Fuzzy approach to business improvement of holding equipment in the conditions of decreased production range

In recent years, manufacturing industry has been characterized by a decreased production range and a demand for a rapid change of production programs. In such conditions holding equipment costs are considerably larger. In this paper, we review and analyze possible ways of business improvement concerning holding equipment in specific production conditions characterized by the decreased production range and lack of financial sources for applying systems of assembled and disassembled equipment. Classification of elements and group of elements of those systems is performed by applying a new fuzzy ABC method presented in this paper. Selected optimization criteria describe the performance measures of elements and group of elements of assembled and disassembled equipment whereas their relative weights are not the same. It is assumed that the values of imprecise optimization criteria and their relative weights are described by discrete fuzzy numbers. The developed procedure is illustrated by an example with real input data

Priorities for Pig Research in Southeast Asia and the Pacific to 2010

Livestock Production/Industries, Research and Development/Tech Change/Emerging Technologies,

Performance in Consumer Financial Services Organizations: Framework and Results from the Pilot Study

Financial services comprise over 4 percent of the gross domestic product of the United States and employ over 5.4 million people. By offering vehicles for investment of savings, extension of credit and risk management, they fuel the modern capitalistic society. While the essential functions performed by the organizations that make up the financial services industry have remained relatively constant over the past several decades, the structure of the industry has undergone dramatic change. Liberalized domestic regulation, intensified international competition, rapid innovations in new financial instruments and the explosive growth in information technology fuel this change. With this change has come increasing pressure on managers and workers to dramatically improve productivity and financial performance. This paper summarizes the first year of a multi-year effort to understand the drivers of performance in financial services organizations. Financial services are the largest single consumer of information technology in the economy, investing $38.7 billion dollars in 1991 (National Research Council, 1994). While this investment has had a profound effect on the structure of the industry and the products it provides, its effect on financial performance of the industry remains elusive. Why this "productivity paradox" (Brynjolfsson and Hitt,1993) exists is an important part of this project. The authors describe the differences in productivity in services from manufacturing. In the service world, the consumer co-produces the product with the firm, ofte nadding labor to the creation of the service. In addition, the scope of the service enterprise typically is quite vast, with components of the service production process being both producers and deliverers of the service. In addition, the quality of the services provided is forever changing. Thus, the authors suggest that productivity gains from human resource improvements or technology investments may not show up in standard performance measures, but may rather be used to improve the quality of the service provided. What appears to be a stagnation in productivity may actually be an increase in value delivered to the customer. Delivering value to the customer may provide the institution with sales opportunities and much needed information about the institution's customer base. The pilot survey conducted by the authors examines the relationship between technological advancement and the relational part of service delivery by studying time spent with the customer in relation to technological sophistication and time spent on the entire delivery process. The authors adopt the view that processes are the central "technology" of an organization. As with any technology, the process must be maintained. After a process has reached its useful life, it should be scrapped or rebuilt. Thus, the authors suggest that researchers should take a life-cycle view of processes when undertaking efficiency studies. The authors rely heavily on a process-oriented methodology in their analysis of performance drivers in financial services. The study does not focus on traditional measures of productivity or financial performance. Rather, the authors base comparisons on intermediary measures which evaluate the drivers of performance from the perspective of all participants in the co-productive process. This pilot study starts with consumer financial services and in particular, retail banking. The authors review the relevant literature on financial services performance and then propose a conceptual framework for the study. The framework assumes that industry conditions and firm strategy are given. The authors focus is to examine the components of performance that managers can affect, given a strategy and industry operating conditions. Thus, their initial focus is guided by their desire to direct attention to issues of implementation and their effects on performance. The authors attempt to bridge the gap between traditional productivity measures and difficult-to-measure financial performance by developing a set of value creation components as an intermediary set of performance indicators. Based on pilot interviews, these indicators reflect effective performance in ways that are more meaningful than the more traditionalmeasure of productivity, as they are the goals toward which bank management strives. The key values the study attempts to measure are customer convenience, precision, efficient cost structure, adaptability and market penetration. The survey conducted by the research team benchmarks two types of management decisions that are presumed to drive these outcomes. The first set of management choices are implementation choices, human resources choices, technology implementation processes and product/servicedelivery processes. The second set of choices relates to management infrastructure, resource management processes, the information architecture of the firm, the performance management and control systems and the organizational structure of the firm. Based on interviews and the work of previous productivity studies, the research team developed a pilot survey focused on the practices of the functional areas, business lines, product groups and the retail distribution network. The pilot measured the outcomes and choices made by managers in seven large commercial banks. The pilot results will lead to a large scale survey of practices for the entire retail banking sector. Based on early pilot results, the researchers concluded that managers in consumer financial services firms typically assume that improvement in one area of performance is largely at the expense of decreased performance in other areas. The authors believe this is only partly true. Based on the pilot results, the authors believe that better management practices can move outcomes in a number of areas simultaneously. Through effective process design, use of technology and management of human resources, institutions can improve performance in multiple categories. The successful financial services organizations will be those which find processes and practices that enhance multiple measures of performance. The results of the large scale survey of practices will be available in early 1996.

Joint pricing and production management: A geometric programming approach with consideration of cubic production cost function

Coordination and harmony between different departments of a company can be an important factor in achieving competitive advantage if the company corrects alignment between strategies of different departments. This paper presents an integrated decision model based on recent advances of geometric programming technique. The demand of a product considers as a power function of factors such as product's price, marketing expenditures, and consumer service expenditures. Furthermore, production cost considers as a cubic power function of outputs. The model will be solved by recent advances in convex optimization tools. Finally, the solution procedure is illustrated by numerical example

Training of Crisis Mappers and Map Production from Multi-sensor Data: Vernazza Case Study (Cinque Terre National Park, Italy)

This aim of paper is to presents the development of a multidisciplinary project carried out by the cooperation between Politecnico di Torino and ITHACA (Information Technology for Humanitarian Assistance, Cooperation and Action). The goal of the project was the training in geospatial data acquiring and processing for students attending Architecture and Engineering Courses, in order to start up a team of "volunteer mappers". Indeed, the project is aimed to document the environmental and built heritage subject to disaster; the purpose is to improve the capabilities of the actors involved in the activities connected in geospatial data collection, integration and sharing. The proposed area for testing the training activities is the Cinque Terre National Park, registered in the World Heritage List since 1997. The area was affected by flood on the 25th of October 2011. According to other international experiences, the group is expected to be active after emergencies in order to upgrade maps, using data acquired by typical geomatic methods and techniques such as terrestrial and aerial Lidar, close-range and aerial photogrammetry, topographic and GNSS instruments etc.; or by non conventional systems and instruments such us UAV, mobile mapping etc. The ultimate goal is to implement a WebGIS platform to share all the data collected with local authorities and the Civil Protectio

Aerospace Medicine and Biology: A continuing bibliography, supplement 191

A bibliographical list of 182 reports, articles, and other documents introduced into the NASA scientific and technical information system in February 1979 is presented

Divergence or Convergence in Research and Development and Innovation Between ‘East’ and ‘West’?

Book description: Research suggests that innovation and technological change are crucial for the economic recovery of the former centrally planned countries in Central and Eastern Europe. This book analyses the development of innovation systems and technology policy in this region from various perspectives, demonstrating not only its importance but also its complexity