Proceedings of Mathsport international 2017 conference

Proceedings of MathSport International 2017 Conference, held in the Botanical Garden of the University of Padua, June 26-28, 2017. MathSport International organizes biennial conferences dedicated to all topics where mathematics and sport meet. Topics include: performance measures, optimization of sports performance, statistics and probability models, mathematical and physical models in sports, competitive strategies, statistics and probability match outcome models, optimal tournament design and scheduling, decision support systems, analysis of rules and adjudication, econometrics in sport, analysis of sporting technologies, financial valuation in sport, e-sports (gaming), betting and sports

An aesthetic for sustainable interactions in product-service systems?

Copyright @ 2012 Greenleaf PublishingEco-efficient Product-Service System (PSS) innovations represent a promising approach to sustainability. However the application of this concept is still very limited because its implementation and diffusion is hindered by several barriers (cultural, corporate and regulative ones). The paper investigates the barriers that affect the attractiveness and acceptation of eco-efficient PSS alternatives, and opens the debate on the aesthetic of eco-efficient PSS, and the way in which aesthetic could enhance some specific inner qualities of this kinds of innovations. Integrating insights from semiotics, the paper outlines some first research hypothesis on how the aesthetic elements of an eco-efficient PSS could facilitate user attraction, acceptation and satisfaction

Frontline workers in education, health and welfare: how much do they earn in European countries? A comparative income analysis based on the EU-LFS

The present paper analyses frontline workers' incomes in the fields of education, health, and welfare ("EHW"). In the face of an upsurge in demand for such services, the question is how EHW occupations can attract enough qualified workers, now and in the future. In public perception, EHW work is poorly paid, while empirically, wage heterogeneity between occupations is quite large. A comprehensive comparison of EHW occupations' wages across Europe is still lacking. The present contribution seeks to fill this gap by comparing incomes for 24 European countries, based on data from the European Union's labour force survey (EU-LFS) between 2016 and 2020. Our descriptive analysis yields that EHW workers earn slightly above-average incomes in the majority of countries. This result can be explained by the high share of EHW workers with a tertiary education level. By contrast, for EHW workers with only secondary education, we find that they earn less in EHW than in other labour-market segments. Both outside and inside the EHW, we observe higher incomes for men than for women. Between EHW occupations, there is an income hierarchy led by medical doctors and tertiary education teachers. At the lower end, there are personal care workers with lower formal education who earn below-average incomes in all observed countries. Yet the degree to which they are penalised differs widely. From a dynamic perspective, our findings hint at a slightly deteriorating relative income position of EHW workers in the 2010s, apparently caused less by declining wages than by structural change in the wider labour market.In diesem Working Paper werden Einkommen von Beschäftigten in den Bereichen Bildung, Gesundheit und Soziales ("EHW") analysiert. Angesichts der steigenden Nachfrage nach solchen Dienstleistungen stellt sich die Frage, wie EHW-Berufe jetzt und in Zukunft genügend qualifizierte Arbeitskräfte anziehen können. In der öffentlichen Wahrnehmung ist Arbeit in diesen Bereichen schlecht bezahlt, während empirisch eher Lohnheterogenität beobachtbar ist. Ein umfassender Vergleich der Löhne von EHW-Berufen in ganz Europa steht noch aus. Der vorliegende Beitrag untersucht auf Basis der Arbeitskräfteerhebung der Europäischen Union (EU-AKE) Einkommen in 24 europäischen Ländern in den Jahren 2016 bis 2020. Es zeigt sich, dass EHW-Beschäftigte in der Mehrzahl dieser Länder leicht überdurchschnittliche Einkommen erzielen. Dies lässt sich durch den hohen Anteil von EHW-Beschäftigten mit einem tertiären Bildungsniveau erklären. Im Gegensatz dazu stellen wir fest, dass EHW-Beschäftigte, die nur über einen Sekundarschulabschluss verfügen, in den Bereichen Bildung, Gesundheit und Soziales weniger verdienen als anderswo. Sowohl außerhalb als auch innerhalb dieser Bereiche beobachten wir höhere Einkommen für Männer als für Frauen. Zwischen EHW-Berufen gibt es eine Einkommenshierarchie, die von Ärzten und Hochschullehrern angeführt wird. Am unteren Ende befinden sich Pflegekräfte mit wenig formaler Qualifikation, die in allen beobachteten Ländern unterdurchschnittliche Einkommen erzielen. Das Ausmaß der Benachteiligung ist jedoch sehr unterschiedlich. Unsere Ergebnisse deuten ferner darauf hin, dass sich die relative Einkommensposition von EHW-Beschäftigten in den 2010er Jahren leicht verschlechtert hat, was offenbar weniger auf sinkende Löhne als auf strukturelle Veränderungen im Arbeitsmarkt insgesamt zurückzuführen ist

Management for Bachelors

The textbook contains educational module, which embraces the content of main regulatory disciplines on specialists training by the direction 6.030601 “Management” in the knowledge branch 03.06 “Management and administration” of the educational and qualification level “Bachelor”. According to the content the disciplines completely conform to curricula approved by scientific and methodological commission on management and agreed with logical and structural scheme of educational process. The textbook embraces almost all aspects of bachelor training. The chapters contain questions for self-control and list of recommended literature. While creating the chapters the results of fundamental and applied scientific researches of the evaluation branch, the forecasting and management of economic potential of complicated industrial system were used

Design of equipment safety & reliability for an aseptic liquid food packaging line through maintenance engineering

This thesis was submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy and awarded by Brunel University.The organisation of maintenance, in the Aseptic Liquid Food (ALF) industry, represents an important management task that enables a company to pursue higher manufacturing effectiveness and improved market share. This research is concerned with the process to design and implement maintenance tasks. These two complementary processes (design and implementation) have been thought and designed to answer the particular needs of food industry regarding product safety and equipment reliability. Numerous maintenance engineering researchers have focused on maintenance engineering and reliability techniques highlighting the contribution of maintenance in achieving world class manufacturing and competitive advantage. Their outcome emphasizes that maintenance is not a “necessary evil” because of costs associated, but it can be considered an “investment” that produces an added value which generates a real company profit. The existing maintenance engineering techniques pursue equipment reliability at minimum cost; but in food industry, food safety represents the most critical issue to address and solve. The research methodology chosen is based on case studies coming from ALF industries. These show that low maintenance effectiveness could have dramatic effects on final consumers and on the company’s image and underline the need of a maintenance design and implementation process that takes into consideration all critical factors relevant to liquid food industry. The analysis of measurable indicators available, represents a tool necessary to show the status of critical performance indicators and reveals the urgency of a research necessary to address and solve the maintenance problems in food industry. The literature review underlines the increasing regulations in place in food industry and that no literature is available to define a maintenance design and implementation process for ALF and in general for food industry. The literature review enabled also the gap existing between theory and real maintenance status, in the ALF, to be identified and the aim of the research was to explore this gap. The analysis of case studies and Key Performance Indicators (KPI’s) available highlights the problem and the literature review provides the knowledge necessary to identify the process to design and implement maintenance procedures for ALF industry. The research findings provide a useful guide to identify the process to design maintenance tasks able to put under control food safety and equipment reliability issues. Company’s restraining forces and cultural inertia, that work against new maintenance procedures, have been analysed and a maintenance implementation process have been designed to avoid losing the benefits produced by the design phase. The analysis of condition monitoring systems shows devices and techniques useful to improve product safety, equipment reliability, and then maintenance effectiveness. This research aimed to fill the gap in the existing literature showing the solution to manage both food safety and production effectiveness issues in food industry. It identifies a maintenance design process able to capture all conceivable critical factors in food industry and to provide the solution to design reliable task lists. Furthermore, the maintenance implementation process shows the way to maximize the maintenance design outcome through the empowerment of equipment operators and close cooperation with maintenance and quality specialists. The new maintenance design and implementation process represents the answer to the research problem and a reliable solution that allows the food industry to improve food safety and production effectiveness

Transformation of German IT Infrastructure Sales Ecosystems during the Course of Digitalisation

The businesses of IT infrastructure product and service manufacturers in Germany are exposed to a variety of opportunities and risks. Some of the opportunities they face emerge from the rapid pace of technological development and the resulting business potential in artificial intelligence, big data analytics, internet of things and cloud technologies. These technologies offer their customers a vast amount of opportunities to innovate their business models and design their digital transformation to compete. IT infrastructure vendors can benefit from associated investments. However, these developments also entail certain business risks for vendors, such as those arising from the availability of innovative public cloud offerings, which can replace commoditised IT infrastructure. As a result, IT Infrastructure vendors experience significant changes in customer (purchasing) behaviour, which threatens their business success. Some of these changes are of a disruptive nature and affect both the manufacturers and also their indirect sales partners in the IT infrastructure sales ecosystem. Based on a Grounded Theory Methodology (GTM) research approach, this study has aimed to improve the understanding of these market dynamics and to provide a transformation framework that enables vendors and their partners to adapt to the changes. Data collection was carried out by conducting twenty-four semi-structured interviews with business professionals who reported on their long-term experiences and observations in this regard. The study analysed which relevant influencing factors have to be considered and how the affected sales ecosystems are structurally changing. As the findings of the study indicate, successful IT infrastructure sales ecosystem transformations depend on a variety of influencing factors. From a customer perspective, these factors relate to the necessity of a modified vendor sales differentiation strategy, providing added value to clients during digital business transformation. Corresponding activities build on the prior development of the skills of the vendors' sales teams. Furthermore, the study underlines the relevance of developing and expanding the sales partner landscape to provide customers with a scalable ecosystem with all digitalisation-relevant core competencies during the increasingly demanding sales process. The study also revealed an increased need to particularly take into account individual sales employee needs and concerns during transformation efforts and to promote improved procedural and organisational agility. For each of these aspects, the study presents and discusses a variety of adequate action strategies. Compared to the existing literature, the findings particularly suggest a different way of thinking during transformation that takes into account the relevance of ambidexterity, trust and empowerment of employees and partners to ensure transformation success. As a further contribution to both theory and practice the study provides the so-called “A.C.T.I.V.A.T.E.” model for managing transformational change, which integrates the identified influencing factors and provides concrete strategies to handle them. For this purpose, the framework allows the assessment of the individual maturity level of sales ecosystems and suggests concrete recommendations to develop them further. This approach enables vendors and their partners to exploit and explore both existing and new market opportunities and to mitigate transformation risks to the same extent