Integral analysis of the ceramic cluster of Castellón

Treball Final de Grau en Administració d'Empreses. Codi: AE1049. Curs acadèmic: 2016/201

The three-stage entrepreneurial model to empower recycling product designers.

Two of every five Egyptian youth aged 20-24 suffer unemployment and abject poverty. And while 40% of Egyptians have entrepreneurial intentions only 2.9% manage to establish their businesses past the 3.5-year mark of regulated operation. The main reasons for this failure have been defined to be: the poor entrepreneurial education at all stages, the poor legal &commercial infrastructure, as well as lack of supportive government programmes. The proposed solution is a three-stage process; it begins with formulating a ‘matrix model’, which is a detailed workplan for the transfer of an entrepreneurial idea from concept to a sustainable business, then developing a successful alpha product line that would allow business operation &sustenance, and then giving room for research and development of new similar products by incubating entrepreneurial ideas that can be turned into profitable product lines later on. The matrix model is the product-customised version of “Egyptian Ecosystem Theory of Change” by Saeed et al, 2015. The alpha product proposed is a flooring tile created from cleaned and shredded trash at the AUC Sustainable Development labs by heat-pressing plastics as a binder and redbrick as a filler, to create an environmentally friendly product line, then the tile is set to be tested against relevant ASTM standards for flooring tiles. Then, the proposed business model is to use part of the revenue to sponsor research and development, provided it is based on the ‘private incubator’ model. The idea is seen to positively impact the society by providing employment for the young entrepreneurs, the economy by boosting production and investment opportunities, as well as the environment by encouraging a recycling economy. This conforms with sustainable development goal number 8.6 which promotes substantially reducing the proportion of youth not in employment, education or training

Current and future challenges of the ceramic tile firms

Treball Final de Grau en Administració d'Empreses. Codi: AE1049. Curs: 2014/2015The importance of choose this topic about "Current and future challenges of the ceramic tile firms" stems from the impact of this industry on our continent. The Spanish manufacturer industry of ceramic tiles is one of the most dynamic and innovative of Spain and in the global ceramic sector it is the leader in terms of technological development, design and quality of service with countries like Italy and Brazil. Given the economic crisis in Spain, it is interesting to study this issue, because it is an industry that has been handled pretty well in this period, being one who has dealt with the situation, despite being affected as many of the Spanish industries. Another reason is because this sector is characterized by high investment in R + D + i. Currently, this sector is making significant efforts to consolidate the ceramic product among prescribers. In addition, the world consumption growth of this industry is guaranteed and the Spanish tile industry has solid foundations and positive future due to its global leadership in R + D + i and its high degree of internationalization. It is also interesting to study the competitiveness since the Spanish ceramic industry is one of the most competitive on the international scene, thanks to its quality and constant commitment to innovation and development of new products and applications. Therefore, it is interesting to compare the Spanish industry with the two major world producers: Italy and Brazil. We need to understand that it is a sector that has always been in turnover, number of companies and number of patents per group growth, except the period of the economic crisis. In Spain, Valencia is the main source of the Spanish ceramic sector, as almost all industry concentration it is located in this territory. We can say that the heart of this area is located in Castellon and its environs, making even more interesting our object of study. To work this issue I will focus on the main objective of this work, which consists on collect different items until the actual date of our country, researched from different studies, and also from Italy and Brazil to make a solid conclusion of this industry. This is because we treat the "TOP 3" of the sector, which will help us to collect proper data for further information on the ceramic sector. The exclusion of China as an object of study of this work is followed by the following reasons: lack of information and language. Finally, the structure I am going to carry out in this work will be in the next order: First, I will introduce the theoretical framework of our study, which is going to focus on the global definition of the Spanish, Italian and Brazilian ceramics industry with the most relevant concepts of the sector that will guide us for along this study. Secondly, I will explain the study‟s methodology, highlighting the main tools of this work and also providing various analyses from the investigation of items. Finally, I will discuss and conclude the study's findings with the compilation of a list of forty five items. Twentyfive of them are from the ceramic industry of Spain, eight from Italy and twelve from Brazil

Sustainability transition in industry 4.0 and smart manufacturing with the triple-layered business model canvas

Sustainability transition is becoming increasingly relevant at a manufacturing level, especially for resource- and energy-intensive industries. In addition, the 4.0 industry paradigm opens new opportunities in terms of sustainable development. The aim of this research is to analyze the introduction of sustainability in the corporate value proposition, through the evolution from a traditional to a sustainable business model. The business model innovation will be investigated in the case of a ceramic tile producer in the district of Sassuolo, Italy. The company has introduced several sustainability practices over the years and, through investments in Industry 4.0 technologies, is able to conduct impact assessments of its production process. The applied tool for the business model transition will be the Triple-Layered Business Model Canvas by Joyce and Paquin. The results illustrate the new company's sustainable value proposition, considering all three pillars of sustainability: environment, economy, and society. Despite the limitations resulting from the individual case study, the findings can be easily adapted to other ceramic tile companies in the sector. Besides, the paper could inspire other manufacturing companies in the drafting of a sustainable business model. The paper explores the still limited literature on the application of sustainable business models in operational scenarios

Industry 4.0 and smart data as enablers of the circular economy in manufacturing: Product re-engineering with circular eco-design

The digital transformation of manufacturing firms, in addition to making operations more efficient, offers important opportunities both to promote the transition to a circular economy and to experiment with new techniques for designing smarter and greener products. This study integrates Industry 4.0 technologies, smart data, Life Cycle Assessment methodology, and material microstructural analysis techniques to develop and apply a circular eco-design model that has been implemented in the Italian ceramic tile manufacturing industry. The model has been initially adopted in a simulation environment to define five different scenarios of raw material supply, alternative to the current production one. The scenarios were then validated operationally at laboratory scale and in a pilot environment, demonstrating that a proper selection of raw material transport systems significantly improves the environmental performance of the ceramic product. Both the results of the laboratory tests and of the pre-industrial experiments have demonstrated the technological feasibility of the solutions identified with circular eco-design, enabling the re-engineering of the ceramic product as the fifth of the 6Rs of the circular economy. © 2021 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland

The transition under globalization of the Marshallian industrial district in Italy and Japan : the case of the Prato and Bishu wool textile districts

制度:新 ; 報告番号:甲3832号 ; 学位の種類:博士(学術) ; 授与年月日:2013/1/21 ; 早大学位記番号:新6255Waseda Universit

The Emergence of new Successful Export Activities in Uruguay

El proyecto “El surgimiento de nuevas actividades exportadoras exitosas en América Latina” busca identificar los elementos claves en el proceso de descubrimiento de nuevas oportunidades de exportación en diferentes países de la región, con el objetivo de proponer políticas y reformas que permitan aumentar el ritmo de descubrimientos, en particular teniendo en cuenta la importancia relativa de diversas fallas de mercado. El enfoque general del estudio puede resumirse en que “los mercados se desempeñan bien al brindar señales de la rentabilidad de actividades que ya existen, pero su desempeño es pobre cuando se trata de actividades que podrían existir pero no existen. Aun si estas actividades no son nuevas en el sentido de que están presentes en economías más ricas, los productores se ven enfrentados a una considerable incertidumbre respecto a los costos y la productividad bajo las condiciones del mercado local. Introducirse en estos nuevos sectores típicamente requiere un inversor pionero, que indica a otros la rentabilidad de dichas actividades. Llamamos a este proceso de descubrir la estructura de costos interna de la economía auto-descubrimiento” (Hausmann y Rodrik, 2003). “En el proceso de auto-descubrimiento abundan las externalidades de información, debido a que la información de costos descubierta por un empresario no puede conservarse en forma privada. Si la empresa pionera resulta rentable, esto es fácilmente observable por otros. Los imitadores entran entonces en la actividad, la renta del productor establecido se disipa y se establece un nuevo sector. Si, por el contrario, el pionero quiebra, las pérdidas son soportadas en su totalidad por el empresario. En consecuencia, la actividad empresarial de esta naturaleza no es una actividad con alta recompensa: las pérdidas son privadas mientras las ganancias se socializan. Por tanto, los mercados no proporcionan suficiente actividad empresarial en actividades nuevas” (Hausmann, Rodríguez-Clare y Rodrik, 2006). El estudio realizado para Uruguay consistió en analizar cuatro actividades exportadoras nuevas para el país, en el contexto del marco teórico propuesto por el BID y siguiendo la metodología común establecida para todos los casos incluidos en el proyecto regional. Asimismo, en el marco de este estudio se construyó una base de datos armonizada de las exportaciones uruguayas de bienes a nivel de producto y empresa, que permite analizar la actividad exportadora a nivel de empresa, producto y mercado de destino en las últimas dos décadas. La disponibilidad de series de tiempo consistentes permitió superar las limitaciones de información que provocaban en las estadísticas los cambios introducidos en la clasificación de productos en cuatro oportunidades (1985, 1993, 1997, 2002). Este estudio busca una mejor comprensión de estos problemas en el caso de Uruguay, presentando, en primer término, una visión de conjunto del desempeño exportador de Uruguay y su política comercial, y un análisis de la actividad exportadora a nivel de firma. En segundo lugar se analizan en profundidad cuatro sectores: software, forestal, caviar y esturión, y vacunas de origen animal a partir de los cuales se extraen lecciones de políticas públicas.exportaciones, fallas de mercado, fallas de coordinación, proceso de auto-descubrimiento, software, sector forestal, vacunas de origen animal, caviar y esturión

Adopting Circular Economy Current Practices and Future Perspectives

The development of a closed-loop cycle is a necessary condition so as to develop a circular economy model as an alternative to the linear model, in order to maintain the value of products and materials for as long as possible. For this motive, the definition of the value must be demonstrated for both the environment and the economy. The presence of these analyses should be associated with the social dimension and the human component. A strong cooperation between social and technical profiles is a new challenge for all researchers. End of life of products attract a lot of attention, and the final output could be the production of technologies suitable for managing this waste

Surgimiento de actividades de exportación exitosas en Uruguay: cuatro casos específicos

En este trabajo se presenta el análisis de cuatro casos específicos de surgimiento de cuatro actividades de exportación exitosas de Uruguay: software de computación, productos madereros, caviar y carne de esturión, y vacunas para animales. En cada uno de esos casos específicos se trata cómo empresas, asociaciones y varios gobiernos a varios niveles han manejado crisis de mercado y facilitado el suministro de los bienes públicos necesarios para cada actividad. El análisis de estos casos específicos presenta además una descripción de las características de los actores principales en cada ramo de actividad así como las externalidades positivas que brindan a los emuladores, especialmente la difusión de conocimientos sobre exportación. También se presenta en cada área un caso opuesto de actividad menos exitosa (electrónica, vino, carne de rana y biotecnología, respectivamente) así como una sección sobre implicaciones de políticas.Agriculture, Exports, Manufacturing, Services, Uruguay