Prioritizing warehouse performance measures in contemporary supply chains

Purpose: Due to the importance of efficiency and responsiveness measures rather than just efficiency measures, this research recognizes both measures when considering overall performance of warehouse operations. Thus, the purpose of this study is to prioritize overall performance measures associated with warehouse operations in manufacturing, third-party logistics (3PL) service provider, and retail industry supply chains. Design/methodology/approach: The study uses an integrated approach that involves the Q-sort method to group measures into four categories. Fuzzy analytical hierarchy process (FAHP) was then used to prioritize individual performance measures within each category and integer liner programming model was used to validate prioritized categories, using the judgement of multiple decision makers across three industries. Findings: The result shows that the financial category is a dominating performance category in managing warehouse operations across all three industries selected. Within the financial category, cost of insurance accounted for 25% of total weight of the category, and is considered to be a powerful measure. The financial category is verified by multiple decision makers across three industries, as the most important performance category. Research Limitations/implications: As part of adopting the proposed methodology in practice, it needs to be guided by overall methodology appropriate for industry-specific contexts. Originality/value: Key novel aspects of this study are to categorize warehouse operations measures and analyze their perspectives in different industries, understand dominant categories of warehouse operations measures in the contemporary supply chain and finally to explore to what extent current practices lead to achieving efficiency and responsiveness in the selected industries

MegSDF Mega-system development framework

A framework for developing large, complex software systems, called Mega-Systems, is specified. The framework incorporates engineering, managerial, and technological aspects of development, concentrating on an engineering process. MegSDF proposes developing Mega-Systems as open distributed systems, pre-planned to be integrated with other systems, and designed for change. At the management level, MegSDF divides the development of a Mega-System into multiple coordinated projects, distinguishing between a meta-management for the whole development effort, responsible for long-term, global objectives, and local managements for the smaller projects, responsible for local, temporary objectives. At the engineering level, MegSDF defines a process model which specifies the tasks required for developing Mega-Systems, including their deliverables and interrelationships. The engineering process emphasizes the coordination required to develop the constituent systems. The process is active for the life time of the Mega-System and compatible with different approaches for performing its tasks. The engineering process consists of System, Mega-System, Mega-System Synthesis, and Meta-Management tasks. System tasks develop constituent systems. Mega-Systems tasks provide a means for engineering coordination, including Domain Analysis, Mega-System Architecture Design. and Infrastructure Acquisition tasks. Mega-System Synthesis tasks assemble Mega-Systems from the constituent systems. The Meta-Management task plans and controls the entire process. The domain analysis task provides a general, comprehensive, non-constructive domain model, which is used as a common basis for understanding the domain. MegSDF builds the domain model by integrating multiple significant perceptions of the domain. It recommends using a domain modeling schema to facilitate modeling and integrating the multiple perceptions. The Mega-System architecture design task specifies a conceptual architecture and an application architecture. The conceptual architecture specifies common design and implementation concepts and is defined using multiple views. The application architecture maps the domain model into an implementation and defines the overall structure of the Mega-System, its boundaries, components, and interfaces. The infrastructure acquisition task addresses the technological aspects of development. It is responsible for choosing, developing or purchasing, validating, and supporting an infrastructure. The infrastructure integrates the enabling technologies into a unified platform which is used as a common solution for handling technologies. The infrastructure facilitates portability of systems and incorporation of new technologies. It is implemented as a set of services, divided into separate service groups which correspond to the views identified in the conceptual architecture

Management: A bibliography for NASA managers

This bibliography lists 706 reports, articles, and other documents introduced into the NASA scientific and technical information system in 1984. Entries, which include abstracts, are arranged in the following categories: human factors and personnel issues; management theory and techniques; industrial management and manufacturing; robotics and expert systems; computers and information management; research and development; economics, costs, and markets; logistics and operations management; reliability and quality control; and legality, legislation, and policy. Subject, personal author, corporate source, contract number, report number, and accession number indexes are included

Optimizing the resource utilization of enterprise content management workloads through measured performance baselines and dynamic topology adaptation

To oblige with the legal requirements, organizations have to keep data up to a certain amount of time.They are creating a huge amount of data on daily basis therefore it is very difficult for them to manage and store this data due to the legal requirements. This is where Enterprise Content Management (ECM) system comes into picture. ECM is a means of organizing and storing an organization's documents and other content that relates to the organization's processes. With ECM being offered as a service, thanks to cloud computing it makes sense to offer this functionality as a shared service. There are various benefits of offering it as a shared service one of which is that it is a cheaper method to meet the needs of large organizations with different requirements for ECM functionality. ECM systems use resources like memory, central processing unit (CPU) and disk which are shared among different clients (organizations). With every client, a service level agreement is there which describes the performance criteria a provider promises to meet while delivering the ECM service. To improve the performance of the ECM by optimizing the use of resources and match the Service level agreements various techniques are used. In this thesis, heuristics technique is used. Performance baselines and utilization of resources are measured for different workloads of the clients and on the basis of that, resources of the ECM can be dynamically provisioned or assigned to different clients get the optimized resource utilization and better performance. First of all typical workload is designed which is similar to the work being performed by various banks and insurance companies using IBM ECM systems and which consists of interactive and batch type of operations. Performance baselines are being measured for these workloads by monitoring the key performance indicators (KPIs) with variable number of users performing operations on the system at the same time. After getting the results for KPIs and resource utilization, resources are being assigned dynamically according to their utilization in a way that the use of resources is optimized and clients are satisfied with better service at the same time

Feasibility study of an Integrated Program for Aerospace-vehicle Design (IPAD) system. Volume 6: Implementation schedule, development costs, operational costs, benefit assessment, impact on company organization, spin-off assessment, phase 1, tasks 3 to 8

A baseline implementation plan, including alternative implementation approaches for critical software elements and variants to the plan, was developed. The basic philosophy was aimed at: (1) a progressive release of capability for three major computing systems, (2) an end product that was a working tool, (3) giving participation to industry, government agencies, and universities, and (4) emphasizing the development of critical elements of the IPAD framework software. The results of these tasks indicate an IPAD first release capability 45 months after go-ahead, a five year total implementation schedule, and a total developmental cost of 2027 man-months and 1074 computer hours. Several areas of operational cost increases were identified mainly due to the impact of additional equipment needed and additional computer overhead. The benefits of an IPAD system were related mainly to potential savings in engineering man-hours, reduction of design-cycle calendar time, and indirect upgrading of product quality and performance

Internet of Things Strategic Research Roadmap

Internet of Things (IoT) is an integrated part of Future Internet including existing and evolving Internet and network developments and could be conceptually defined as a dynamic global network infrastructure with self configuring capabilities based on standard and interoperable communication protocols where physical and virtual “things” have identities, physical attributes, and virtual personalities, use intelligent interfaces, and are seamlessly integrated into the information network

Management information systems in social safety net programs : a look at accountability and control mechanisms

This paper is intended to provide task managers and World Bank Group clients working on Social Safety Net (SSN) programs with practical and systematic ways to use information management practices to mitigate risks by strengthening control and accountability mechanisms. It lays out practices and options to consider in the design and implementation of the Management Information System (MIS), and how to evaluate and mitigate operational risks originating from running a MIS. The findings of the paper are based on the review of several Conditional Cash Transfer (CCT) programs in the Latin American Region and various World Bank publications on CCTs. The paper presents a framework for the implementation of MIS and cross-cutting information management systems that is based on industry standards and information management practices. This framework can be applied both to programs that make use of information and communications technology (ICT) and programs that are paper based. It includes examples of MIS practices that can strengthen control and accountability mechanisms of SSN programs, and presents a roadmap for the design and implementation of an MIS in these programs. The application of the framework is illustrated through case studies from three fictitious countries. The paper concludes with some considerations and recommendations for task managers and government officials in charge of implementing CCTs and other safety nets program, and with a checklist for the implementation and monitoring of MIS.E-Business,Technology Industry,Education for Development (superceded),Labor Policies,Knowledge Economy

A collaborative platform for an ambient assisted living ecosystem

The population ageing is a global trend that affects almost all countries in the world. The global share of people with 60 years or over is expected to reach 21.6% by 2050. The social and economic impact of this tendency is huge, creating new challenges to healthcare and social support services. Furthermore, population ageing is linked to an increased number of people with physical limitations together with the isolation of persons. The Ambient Assisted Living paradigm seeks to answer to some of this challenges through the integration of innovative technologies, products, systems and services. Aiming the development of an ecosystem of products and services for Ambient Assisted Living, the AAL4ALL project was created joining more than thirty research, academic and industry partners. During the AAL4ALL project a 3-layered model of services ecosystem was adopted for the conceptual architecture. This work presents a collaborative platform as a contribution to the top layer of the conceptual architecture - AAL Ecosystem.O envelhecimento da população é uma tendência global que afeta quase todos os países no mundo. A nível mundial, a percentagem de pessoas com mais de 60 anos deve atingir os 21,6% até 2050. Os impactos sociais e económicos desta tendência são enormes, criando novos desafios aos serviços de saúde e de assistência social. Além disso, o envelhecimento populacional significa um aumento do número de pessoas com limitações físicas bem como o seu isolamento. O paradigma de Ambient Assisted Living procura responder a alguns destes desafios através da integração de tecnologias, produtos, sistemas e serviços inovadores. Com o objetivo de desenvolver um ecossistema de produtos e serviços de Ambient Assisted Living, o projeto AAL4ALL foi criado reunindo mais de trinta parceiros das áreas académica, de investigação e indústria. Durante o projeto AAL4ALL, um modelo de ecossistema de serviços de 3 camadas foi adotado para a arquitetura conceptual. Este trabalho apresenta uma plataforma colaborativa como contributo para a camada superior da arquitetura conceptual – Ecossistema AAL