Food marketing cooperatives of Crete: A financial assessment within the EU context

In this paper an estimate is made concerning the correlation between the prosperity and viability of food enterprises and the volume of fixed assets. The amount of investment in fixed assets refers to the volume of the food cooperative activities. Hence, it can be considered as a comprehensive indicator which shows the size and use orientation of enterprises. The financial activity results and efficiency of the cooperatives depend, in many respects, on investments in the floating funds and fixed assets, the size of investment in monetary units and materials and the optimum ratio between them. This paper provides a financial assessment and comparative analysis of the food marketing cooperatives, against the amount of the fixed assets they have. The main purpose of this research is to estimate the viability of food marketing cooperatives under competitive conditions in the agricultural sector and to evaluate the financial aspects of their activities in terms of the size of fixed assets. The research provides a brief overview of the European Union experience from the financial side of cooperative activities. But due to the huge size of the EU and the significant differences between the various countries, it is difficult to estimate the issue on a union scale. Instead, some general features are mentioned briefly with reference to Greek cooperation, with more specific and detailed data and analyses provided for several cooperatives located in Crete. Crete was chosen for this research because it is one of the largest food producing regions in Greece. The comparative analysis was carried out based on the data for four consecutive years (from 2003 to 2006). For the purpose of this study, cooperatives functioning in Crete were chosen. The aim of the current research was to determine the interdependence between the size of the fixed assets and the welfare of the cooperatives and to underline the optimum amount of assets for marketing cooperatives, based on the ranking of the enterprises. Keywords:food marketing cooperatives, fixed assets, financial ratio analysis, multicriteria analysis., Agricultural and Food Policy, Food Consumption/Nutrition/Food Safety,

Internet functions in marketing: multicriteria ranking of agricultural SMEs websites in Greece

Δημοσιεύσεις μελών--ΣΔΟ--Τμήμα Λογιστικής, 2013The invasion of new technologies combined with the high cost for running shop force enterprises to search for new sales methods. Network applications and ICT (Information and Communication Technology) can help achieve e-commerce goals. In Greece, many enterprises in the agro-food and drink sectors are already present on the internet. This paper studies the adoption of e-commerce on websites that support e-commerce activities within the agro-food and drink sectors. Therefore, the paper aims to identify and evaluate their qualitative and quantitative content characteristics, rank them according to 6 content characteristics/criteria using the multicriteria method of PROMETHEE II and classify them in groups of similar adoption. The findings of this study reveal the rate of adoption of e-commerce in the sectors and can serve as a valuable model for the designers of websites that promote e-commerce activities within the wider areas of food and drinks

Identifying the optimal strategy for suppliers’ involvement in product design: A case study

In order to increase efficiency and improve competitiveness, manufacturers around the globe are focusing on developing their core businesses. On the other hand, standard activities of engineering are optimally accomplished outside the borders of the firm; thus outsourcing of non-core businesses has become lately a common practice. Product design is considered as one of the most important phases in a product’s life cycle, since the majority of most critical decisions in terms of products’ overall performance are considered during the Research & Development (R&D) phase. Involving suppliers in a firm’s R&D offers significant benefits in various directions, such as feasibility, practicability, sustainability, competitiveness and innovativeness. However, selecting the optimal outsourcing strategy is not an easy decision. On the contrary, it is most challenging since it encompasses a number of different and in many cases mutually conflicting criteria. This paper presents a methodological approach for the selection of the optimal outsourcing strategy for a manufacturer’s R&D. The methodology is based on outranking multicriteria methods and more specifically ELECTRE III. The approach is illustrated and validated through a real world case study of a Greek olive oil producer.   Keywords: product design; suppliers; R&D; outsourcing strategy; multicriteria analysis, ELECTRE II

KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT IN HIGHER EDUCATION – AN ONTOLOGICAL APPROACH IN COLLABORATIVE ENVIRONMENTS

The paper presents an ontology-based knowledge management system developed for a Romanian university. The university used a classic Management Information System (MIS), which was the starting point for developing the knowledge management system. The developed knowledge management system has a general ontology, containing terms which are valid for a public institution, and specific ontology for two process categories, didactic and research process. The ontology is implemented using Protege. The results are very encouraging and suggest several future developments.business intelligence, knowledge management, ontology, university

Operational Research in Education

Operational Research (OR) techniques have been applied, from the early stages of the discipline, to a wide variety of issues in education. At the government level, these include questions of what resources should be allocated to education as a whole and how these should be divided amongst the individual sectors of education and the institutions within the sectors. Another pertinent issue concerns the efficient operation of institutions, how to measure it, and whether resource allocation can be used to incentivise efficiency savings. Local governments, as well as being concerned with issues of resource allocation, may also need to make decisions regarding, for example, the creation and location of new institutions or closure of existing ones, as well as the day-to-day logistics of getting pupils to schools. Issues of concern for managers within schools and colleges include allocating the budgets, scheduling lessons and the assignment of students to courses. This survey provides an overview of the diverse problems faced by government, managers and consumers of education, and the OR techniques which have typically been applied in an effort to improve operations and provide solutions

A multi-criteria fuzzy method for selecting the location of a solid waste disposal facility

Facility location is a multicriteria decision process that has important operational and economic impacts and that typically involves uncertainty and vagueness of evaluations. A fuzzy-based method supporting preliminary decision-making about siting solid waste incinerators is proposed building on a structured classification of criteria for location selection developed from the existing literature. The application to a case study revealed the advantages of the methodology. The work intends to provide a general and comprehensive taxonomy of decision criteria that may be adapted to various facility location problems together with a fuzzy inference process that is useful for companies and public administration institutions looking for rigorous but relatively simple decision-making tools in uncertain environments. Future research will compare the developed method with the most common tools for making location decisions. The approach will be then extended to different kinds of facilitie