Adopting E-Business in Small and Medium Enterprise

Companies have grown sigificantly due to internet and electronic business (e-business). E- Business has become a part of everyday life for individuals and organizations. E-business systems used to be costly and only large organizations could afford to implement them. The recently developed information technologies including web-based applications have made e-business systems cost effective and easy to implement for medium and small enterprises (SMEs). For the purposes of this paper, a small business is defined to have fewer than 250 employees, and a medium size business is defined to have fewer than 500 employees

Reasons for the low usage of scheduling software and the difference in production performance between users and nonusers of scheduling software from a lean manufacturing perspective

It is more important than ever for printers to improve efficiency and productivity, and the means for doing so are available. Computer-assisted scheduling is one method that is claimed to increase throughput speed and reduce costs, among other benefits. Recently, scheduling applications have started to increase in popularity, and many management information systems (MISs) have built-in scheduling features. However, only 15% of the companies that own scheduling software utilize it. The first part of this research project seeks to determine the reasons for the low usage. Another way to increase efficiency is through Lean manufacturing, a strategy for eliminating non-value-added activities, such as defects, excess inventory, and overproduction. Lean manufacturing and computer-assisted scheduling share many of the same objectives. The second part of the research project seeks to determine whether or not there is a difference in production performance between users and nonusers of scheduling software from a lean manufacturing perspective. The analysis is based on data collected through an email questionnaire from 60 commercial printing companies in the U.S. It was found that the surveyed companies who own scheduling software but do not use it, do not rely on the application’s capability because they believe that they can achieve better control with manual scheduling. Furthermore, they believe scheduling software is difficult to integrate with their workflow. Companies who have owned an MIS for 5 years or fewer have a more negative perception about scheduling software compared with those who have owned one for a longer time. In the research, it was also found that companies using scheduling software have higher utilization rates of equipment, shorter lead times for paper storage, and a higher percentage of short makereadies out of the total number of makreadies. Nonusers of scheduling software have shorter throughput time and shorter waiting time for a job between preflighting and platemaking, between platemaking and plate mounting, and between completed printing and the first postpress operation. In general, the scheduling software users in the study are more homogeneous as a group in performance, whereas the nonusers are more diverse in performance, with a relatively high percentage performing at a very low or very high level. The implication of the study is that scheduling software needs to be more userfriendly and easier to customize to increase the flexibility and capability of integrating it into a workflow. Furthermore, companies that own scheduling software, but do not use it, should investigate the possibility of achieving better performance by beginning to use the scheduling application. Scheduling software that is already in house has the capability of enhancing a lean manufacturing effort

Enabling supply chain cooperation with information sharing

Thesis (M.B.A.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Sloan School of Management; and, (S.M.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Engineering Systems Division; in conjunction with the Leaders for Global Operations Program at MIT, 2009.Cataloged from PDF version of thesis.Includes bibliographical references (p. 74-77).Virtual Business System (VBS) is a system with software and hardware components designed by Raytheon employees to improve operational performance by facilitating and reinforcing lean behavior. It has helped contribute to four years in a row of twenty-percent yearly reductions in costs by providing near real-time metrics information, visibility into the details underlying those metrics, and publishing results to provide accountability for continuous improvement efforts. Originally designed for use in a manufacturing cell, its use has since expanded to include project management, engineering, quality, and other functions. This thesis examines how VBS has contributed to internal alignment at Raytheon and explores whether it can fulfill Raytheon's external supply chain coordination needs as well. VBS was successfully upgraded to allow supplier access over Citrix; the next step is to conduct a pilot implementation to test the system in practice. As a "homegrown" system, VBS can be made to do nearly anything, and in time could fulfill Raytheon's supply chain integration needs. In the near term, additional work is likely to be necessary in the areas of data access control, user interface, and extension from stand-alone system to a peer-to-peer information sharing network. The VBS team will also need to continue gathering executive sponsorship and support in order to motivate the necessary change in business processes. A number of lessons applicable to supply chain integration systems in general can be learned from the success of VBS.(cont.) These include: the importance of ensuring client control and security of the data; the potential gains made possible by sharing functionality in addition to data; the need to include information about improvement processes when sharing information; and the critical need that the application remain flexible and responsive to change in user needs.by Akiva Holzer.S.M.M.B.A

Hierarchical categorisation of tags for delicious

In the scenario of social bookmarking, a user browsing the Web bookmarks web pages and assigns free-text labels (i.e., tags) to them according to their personal preferences. In this technical report, we approach one of the practical aspects when it comes to represent users' interests from their tagging activity, namely the categorization of tags into high-level categories of interest. The reason is that the representation of user profiles on the basis of the myriad of tags available on the Web is certainly unfeasible from various practical perspectives; mainly concerning the unavailability of data to reliably, accurately measure interests across such fine-grained categorisation, and, should the data be available, its overwhelming computational intractability. Motivated by this, our study presents the results of a categorization process whereby a collection of tags posted at Delicious #http://delicious.com# are classified into 200 subcategories of interest.Preprin

The Impact of Industry 4.0 on Supply Chain Capability and Supply Chain Resilience: A Dynamic Resource-Based View

Industry 4.0, a collection of emerging intelligent and digital technologies, has been the main interest of both researchers and practitioners in operations management (OM) in recent years. Despite its proclaimed effectiveness in supply chain (SC) management, empirical studies examining the effects of Industry 4.0 adoption on SC resilience have been underrepresented in the current OM literature. In our study, we explore the effects of 16 Industry 4.0 technologies and IT advancement concerning SC resilience through the mediating roles of SC capabilities with respect to SC collaboration and SC visibility. Following the dynamic resource-based view (RBV), we regard Industry 4.0 adoption and IT advancement as two important IT resources with heterogeneity, SC collaboration and SC visibility as essential SC dynamic capabilities, and SC resilience as competitive advantages. We suggest the combination and evolution of IT resources and dynamic SC capabilities helps firms obtain the competitive advantage regarding SC resilience. Using data from a survey of 408 Chinese manufacturing firms, we reveal Industry 4.0 adoption is positively related to IT advancement and that Industry 4.0 has a nonsignificant impact on SC capabilities, whereas IT advancement has a positive impact on SC capabilities. Additionally, both SC collaboration and visibility positively influence SC resilience and significantly mediate the impacts of Industry 4.0 and IT advancement on SC resilience. Our study offers an enhanced understanding of the specific flows between Industry 4.0 and SC resilience and provides nuanced insights for both literature and practice

Electronic business and electronic commerce (supporting lecture notes for students of dirеction "Management" of all forms of education)

E-Business systems naturally have greater security risks than traditional business systems, therefore it is important for e-business systems to be fully protected against these risks. Customers, suppliers, employees, and numerous other people use any particular e-business system daily and expect their confidential information to stay secure. Hackers are one of the great threats to the security of e-businesses. Some common security concerns for e-Businesses include keeping business and customer information private and confidential, authenticity of data, and data integrity. Some of the methods of protecting e-business security and keeping information secure include physical security measures as well as data storage, data transmission, anti-virus software, firewalls, and encryption to list a few.Розглянуто та рекомендовано до друку на засіданні кафедри інноваційного менеджменту та підприємництва, протокол No1 від 27 серпня 2015 року. Схвалено та рекомендовано до друку на засіданні методичної комісії факультету управління та бізнесу у виробництві Тернопільського національного технічного університету імені Івана Пулюя, протокол No6 від 26 лютого 2016 року.The purpose of thе document is to present the different underlying "technologies" (in reality, organizational modes based on information and communication technologies) and their associated acronyms. The term "e-Business" therefore refers to the integration, within the company, of tools based on information and communication technologies (generally referred to as business software) to improve their functioning in order to create value for the enterprise, its clients, and its partners.Topic 1. Basic concepts of electronic business and electronic commerce 1.1. Basic concepts and principles of e-business. 1.2. Origins and growth of e-commerce. Topic 2. Ecommerce as a part of electronic business 2.1. E-business infrastructure, e-environment and e-business strategy 2.2. Ways of e-business conducting. Online trading. Topic 3. Basis of global computer network internet functioning. 3.1. Basic principles of internet. 3.2. The most common services of Іnternet. 3.3. The concept and structure of Internet marketing. Topic 4. E-commerce systems in corporate sector 4.1. The basic processes of implementation of electronic commerce in the B2B sector. Virtual enterprise, internet incubator, mobile commerce. 4.2. The role of supply-chain management (SCM) and customer relationship management (CRM) in e-commerce. Topic 5. Information management for effective e-commerce building through intranet and extranet 5.1. Basic principles of Intranet functioning. 5.2. Extranet and its security issues. Topic 6. Electronic payment systems 6.1. Electronic payment systems. 6.2. Primary classification of payment systems

Hierarchical categorisation of web tags for Delicious

In the scenario of social bookmarking, a user browsing the Web bookmarks web pages and assigns free-text labels (i.e., tags) to them according to their personal preferences. The benefits of social tagging are clear – tags enhance Web content browsing and search. However, since these tags may be publicly available to any Internet user, a privacy attacker may collect this information and extract an accurate snapshot of users’ interests or user profiles, containing sensitive information, such as health-related information, political preferences, salary or religion. In order to hinder attackers in their efforts to profile users, this report focuses on the practical aspects of capturing user interests from their tagging activity. More accurately, we study how to categorise a collection of tags posted by users in one of the most popular bookmarking services, Delicious (http://delicious.com).Preprin

Technology trends for business productivity increase

This reflection paper aims to summarize some of the technology trends that companies can use in their business processes to increase productivity and improve the competitiveness of the sector and country. It is based mainly on an official documentation study of both national and international authorized entities. First, some characteristics of the ICT and its influence in companies over the last years are shown; and finally, the conceptualization and benefits that Internet, Telework, e-Learning and Cloud computing represent today to com-panies in the productive sector are analyzed. It is con-cluded that ICT, and trends based on them, can make simpler and more agile processes in companies, and also, strengthen their skills to face increasingly demanding markets, whenever globalization and Free Trade Agre-ements (FTA) call to companies from all sectors to be more effective and efficientEste artículo de reflexión pretende resumir algunas de las tendencias tecnológicas que pueden usar las empresas en sus procesos de negocio para aumentar su productividad y, por tanto, la competitividad del sec-tor y el país. El autor se ha basado especialmente en el estudio de documentación oficial de entes autorizados, tanto nacionales como internacionales. Inicialmente, se revisan algunas características de las TIC y su influen-cia en las empresas en los últimos tiempos para final-mente pasar a analizar la conceptualización y los bene-ficios que Internet, el teletrabajo, la formación virtual y la computación en la nube representan hoy por hoy para las empresas y el sector productivo. Se concluye que las TIC y tendencias derivadas de éstas pueden hacer más simples y ágiles los procesos de las empresas, al igual que más fuertes sus competencias para enfrentar merca-dos cada día más exigentes, toda vez que la globalidad y la entrada en vigencia de los Tratados de Libre Comer-cio (TLC) abocan a las compañías de todos los sectores a buscar mayor efectividad y eficienci

E-procurement for Small and Medium Enterprises in Malaysia

In a day and age where IT technologies permeate virtually every facet of society, business organizations especially for small and medium companies should not miss the advantages of it. This research will look deep into the acceptance level of E-procurement among the Small Medium Enterprises (SME) in Malaysia. The aim is to find out the rationale behind these problems and the solutions to make the development of eprocurement successful. Investigation involves small and medium companies (SMEs) in Malaysiathat have the opportunity to procure via Internet and also those companies who also do not have internet connection in the office. In this project, several techniques are used such as conducting interview session with companies, providing and distributing online questionnaires, and also observation through Internet and magazines. In this project,the functional and non functional requirement for an online community for SMEs are listed and ranked. Based on these requirements, the prototype of a web-based eprocurement intermediary for SMEs will be developed and ensure that it satisfied all the requirements. As the findings have been done, it highlights that the industry should realized the potential that e-procurement offers and the ability to help the small and medium companies to compete in larger markets