Information Management: A Consolidation of Operations, Analysis and Strategy

The book provides an exposition on the discipline of information management. It is organised into four parts. The first of these deals with factors that shape the meaning of information management - the professional associations that have formed; the science of information; and corporate approaches to consideration of information as an enterprise resource. The following three parts explain how information management is undertaken in three domains: operational, analytical and administrative. The operational domain details techniques that are concerned with processing information about information - the organising structures, finding aids, classification and retrieval systems, that make their respective information systems useable. The analytical domain is concerned with determining enterprise and user information requirements; undertaking requirements analysis; information audits; and evaluation of information operations. The administrative domain is concerned with the strategic approach – fostering effective utilisation of information and knowledge resources using a planning framework that aligns information services with that of an enterprise’s objectives and resourcing, and works effectively within constraints imposed by the broader regulatory and business environment

Business strategy and innovativeness: results from an empirical study

This study reports on the testing of the hypothesis that there is a positive relationship between business strategy and innovativeness. Business strategy is defined here to include market focus strategy, technology development strategy, and operations priorities - including cost, quality, delivery / dependability, and flexibility. An empirical study is conducted based on data collected using a questionnaire developed. 184 manufacturing firms from different industries in the Northern Marmara region in Turkey participated in the study. Multivariate statistics techniques and structural equation modeling are employed. The results have been affirmative supporting the hypothesis. Market focus and technology development factors are found to mediate the effects of operations priorities on innovativeness. That market focus, technology development and cost efficiency have direct effects on innovativeness is another finding of managerial importance

Building dynamic capabilities through operations strategy: an empirical example

This paper suggests that the implementation of an effective operations strategy process is one of the necessary antecedents to the development of dynamic capabilities within an organisation and that once established, dynamic capabilities and operations strategy process settle into a symbiotic relationship. Key terms and a model of operations strategy process are proposed from literature as a framework for analysing data from a longitudinal case study with a UK based manufacturer of construction materials

Hypernode reduction modulo scheduling

Software pipelining is a loop scheduling technique that extracts parallelism from loops by overlapping the execution of several consecutive iterations. Most prior scheduling research has focused on achieving minimum execution time, without regarding register requirements. Most strategies tend to stretch operand lifetimes because they schedule some operations too early or too late. The paper presents a novel strategy that simultaneously schedules some operations late and other operations early, minimizing all the stretchable dependencies and therefore reducing the registers required by the loop. The key of this strategy is a pre-ordering that selects the order in which the operations will be scheduled. The results show that the method described in this paper performs better than other heuristic methods and almost as well as a linear programming method but requiring much less time to produce the schedules.Peer ReviewedPostprint (published version

The Applicability of Transaction Costs Economics to Vertical Integration Decision: Evidences from a Brazilian Beef Processor

This article aims to explore the vertical integration decision of a beef processor from an integrated approach operations strategy and transaction costs economic theory. In this research, vertical integration as a structural decision of operations strategy determined by the occurrence of transaction costs. The paper presents one case study carried out in one beef Processor Company which illustrates the main theoretical assumptions. The results suggest that transaction costs economics helps to identify key points of major strategic decisions on vertical integration due to its behavioural perspective, reducing the effect of uncertainty and asset specificity of this decision. At the end of the paper, future research is suggested.vertical integration, operations strategy, transaction costs economics, Agribusiness, Agricultural Finance, Industrial Organization,

Self-Averaging Property of Minimal Investment Risk of Mean-Variance Model

In portfolio optimization problems, the minimum expected investment risk is not always smaller than the expected minimal investment risk. That is, using a well-known approach from operations research, it is possible to derive a strategy that minimizes the expected investment risk, but this strategy does not always result in the best rate of return on assets. Prior to making investment decisions, it is important to an investor to know the potential minimal investment risk (or the expected minimal investment risk) and to determine the strategy that will maximize the return on assets. We use the self-averaging property to analyze the potential minimal investment risk and the concentrated investment level for the strategy that gives the best rate of return. We compare the results from our method with the results obtained by the operations research approach and with those obtained by a numerical simulation using the optimal portfolio. The results of our method and the numerical simulation are in agreement, but they differ from that of the operations research approach.Comment: 37 pages, 1 figur

Machining strategy development in 5-axis milling operations using process models

Increased productivity and part quality can be achieved by selecting machining strategies and conditions properly. At one extreme very high speed and feed rate with small depth of cut can be used for high productivity whereas deep cuts accompanied with slow speeds and feeds may also provide increased material removal rates in some cases. In this study, it is shown that process models are useful tools to simulate and compare alternative strategies for machining of a part. 5-axis milling of turbine engine compressors made out of titanium alloys is used as the case study where strategies such as flank milling (deep cuts), point milling (light cuts) and stripe milling (medium depths) are compared in terms of process time by considering chatter stability, surface finish and tool deflections