Book Description

This informative anthology provides convenient, inexpensive access to current, carefully selected articles from such sources as Production and Inventory Management Journal, Forbes, Fortune, National Productivity Review, APICS--The Performance Advantage, and Business Week.

The readings cover performance improvement; quality; human resources management for productivity; forecasting and product design; capacity, location, logistics, and layout planning; inventory and supply-chain management, and emerging trends. ... Read more

Book Description

This collection of papers gives a broad overview of the state of the art in Multiple Criteria Decision Making (MCDM), in both theory and practice. Topical sections are ranging from preference modelling and methodological developments to a number of applications of MCDM thinking. Special sections are devoted to applications in natural resources and environmental management issues, to negotiation and group decision support, and to philosophical issues, particularly in the interface between systems thinking and MCDM. The book will be relevant not only to those working in the area of MCDM, but also to researchers and practitioners concerned with broader areas of management science, especially those concerned with decision support systems and negotiation support. ... Read more

Book Description

Business modelling is a vast arena of research and practice, which is gaining increasing important in the rapid development of e-commerce, globalization, and in particular, the movement toward global e-business. The ability to utilize advanced computing technology to model, analyse and simulate various aspects of ever-changing businesses has made a significant impact on the way businesses are designed and run these days. With the current global e-business and e-commerce initiatives, it has become important that all businesses carefully validate their business objectives, requirements, and strategies through a careful process of formal business modelling. It is important for effective enterprise decision making to have clear, concise business models that allow the extraction of critical value from business processes and specify the rules to be globally enforced. Particularly in e-business specifications, the need to be unambiguous, accurate, and complete becomes even greater, because there may be no human mediator or agent to rely on in complex or unforeseen situations. Business Modelling: Multidisciplinary Approaches -- Economics, Operational, and Information Systems Perspectives, arranged in three parts, brings scholarly perspectives from various disciplines to bear on some of the critical aspects of business modeling. The first part (chapters 1-8) focuses on business modelling fundamentals and starts with a series of economics and operations research perspectives. The second part (chapters 9-19) concentrates on modelling in electronic businesses and focuses on Management Information Systems and Decision Support Systems. The third part (chapters 20-22) centers on multidisciplinary business modelling progress, in particular on the seminal work of Professor Andrew B. Whinston. ... Read more

Book Description

Inventory and Supply Chain Management with Forecast Updates is concerned with the problems of inventory and supply chain decision making with information updating over time. The models considered include inventory decisions with multiple sources and delivery modes, supply-contract design and evaluation, contracts with exercise price, volume-flexible contracts allowing for spot-market purchase decisions, and competitive supply chains. Real problems are formulated into tractable mathematical models, which allow for an analysis of various approaches, and provide insights for better supply chain management. The book provides a unified treatment of these models, presents a critique of the existing results, and points out potential research directions. Attention is focused on solutions—that is, inventory decisions prior and subsequent to information updates and the impact of the quality of information on these decisions. Supply chain management research has attracted a great deal of attention over the past ten years. Moreover, it is an area of research that covers an enormous territory involving multiple disciplines. Supply chain management is studied and practiced in both academic as well as by practitioner circles. This is a book that is written for students, researchers, and practitioners across a number of domains including Operations Management Science, Operations Research, Applied Mathematics and Engineering. ... Read more

Book Description

Frequency Plots teaches simple graphical tools that show how often different data values occur and provides fundamental information about your process.The information is presented in a straightforward, easy-to-understand manner through a series of exercises and case studies.Users of Plain & Simple Series learn how to select the right tool for the task at hand, collect the right data, interpret the data, and take appropriate action based on their findings. ... Read more

Book Description

Emotions at Work is a comprehensive review of the whole spectrum of emotions, both negative and positive, as they impinge upon organizations and their workforces. Roy Payne and Cary Cooper have enlisted the expertise of an international star cast to convey the importance and magnitude of this topic to the academic and the business world today.

Arranged in five sections, this important reference includes definitions, measurement and assessment, biological correlates, the influence of organizations on emotion, how to manage emotions and what future influences there may be on the area, including discussion of emotional intelligence. Whatever the individual topic under discussion, authors relate their findings to the workplace and practical applications for management. ... Read more

Reviews (1)

how do you achieve the balance?
This book brings up the interesting issue of emotions and the workplace, a tricky balancing act. However, the unique approach to this issue presented here makes this a standout from "touchy-feely" HR/OB books. Scientific and sociological analysis plays a large role here, so this is recommended for those who prefer objectivity over subjectivity. ... Read more

Book Description

Scheduling is a resource allocation problem which exists in virtually every type of organization. Scheduling problems have produced roughly 40 years of research primarily within the OR community. This community has traditionally emphasized mathematical modeling techniques which seek exact solutions to well formulated optimization problems. While this approach produced important results, many contemporary scheduling problems are particularly difficult. Hence, over the last ten years operations researchers interested in scheduling have turned increasingly to more computer intensive and heuristic approaches. At roughly the same time, researchers in AI began to focus their methods on industrial and management science applications. The result of this confluence of fields has been a period of remarkable growth and excitement in scheduling research.Intelligent Scheduling Systems captures the results of a new wave of research at the forefront of scheduling research, of interest to researchers and practitioners alike. Presented are an array of the latest contemporary tools -- math modeling to tabu search to genetic algorithms -- that can assist in operational scheduling and solve difficult scheduling problems. The book presents the most recent research results from both operations research (OR) and artificial intelligence (AI) focusing their efforts on real scheduling problems. ... Read more

Book Description

Consists of invited papers, from internationally recognized researchers, chosen for their quality as well as their overall unity. Describes current methods along with innovative research and presents new technologies for solving problems unique to establishment surveys. Stages of the survey process are addressed in the first five parts with cross-cutting topics in the last section. ... Read more

Book Description

Corporations from around the world have begun to taste the benefits of the Internet in many areas. Few, however, have infused their end-to-end operations with Internet technologies. This book goes beyond point solutions to define a cohesive framework for an Internet-enabled Operting Model, or I-Operations.

Based on proven thinking-tools and detailed research, I-Operations addresses the challenge of how to achieve sustainable Impact in the Internet Economy. Leaders of academic institutions, businesses, charities and governments will be provoked to find their own I-Operations strategy as they read this book. ... Read more

Reviews (3)

I-Operations: Insightful and Informative Book
This book rates highly with me because: 1) it's brief and to the point, 2) it treats I-Operations in the larger enterprise operations context, 3) it deals with the nuances of I-Operations in a thorough, clear manner, and 4) it's well written in manner accessible by non-IT executives as well - I can give it any reasonably IT-literate CxO to read.

The last section incorporating the "10 F's" is especially welcome and well done.

I had the pleasure of meeting Brett Johnson recently and it's always reassuring to know that an author can "walk the talk", as is the case here.

I strongly recommend this book.

Easy access to today's business issues
In our business of providing business solutions it is imperative that we are on the cutting edge of thinking and tools in the market. I find Brett Johnson's book full of substance that is pertinent to the issues being wrestled with in business today. This book is also very accessible, with a clean writing style that makes it easy to grasp the content. Highly recommended for business leaders.

Great book for businesses
Great tool to develop a plan to apply the internet to a business. ... Read more

Book Description

ExpressExec is a unique business resource of one hundred books. These books present the best current thinking and span the entire range of contemporary business practice. Each book gives you the key concepts behind the subject and the techniques to implement the ideas effectively, together with lessons from benchmark companies and ideas from the world's smartest thinkers.

ExpressExec is organised into ten core subject areas making it easy to find the information you need:

01 Innovation
02 Enterprise
03 Strategy
04 Marketing
05 Finance
06 Operations and Technology
07 Organizations
08 Leading
09 People
10 Life and Work

ExpressExec is a perfect learning solution for people who need to master the latest business thinking and practice quickly. ... Read more

Book Description

To tackle the complex problems of life today, we need to coordinate a wide range of expertise. Systems concepts and methods offer the means of integrating the contributions of specialists, including managers, scientists and engineers.

The book introduces simple yet sound concepts and a language understandable to all concerned. Its methods of process modelling, systems analysis and design complement traditional methods of engineering and management. It demonstrates those methods on problems arising from everyday life, industry, business, quality management and public administration.

This introductory book is suitable for managers and professionals, as well as undergraduates on business, engineering, computing and science courses who aspire to become professional problem solvers. ... Read more

Book Description

This invaluable book provides an account of Operational Research in Britain, the country of its inception, from the late 1930s to 1970. Originating in response to the country's air defence needs against the Luftwaffe, Operational Research had outstanding achievements as part of the 'secret war' against Nazi Germany. After 1945, the discipline began to be adopted in an increasing range of industries and services. In the 1960s — by which time it was being incorporated in to university curricula — the discipline began to penetrate into civil government departments. The history of Operational Research provides unique insights into the conduct of modern warfare, the professionalisation of business management and the modernisation of the civil service. The chronological coverage, from the late 1930s to 1970, coincides with 'golden age' of Operational Research, when the discipline was presented as a means of achieving optimum solutions to complex managerial problems. The book will be of interest to military and business historians, as well as to historians of public administration and higher education. ... Read more

Reviews (1)

An excellent collections of OR cases, emphasizing process
An excellent collection of OR cases developed in Europe in the last decade, presenting different categories of problems, consulting process used and (in a lesser degree) technique. Very good bibliographic references in most cases. Emphasizes trade-offs for organizational fitness, data availability, user interface and other practical topics not commonly found in the field of OR. Useful discussions of "theory vs practice" and the future of OR: Should be very useful as a complementary text in OR courses (I plan to use it on mine). ... Read more

Book Description

Using a business process approach, this text focuses on not only the concepts but also the applicable skills in the design and implementation of an effective accounting information system.Throughout the text, the authors emphasize the relevance of the content to accountants and the roles that they play as designer, user and evaluator of information systems. ... Read more

Book Description

Hardbound. This is an annual research series devoted to the examination of occupational stress, health and well being, with particular emphasis on the multi-disciplinary nature of occupational stress. The intent is to pull together the various streams of research from a variety of disciplines to better capture the significant bodies of work in occupational stress and well being.

We provide a multidisciplinary and international perspective that gives a thorough and critical assessment of issues in occupational stress and well being.The theme for this volume, Historical and Current Perspectives on Stress and Health focuses on two main concerns: historical as well as current perspectives to occupational stress research and an emphasis on the healthy individual and organization. ... Read more

Book Description

This is the first comprehensive book to present, in English, the multicriteria methodology for decision aiding. In the foreword the distinctive features and main ideas of the European School of MCDA are outlined. The twelve chapters are essentially expository in nature, but scholarly in treatment. Some questions, which are too often neglected in the literature on decision theory, such as how is a decision made, who are the actors, what is a decision aiding model, how to define the set of alternatives, are discussed. Examples are used throughout the book to illustrate the various concepts. Ways to model the consequences of each alternative and building criteria taking into account the inevitable imprecisions, uncertainties and indeterminations are described and illustrated. The three classical operational approaches of MCDA: synthesis in one criterion (including MAUT), synthesis by outranking relations, interactive local judgements, are studied. This methodology tries to be a theoretical or intellectual framework directed towards formulating recommendations for action.Audience:The book is addressed to graduate students, postgraduates and researchers in management sciences, operations research or decision analysis, as well as all scientists who use models and methods for guiding decisions. In addition all those who, in business and administration, wish to take part in decision-making through scientific reasoning will be interested. The contents of the book are organized in such a way as to help individuals with different backgrounds and interests chart an appropriate course through the chapters (see Reader's Guide in the front-matter). ... Read more