A study on decision-making of food supply chain based on big data

As more and more companies have captured and analyzed huge volumes of data to improve the performance of supply chain, this paper develops a big data harvest model that uses big data as inputs to make more informed production decisions in the food supply chain. By introducing a method of Bayesian network, this paper integrates sample data and finds a cause-and-effect between data to predict market demand. Then the deduction graph model that translates products demand into processes and divides processes into tasks and assets is presented, and an example of how big data in the food supply chain can be combined with Bayesian network and deduction graph model to guide production decision. Our conclusions indicate that the analytical framework has vast potential for supporting support decision making by extracting value from big data

An analytic infrastructure for harvesting big data to enhance supply chain performance

Big data has already received a tremendous amount of attention from managers in every industry, policy and decision makers in governments, and researchers in many different areas. However, the current big data analytics have conspicuous limitations, especially when dealing with information silos. In this paper, we synthesise existing researches on big data analytics and propose an integrated infrastructure for breaking down the information silos, in order to enhance supply chain performance. The analytic infrastructure effectively leverages rich big data sources (i.e. databases, social media, mobile and sensor data) and quantifies the related information using various big data analytics. The information generated can be used to identify a required competence set (which refers to a collection of skills and knowledge used for specific problem solving) and to provide roadmaps to firms and managers in generating actionable supply chain strategies, facilitating collaboration between departments, and generating fact-based operational decisions. We showcase the usefulness of the analytic infrastructure by conducting a case study in a world-leading company that produces sports equipment. The results indicate that it enabled managers: (a) to integrate information silos in big data analytics to serve as inputs for new product ideas; (b) to capture and interrelate different competence sets to provide an integrated perspective of the firm’s operations capabilities; and (c) to generate a visual decision path that facilitated decision making regarding how to expand competence sets to support new product development

Acquisition of compound skills and learning costs for expanding competence sets

AbstractFor each decision problem, there is a competence set consisting of ideas, knowledge, information, and skills for solving that problem. When decision makers have not acquired the com petence set, it is more difficult for them to make decisions. In order to effectively acquire a needed competence set to cope with the problem they face, finding an appropriate learning sequence for acquiring needed single skills for decision makers, the so-called competence set expansion, is very necessary. A compound skill represents a collection of single skills that might be acquired, and some useful compound skills can be added to the needed competence set to help acquire some single skills. To effectively expand the competence set, effective acquisitions of compound skills and learning costs are both necessary. This paper thus proposes a data mining technique to extract potentially useful compound skills from single skills. Subsequently, an effective method is proposed to obtain the learning cost between any two skills. A computer simulation is employed to further show that it is feasible to use those potentially useful compound skills to facilitate the acquisition of single skills through a known integer programming method for expanding the competence set

Harvesting big data to enhance supply chain innovation capabilities: an analytic infrastructure based on deduction graph

Today, firms can access to big data (tweets, videos, click streams, and other unstructured sources) to extract new ideas or understanding about their products, customers, and markets. Thus, managers increasingly view data as an important driver of innovation and a significant source of value creation and competitive advantage. To get the most out of the big data (in combination with a firm?s existing data), a more sophisticated way of handling, managing, analysing and interpreting data is necessary. However, there is a lack of data analytics techniques to assist firms to capture the potential of innovation afforded by data and to gain competitive advantage. This research aims to address this gap by developing and testing an analytic infrastructure based on the deduction graph technique. The proposed approach provides an analytic infrastructure for firms to incorporate their own competence sets with other firms. Case studies results indicate that the proposed data analytic approach enable firms to utilise big data to gain competitive advantage by enhancing their supply chain innovation capabilities

Seasonal power peaking and the diffusion of demand-side technologies : modelling socio-economic & technical dynamics in the Greek Islands

Imperial Users onl

CHORUS Deliverable 2.2: Second report - identification of multi-disciplinary key issues for gap analysis toward EU multimedia search engines roadmap

After addressing the state-of-the-art during the first year of Chorus and establishing the existing landscape in multimedia search engines, we have identified and analyzed gaps within European research effort during our second year. In this period we focused on three directions, notably technological issues, user-centred issues and use-cases and socio- economic and legal aspects. These were assessed by two central studies: firstly, a concerted vision of functional breakdown of generic multimedia search engine, and secondly, a representative use-cases descriptions with the related discussion on requirement for technological challenges. Both studies have been carried out in cooperation and consultation with the community at large through EC concertation meetings (multimedia search engines cluster), several meetings with our Think-Tank, presentations in international conferences, and surveys addressed to EU projects coordinators as well as National initiatives coordinators. Based on the obtained feedback we identified two types of gaps, namely core technological gaps that involve research challenges, and “enablers”, which are not necessarily technical research challenges, but have impact on innovation progress. New socio-economic trends are presented as well as emerging legal challenges