Exploring the Strategic Use of Platform-Based Planning

Platform planning is a strategy that can be effectively used to manage today’s rapidly changing environment. It is the process by which core elements are identified and used as a foundation for future growth. Although platform planning is most often associated with product design, its value is now being acknowledged along other dimensions of marketing strategy such as brands, target markets, geographical markets, and business processes. This paper summarizes literature introducing different dimensions of marketing strategy that platform planning can be applied to. Next it introduces findings from engineering literature regarding the benefits and risks associated with this type of planning. Finally, it applies engineering knowledge to strategic decision-making in marketing. For example, engineering literature suggests that platform-based planning for global markets will allow firms to better balance the adaptation versus standardization decision but could lead to suboptimal designs and the emergence of grey markets

An analysis of current supply chain best practices in the retail industry with case studies of Wal-Mart and Amazon.com

Thesis (M. Eng. in Logistics)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Engineering Systems Division, 2005.Includes bibliographical references (leaves 184-188).In support of the Supply Chain 2020 Project at MIT, this thesis identifies current best practices in retail industry supply chains, with a specific focus on mass merchandising and Internet retailing. Using a survey of current literature for context and industry expert interviews, this thesis assesses the current state of the retail industry and analyzes case studies of Wal-Mart and Amazon.com to illustrate retail supply chain best practices. Topics covered in each case study include supply chain strategy and business strategy linkage, operating models, supply chain design, replenishment and distribution processes, and ongoing supply chain improvement initiatives. Wal-Mart and Amazon.com are found to have very different supply chains in terms of structure and processes, based on their different operating models. However, there are many supply chain themes that are common among the two companies. Both case study companies have supply chain strategies, designs, and processes that clearly support their business strategies. Additionally, these companies tailor processes to fit specific product and demand profiles, collaborate extensively with supply chain partners, invest significantly in information technology, focus on operational efficiency, and leverage scale to facilitate competitive advantage through supply chain management. Based on the common and unique aspects of Wal- Mart and Amazon.com's supply chains, we provide recommendations for the potential transferability of Wal-Mart and Amazon.com practices within the retail industry and to other industries.by Colby Ronald Chiles and Marguarette Thi Dau.M.Eng.in Logistic

Generating citizen trust in e-government using a trust verification agent: A research note

Generating Citizen Trust in e-Government using a Trust Verification AgentThis is an eGISE network paper. It is motivated by a concern about the extent to which trust issues inhibit a citizen’s take-up of online public sector services or engagement with public decision and policy making. A citizen’s decision to use online systems is influenced by their willingness to trust the environment and agency involved. This project addresses one aspect of individual “trust” decisions by providing support for citizens trying to evaluate the implications of the security infrastructure provided by the agency. Based on studies of the way both groups (citizens and agencies) express their concerns and concepts in the security area, the project will develop a software tool – a trust verification agent (TVA) - that can take an agency’s security statements (or security audit) and infer how effectively this meets the security concerns of a particular citizen. This will enable citizens to state their concerns and obtain an evaluation of the agency’s provision in appropriate “citizen friendly” language. Further, by employing rule-based expert systems techniques the TVA will also be able to explain its evaluation.Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council, UK (grant GR/T27020/01

Generating citizen trust in e-government using a trust verification agent: A research note

Generating Citizen Trust in e-Government using a Trust Verification AgentThis is an eGISE network paper. It is motivated by a concern about the extent to which trust issues inhibit a citizen’s take-up of online public sector services or engagement with public decision and policy making. A citizen’s decision to use online systems is influenced by their willingness to trust the environment and agency involved. This project addresses one aspect of individual “trust” decisions by providing support for citizens trying to evaluate the implications of the security infrastructure provided by the agency. Based on studies of the way both groups (citizens and agencies) express their concerns and concepts in the security area, the project will develop a software tool – a trust verification agent (TVA) - that can take an agency’s security statements (or security audit) and infer how effectively this meets the security concerns of a particular citizen. This will enable citizens to state their concerns and obtain an evaluation of the agency’s provision in appropriate “citizen friendly” language. Further, by employing rule-based expert systems techniques the TVA will also be able to explain its evaluation.Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council-UK (grant GR/T27020/01

Managing Diversity and Glass Ceiling Initiatives as National Economic Imperatives

Glass Ceiling ReportGlassCeilingBackground5ManagingDiversity.pdf: 11584 downloads, before Oct. 1, 2020

Heartland Payment Systems: lessons learned from a data breach

On August 13, 2009, the Payment Cards Center hosted a workshop examining the changing nature of data security in consumer electronic payments. The center invited the chairman and CEO of Heartland Payment Systems (HPS or Heartland), Robert (Bob) Carr, to lead this discussion and to share his experiences stemming from the data breach at his company in late 2008 and, as important, to discuss lessons learned as a result of this event. The former director of the Payment Cards Center, Peter Burns, who is acting as a senior payments advisor to HPS, also joined the discussion to outline Heartland's post-breach efforts aimed at improving information sharing and data security within the consumer payments industry. In conclusion, Carr introduced several technology solutions that are under discussion in payment security circles as ways to better secure payment card data as they move among the different parties in the card payment systems: end-to-end encryption, tokenization, and chip technology. While HPS has been very supportive of end-to-end encryption, each of these alternatives offers its own set of advantages and disadvantages.Payment systems ; Data protection ; Electronic commerce

A Software Product Line Approach to Ontology-based Recommendations in E-Tourism Systems

This study tackles two concerns of developers of Tourism Information Systems (TIS). First is the need for more dependable recommendation services due to the intangible nature of the tourism product where it is impossible for customers to physically evaluate the services on offer prior to practical experience. Second is the need to manage dynamic user requirements in tourism due to the advent of new technologies such as the semantic web and mobile computing such that etourism systems (TIS) can evolve proactively with emerging user needs at minimal time and development cost without performance tradeoffs. However, TIS have very predictable characteristics and are functionally identical in most cases with minimal variations which make them attractive for software product line development. The Software Product Line Engineering (SPLE) paradigm enables the strategic and systematic reuse of common core assets in the development of a family of software products that share some degree of commonality in order to realise a significant improvement in the cost and time of development. Hence, this thesis introduces a novel and systematic approach, called Product Line for Ontology-based Tourism Recommendation (PLONTOREC), a special approach focusing on the creation of variants of TIS products within a product line. PLONTOREC tackles the aforementioned problems in an engineering-like way by hybridizing concepts from ontology engineering and software product line engineering. The approach is a systematic process model consisting of product line management, ontology engineering, domain engineering, and application engineering. The unique feature of PLONTOREC is that it allows common TIS product requirements to be defined, commonalities and differences of content in TIS product variants to be planned and limited in advance using a conceptual model, and variant TIS products to be created according to a construction specification. We demonstrated the novelty in this approach using a case study of product line development of e-tourism systems for three countries in the West-African Region of Africa

Cost management and cross-functional communication through product architectures

Product architecture decisions regarding, for example, product modularity, component commonality, and design re-use, are important for balancing costs, responsiveness, quality, and other important business objectives. Firms are challenged with complex tradeoffs between competing design priorities, face the need to facilitate communication between functional silos, and want to learn from past experiences. In this paper, we present a qualitative approach for systematically evaluating the product architecture of a product family, comparing the original architecture objectives and actual experiences. The intended contribution of our research is threefold: (1) to present a framework that brings together a diverse set of product architecture-related decisions and business performance; (2) to provide a set of metrics that operationalise the variables in the framework, and (3) to provide a workshop protocol that is based on the framework and the metrics. This workshop aims to improve cross-functional communication about the product architecture of an existing product family, and it results in practical improvement actions for future architecture design projects. Experiences with this approach are reported in pilots with Philips Domestic Appliances and Personal Care, and Philips Consumer Electronics