field of supply chains. Moreover, these changes may be only the beginning and more change is likely in the fast-moving field of supply chain management. These global changes are: the explosive growth of the Internet; the growth in free-market economies with the corresponding political interest in global economic stability; and the emergence of a global managerial culture focused on performance, quality, and service. Professor Zipkin goes on to say "In Supply Chain Structures, the editors Jeannette Song and David Yao have collected a spectrum of approaches to these challenges from some of the leading scholars of supply chains, from both the academic and commercial worlds. Each of the articles offers an interesting and illuminating way to think about the key issues in supply chain management. Some also offer practical techniques to solve important problems. Together they provide an excellent survey of the current state of the art in research and practice."

Sustainable Operations Management applies the issues of sustainability to all strategic decisions of operations: capacity management, supply network, process technology, and development and organisation. This book extends the existing literature of operations management that for years has been paramount in creating economic value with little consideration of environment and social dimensions. Whilst based on robust theoretical frameworks, some developed by its own authors, the book is enriched by international case studies and real-world illustrations throughout, to demonstrate how this theory translates to practice. Each chapter begins with learning objectives and ends with a summary, activity, and questions for discussion. Readers will gain a comprehensive and in-depth knowledge on how to manage operations for sustainability. They will learn the ways to formulate a sustainable operations strategy and the elements involved in managing tactical and operational activities to enhance sustainability performance over time. The book covers all aspects of the new business sustainability paradigm from an operations perspective, including sustainable development goals, the circular economy and digital transformation. With international agreements and national policies in place around themes such as climate change, ocean plastic pollution, loss of biodiversity, water scarcity, and zero landfill targets, this book will be a must for any university abiding to the Principles of Responsible Management Education (PRIME). The text is suitable mostly for MSc and MBA students on sustainable supply chain and operations management modules as well as broader Operations Management courses, but it can also be used for final-year Undergraduate students as part of advanced operations management modules. Online resources include chapter-by-chapter PowerPoint slides and a test bank of questions.

Predictive and Optimised Life-Cycle Management sets out methodologies to meet the demands of the current trend towards sustainable civil engineering and building.

Encompassing all aspects of construction practice, from design through to demolition and the recycling of materials, Sarja provides tools for optimal property-value protection, including a description of an integrated and predictive Life-Cycle Maintenance and Management Planning System (LMS), which employs a wide range of techniques.

Clear and practical, this guide provides effective methodology required to change a reactive system of management to a predictive one, which will benefit practitioners and students involved in construction, from the architect to local and government authorities; from design engineers to facility managers.

-- Only book written addressing the role of a Lean CFO. -- Explains how a Lean Management System integrated with a Lean Business Strategy drives financial success. -- In clear concise terms explains how & why Lean makes money for companies. -- Gives readers the logical reasons why a Lean Management System must replace a Management Accounting System. -- Answers the question "why do we need a Lean Management System?"

This book presents an analysis of the dynamics and the complexity of new product development projects which are organized according to the concept of concurrent engineering. The approach of the authors includes both a theoretical and an empirical treatment of the topic, based on the theory of design structure matrices. Readers will discover diverse perspectives and mathematical models, as well as an extensive discussion of two case studies.

"An Industrial Product-Service System is characterized by the integrated and mutually determined planning, development, provision and use of product and service shares including its immanent software components in Business-to-Business applications and represents a knowledge-intensive socio-technical system." - Meier, Roy, Seliger (2010) Since the first conference in 2009, the CIRP International Conference on Industrial Product-Service Systems has become a well-established international forum for the review and discussion of advances, research results and industrial improvements. Researchers from all over the world have met at previous IPS(2) conferences in Cranfield (2009), Linkoeping (2010), Braunschweig (2011) and Tokyo (2012). In 2013, the 5th CIRP International Conference on Industrial Product-Service Systems is held in Bochum. Important topics of IPS(2) research presented at the conference are: planning and development, sustainability, business models, operation, service engineering, knowledge management, ICT, modeling and simulation, marketing and economic aspects as well as the role of the human in IPS(2).

Within American service sector organizations there exists a gap between understanding customer service quality improvement (QI) theories and applying them. Improving Service Quality in the Global Economy: Achieving High Performance in Public and Private Sectors, Second Edition fills that gap by presenting theory, application models, and cases of successful customer service QI efforts in both the public and private sectors. The book emphasizes the selection and development of strategies for quality improvement in regulated public non-market-driven services such as education, government, and healthcare. This revised edition promotes managerial thinking that integrates QI and Knowledge Management (KM) concepts with leadership principles that enable effective responses to the changing demands of the global economy. The text provides step-by-step guidelines, recommendations, and action plans for implementing quality improvements in service sector industries, which now generate two-thirds of America's GDP. Throughout this volume, cases of successful QI efforts in service industries complement major points in each chapter, offering profiles of global service quality leaders that serve as examples to organizations in the public sector. Current and future managers will gain insight into how the global service quality revolution effects their daily work environments, inspiring improvement in products, services, and support that American companies provide to markets worldwide.

This book discusses emerging themes in the area of humanitarian logistics. It examines how humanitarian logistics and supply chains play a key role, focusing on rapidly delivering the correct amount of goods, people and monetary resources to the locations needed to achieve the success of relief efforts in response to global emergencies such as flood, earthquakes, wars etc. With an increase in the frequency, magnitude and impact of both natural and manmade disasters, effective delivery of humanitarian aid is an issue that is becoming increasingly important in the context of disaster management. The book focuses on how logistics systems and supply chains responsible for delivering this aid from origin to recipients can be made more effective and efficient. It also discusses how the development of information technology systems that can provide visibility to the disaster relief supply chain marks a huge step forward for the humanitarian sector as a whole. As more organizations begin to adopt and implement these systems and visibility is established, the use of key performance indicators will then become essential to further enhance the efficiency and effectiveness of these supply chains.

This book provides a powerful insight into strategic portfolio management and its central role in the delivery of organisational strategy, maximisation of value creation, and efficient allocation of resources and capabilities to achieve organisational strategic objectives. The book makes a valuable contribution to the development of thinking on the translation of strategy into actionable work. Whether you are a senior manager building a high-performing strategic portfolio for your organisation or an academic searching for new perspectives on strategy execution through portfolio management, you will find great significance in this book. Twenty-eight chapters in four sections provide multiple perspectives on the topic, with in-depth guidance on organisational design for strategic portfolio management and covering all process, capability, and leadership aspects of strategic portfolio management. The book includes several detailed case studies for the effective deployment of strategic portfolios, bringing together theory and practice for strategic portfolio management. This book is particularly valuable for advanced undergraduate and postgraduate students of project and portfolio management, strategic management, and leadership who are looking to expand their knowledge within the multi-project environment. Highly practical and logical in its structure, it also shows project management professionals how to effectively manage their business portfolios and align this with their business strategy.

Mastering Statistical Process Control shows how to understand business or process performance more clearly and more effectively. This practical book is based on a rich and varied selection of case studies from across industry and commerce, including material from the manufacturing, extractive and service sectors. It will enable readers to understand how SPC can be used to maximum effect, and will deliver more effective monitoring, control and improvement in systems, processes and management.
The common obstacle to successful use of SPC is getting bogged down with control charts, forgetting that visual representation of data is but a tool and not an end in itself. Mastering SPC demonstrates how statistical tools are applied and used in reality. This is a book that will open up the power of SPC for many: managers, quality professionals, engineers and analysts, as well as students, will welcome the clarity and explanation that it brings to understanding the use and benefit of SPC in a wide range of engineering, production and service situations.
Key case studies include using SPC to:
- Measure quality and human factors
- Monitor process performance accurately over long periods
- Develop best-practice benchmarks using control charts
- Maximise profitability of fixed assets
- Improve customer service and satisfaction
*Shows how your business, process and profitability can benefit from process management and control
*SPC is widely used and widely misunderstood. This is the only book to take an applications based approach to SPC
*Ideal for managers, process engineers and quality personnel in both manufacturing and service sectors, as well as students ofmanagement, statistics, operations research, MBAs and Six Sigma candidates

The problem with the way the safety industry functions is three-fold: (1) the dysfunctional relationship between business and safety leaders, (2) the practice of Results-Based Safety, and (3) the creation of a false reality. This book presents an insightful and practical approach to how you can move your safety program from Results-Based to Behavior-Based Safety. The move involves understanding what motivates behavior, utilization of consequences, practicing the seven steps of performance coaching, creating accurate safety campaigns, and defining evidence of a healthy Behavior-Based Safety program-this is the other side of safety.. The text: Defines the four major motivations, explains how they work, and how safety leaders can use the right motivation for the right person to help them practice safe behavior Explains how to maximize the impact of reinforcement consequences and minimize punitive consequences in a way that is alingned with an individual's motivation Implements the seven steps of performance coaching conversations, how safety and business leaders can model fluency and frequency to shape behavior to habit strength Provides clearly defined evidence of a healthy Behavior-Based safety program by measuring outcome like locus of control, self-esteem, self-efficacy, and self-actualization Highlights the distinction between Results-Based Safety (RBS) anecdotal practices from the science of Behavior-Based Safety (BBS) methodology Showcases how the distinct difference between a mechanistic and organic culture, and how the four phenomena can be utilized to drive safety culture on purpose Discusses the importance of expanding from lagging indicators to leading indicators for robust metrics and predictability Addresses how the significant negative impact of "telling people what to do" and re-focuses on coaching people on "what to think" The book provides definitions, examples, and applications that focus on how safety and business leaders can influence the behavior of people, impact their culture, and support healthy relationships. It will serve as an ideal text for students, professionals, and researchers in the fields of ergonomics, human factors, human-computer interaction, industrial-organizational psychology, and computer engineering.

Maintaining the reader-friendly features of its popular predecessor, the Second Edition illustrates fundamental principles and practices in statistical quality control for improved quality, reliability, and productivity in the management of production processes and industrial and business operations. Presenting key concepts of statistical quality control in a simple and straightforward manner, this reference will provide a solid foundation in statistical quality control theory, background, and applications.
Moving from elementary topics to sampling by variables, sound tolerancing, and relationships between variables, this reference

In an age of increasing complexity, diversification and changes, customers expect services that will cater to their needs and to their tastes. Emotional Engineering describes how their expectations can be satisfied and managed throughout the product life cycle, if greater attention is paid to emotion. Emotion plays a crucial role in value recognition, but it is also important for team working - which extends beyond human-human to human-machine and human-environment - and for enabling us to cope with changeable situations.

Traditional products have been developed without much consideration of context. The value of products, however, is determined in their working contexts. Service is to provide the greatest utility in the current context. Therefore, the twenty-first century is the time to develop services beyond product realization. As emotion is very much multidisciplinary, there are many works in different fields, that are unknown or unfamiliar elsewhere. Emotional Engineering is intended to provide a bird s eye view on its research and applications. This book will help readers to make strategic decisions on how they can go beyond product realization. It is recommended for all pioneers in industry, academia and government, who are trying to create value in partnership with their customers. "

Filling a gap in the literature, Practical Engineering Failure Analysis vividly demonstrates the correct methodology to conduct successful failure analyses, as well as offering the background necessary for these investigations. This authoritative reference covers procedures to reduce the occurrence of component failures due to errors in material selection, design, and manufacturing, as well as fatigue, stress, cracking, creep, and operating conditions. A single-source tool to help professionals avoid costly system failures, improve plant operation and system reliability, and prevent accidents related to component malfunction

Sustainable Self-Governance in Businesses and Society offers a sound introduction to Stafford Beer's Viable System Model (VSM) and clarifies its relevance to support organisational sustainability and self-governance. While the VSM has been known since the early 1980s, it hasn't been always easy to understand and to apply. It explains the self-transformation methodology to analyse the way organisations manage (or not) their complexity and govern themselves. The work is supported by multiple examples of application in organisations of all scales - from small to multi-national corporations and from organised social networks to communities and national organisations. It clarifies the relevance of Beer's theory to support systemic learning and change in organisations, and to coach them to self-organise and self-govern. Readers interested in further understanding insights from complex systems and cybernetics theories for designing and transforming organisations will benefit from this book, as it works to offer very detailed insights on how to put the VSM theory into practice. It clarifies how it improves adaptive capabilities, agile and self-regulated structures, more capable of fully implementing corporate sustainability strategies and self-governing themselves. The chapters provide key reading for managers, consultants, practitioners, and post-graduate students working in organisational transformation, governance, and sustainability.

This book focuses on the emergence of the "science of sustainability" and the key concepts in making sustainability operational in an organization. The authors discuss the methods, techniques and tools needed to manage the impact of sustainability and how these can be reformulated into business models and solutions for new growth and applications. They then move onto the reformulation of future thinking processes before ending by looking towards an approach for the measurement of sustainability and competitiveness.

The factory scheduling problem, that of allocating machines to competing jobs in manufacturing facilities to optimize or at least improve system performance, is encountered in many different manufacturing environments. Given the competitive pressures faced by many companies in today's rapidly changing global markets, improved factory scheduling should contribute to a flrm's success. However, even though an extensive body of research on scheduling models has been in existence for at least the last three decades, most of the techniques currently in use in industry are relatively simplistic, and have not made use of this body of knowledge. In this book we describe a systematic, long-term research effort aimed at developing effective scheduling algorithms for complex manufacturing facilities. We focus on a speciflc industrial context, that of semiconductor manufacturing, and try to combine knowledge of the physical production system with the methods and results of scheduling research to develop effective approximate solution procedures for these problems. The class of methods we suggest, decomposition methods, constitute a broad family of heuristic approaches to large, NP-hard scheduling problems which can be applied in other environments in addition to those studied in this book.

There are a number of distinctive features of this book that makes it different from other on Six Sigma. It recognizes that there are two diametrically opposing views expressed on Six Sigma, those that are strongly in favour, and those that are not, for various reasons. The book deals, head on, with the principle reasons for such hostility. It cuts through the hype associated with the brand name. It proposes simple remedies for certain defined frailties in the standard approach, particularly those related to the Sigma Measure that provides the brand name for the Six Sigma breakthrough strategy. The book is highly supportive of the Six Sigma continuous improvement process, provided it is tailored to the needs and expectations of a particular organization. The commitment and active participation of top management is emphasized, to ensure the necessary change in culture and priorities demanded, in most organizations. Practical guidance is given in the setting up, operating and developing the project by project approach across an organisation. The book also covers how to equip a critical mass of members in an organization with the core workforce competencies required to get the desired results. The book covers the realities of applying Six Sigma in a range of functions within an organization and also to various types of organizations from the manufacturing sector to commerce and public service. It demonstrates how statistical thinking, coupled with the application of technical and operational knowledge of processes and focus provided by Six Sigma, can considerably enhance quality, competitiveness, effectiveness and efficiency. Statistical process control is a tool, which enables both manufacturers and suppliers to achieve control of product quality by means of the application of statistical methods in the controlling process. This book gives the foundations of good quality management and process control, including an explanation of w

First textbook in the literature to treat sustainability as a powerful concept to create optimal workplace experiences FM is a growth area and this book pushes the boundaries to teach sustainability in a new way Most other textbooks dedicated to this topic focus on describing specific best practices or case studies, that is simply not enough to take the next step in truly integrating sustainability in the facility management industry. This book seeks to do that.

The world is witnessing an increasingly dangerous combination of social, economic and environmental factors which are accelerating an ever growing emergence of novel viruses resulting in new epidemics. A must-have for facing the consequential pandemic threat, Robert A. Clark's new book reveals what you should do to mitigate the risk, and limit the damage, while designing contingency measures to address a pandemic crisis. The book builds on the themes introduced in his 2016 title Business Continuity and the Pandemic Threat - Potentially the biggest survival challenge facing organisations, by focusing specifically on the COVID-19 pandemic. Business Continuity and the Pandemic Threat - Learning from COVID-19 while preparing for the next pandemicCOVID-19 has shown organisations that the threat of a pandemic needs to be taken seriously, emphasising the importance of preparing a business continuity plan and a pandemic plan in response to the crisis. Clark's book focuses on how an organisation can create a new or update an existing pandemic response plan. He highlights the similarities in managing different types of crisis whether it is a pandemic, or other threats such as cyber attacks, floods, fires, civil disturbances, terrorism etc. The book looks at several case studies, reviewing how different industries have been impacted by the pandemic, with the author also reflecting on his own personal experience during this crisis. It also discusses the ways the virus has affected our economy and daily routines, and the psychological impact. The book further provides useful free resources that offer additional guidance/information. Explore how: Your organisation can create and validate a pandemic response plan; To manage your organisation when faced with a pandemic threat; Lockdown has impacted our mental health, economies and working culture; Organisations from varied industries have adapted in response to the pandemic; To search for new opportunities that pandemics can present by both changes to working practises and diversification; and Information technology helped many organisations to continue functioning during lockdowns. "Bob's book, Business Continuity and the Pandemic Threat does a spectacular job filling a gaping void in the pandemic preparedness and response literature. It should be required reading for every CEO concerned with keeping their business in business and every corporate risk manager, regardless of the type of business. He's written with an engaging, rare combination of hard-nosed business survival strategy and insightful human stories of pandemic experiences." Dr Jonathan Quick MD MPH, global health leader with expertise in pandemic and epidemic threats Understand the corporate, psychological and societal impact of a pandemic threat and how to prepare for and mitigate its effects with this book - order your copy today!

Because of their mutually influencing interactions, information systems and modern manufacturing systems are intertwined. They have been so integrated that information systems have become an embedded and critical component of any effective manufacturing system. The impact of the increasing focus on information permeates throughout the manufacturing life cycle, from product conceptualization, design, process planning, all the way to production, order fulfilment, and customer services. For these reasons, it is critical that we study information-based manufacturing in its entirety, crossing the traditional functional boundaries and building as much synergy between Information Systems (IS), Information Technology (IT), and manufacturing as possible. This is the motivation for this book and, to this end, the purpose of this book is threefold: to establish an up-to-date interdisciplinary research framework for information-based manufacturing that builds on the research foundation from IS and IT and manufacturing research; to develop a forward-looking research agenda for information-based manufacturing for identifying future directions for research and applications; and to foster a joint academic and industrial research agenda in information systems and manufacturing by identifying the greatest synergy possible between academic research and industrial practices.

This volume addresses design improvement from the perspective of prevention by introducing readers to the tools of the Six Sigma design process. The author discusses the issues of designing for Six Sigma, covering the topics that any Shogun Six Sigma Master must be familiar with: customer satisfaction, quality function deployment, benchmarking, systems engineering, value engineering, reliability and maintainability, design for manufact`urability, mistake proofing, failure mode and effect analysis, project management, and financial concepts.