European manufacturing industries are changing fast. Amid the pressures of globalisation, emerging markets and shifting geographical patterns of consumption and production, competition and collaboration need to be redefined. The book contains roadmaps for survival in the emerging global competitive arena by and for practitioners, as well as concrete examples and theoretical studies across industries. New forms of cooperation are analysed which combine intensive collaboration with high competition in networks of excellence among suppliers, manufacturers and customers. The success factors for such industrial networks are described in detail, as well as their benefits and potential risks. In a multidisciplinary approach, the book draws on parallels from other fields and disciplines in order to explore the many facets of competition and collaboration.  

Based on several recent courses given to mathematical physics students, this volume is an introduction to bundle theory. It aims to provide newcomers to the field with solid foundations in topological K-theory. A fundamental theme, emphasized in the book, centers around the gluing of local bundle data related to bundles into a global object. One renewed motivation for studying this subject, comes from quantum field theory, where topological invariants play an important role.

The second edition of these notes has been completely rewritten and substantially expanded with the intention not only to improve the use of the book as an int- ductory text to conformal ?eld theory, but also to get in contact with some recent developments. In this way we take a number of remarks and contributions by re- ers of the ?rst edition into consideration who appreciated the rather detailed and self-contained exposition in the ?rst part of the notes but asked for more details for the second part. The enlarged edition also re?ects experiences made in seminars on the subject. The interest in conformal ?eld theory has grown during the last 10 years and several texts and monographs re?ecting different aspects of the ?eld have been p- lished as, e. g. , the detailed physics-oriented introduction of Di Francesco, Mathieu, 1 and Sen ' echal ' [DMS96*], the treatment of conformal ?eld theories as vertex - gebras by Kac [Kac98*], the development of conformal ?eld theory in the context of algebraic geometry as in Frenkel and Ben-Zvi [BF01*] and more general by Beilinson and Drinfeld [BD04*]. There is also the comprehensive collection of ar- clesbyDeligne,Freed,Witten,andothersin[Del99*]aimingtogiveanintroduction to strings and quantum ?eld theory for mathematicians where conformal ?eld theory is one of the main parts of the text. The present expanded notes complement these publications by giving an elementary and comparatively short mathematics-oriented introduction focusing on some main principles.

European manufacturing industries are changing fast. Amid the pressures of globalisation, emerging markets and shifting geographical patterns of consumption and production, competition and collaboration need to be redefined. The book contains roadmaps for survival in the emerging global competitive arena by and for practitioners, as well as concrete examples and theoretical studies across industries. New forms of cooperation are analysed which combine intensive collaboration with high competition in networks of excellence among suppliers, manufacturers and customers. The success factors for such industrial networks are described in detail, as well as their benefits and potential risks. In a multidisciplinary approach, the book draws on parallels from other fields and disciplines in order to explore the many facets of competition and collaboration.

Based on several recent courses given to mathematical physics students, this volume is an introduction to bundle theory. It aims to provide newcomers to the field with solid foundations in topological K-theory. A fundamental theme, emphasized in the book, centers around the gluing of local bundle data related to bundles into a global object. One renewed motivation for studying this subject, comes from quantum field theory, where topological invariants play an important role.

The second edition of these notes has been completely rewritten and substantially expanded with the intention not only to improve the use of the book as an int- ductory text to conformal ?eld theory, but also to get in contact with some recent developments. In this way we take a number of remarks and contributions by re- ers of the ?rst edition into consideration who appreciated the rather detailed and self-contained exposition in the ?rst part of the notes but asked for more details for the second part. The enlarged edition also re?ects experiences made in seminars on the subject. The interest in conformal ?eld theory has grown during the last 10 years and several texts and monographs re?ecting different aspects of the ?eld have been p- lished as, e. g. , the detailed physics-oriented introduction of Di Francesco, Mathieu, 1 and Sen ' echal ' [DMS96*], the treatment of conformal ?eld theories as vertex - gebras by Kac [Kac98*], the development of conformal ?eld theory in the context of algebraic geometry as in Frenkel and Ben-Zvi [BF01*] and more general by Beilinson and Drinfeld [BD04*]. There is also the comprehensive collection of ar- clesbyDeligne,Freed,Witten,andothersin[Del99*]aimingtogiveanintroduction to strings and quantum ?eld theory for mathematicians where conformal ?eld theory is one of the main parts of the text. The present expanded notes complement these publications by giving an elementary and comparatively short mathematics-oriented introduction focusing on some main principles.

Ohne Mathematik ist ein tiefes Verstandnis der Physik nicht moeglich. Dabei werden in jungerer Zeit besonders differentialgeometrische und gruppentheoretische Methoden mit Erfolg angewandt. Dieses Lehrbuch fur die hoeheren Semester legt die notwendigen mathematischen Methoden anhand physikalischer Anwendungen dar und ist somit sowohl fur Physiker interessant, die Einblick in die mathematische Beschreibung ihrer Wissenschaft gewinnen wollen, als auch fur Mathematiker, die wissen wollen, wie die abstrakten Konzepte der modernen Mathematik angewandt werden.