What makes urban governance co-productive? Contradictions in the current debate on co-production

Following a number of prominent concepts in urban planning, like participatory planning or self-help housing, co-production has started to gain momentum in the global South context. While it is has been long discussed as a means of service provision, the term is more and more often used in the broader sense of urban governance and policy planning. This understanding goes beyond the aspect of scaling-up successful co-productive infrastructure focused projects; rather, it indicates a different format of engagement for prompting urban stakeholders into planning citywide urban solutions. This article discusses the distinction between the different levels of co-production and their inter-linkages, and it investigates the relevance of positioning co-production as a factor framing urban governance. This includes a discussion on three main contradictions that can be identified within the current discussion on co-production. Finally, it identifies a set of arguments for elaborating the role of co-production in a policy and urban governance setting

Integration of demand management and production planning in a batch process manufacturing system: Case study

Production Planning;Batch Production;production

Production planning systems for cellular manufacturing

New product development is one of the most powerful but difficult activities in business. It is also a very important factor affecting final product quality. There are many techniques available for new product development. Experimental design is now regarded as one of the most significant techniques. In this article, we will discuss how to use the technique of experimental design in developing a new product - an extrusion press. In order to provide a better understanding of this specific process, a brief description of the extrusion press is presented. To ensure the successful development of the extrusion press, customer requirements and expectations were obtained by detailed market research. The critical and non-critical factors affecting the performance of the extrusion press were identified in preliminary experiments. Through conducting single factorial experiments, the critical factorial levels were determined. The relationships between the performance indexes of the extrusion press and the four critical factors were determined on the basis of multi-factorial experiments. The mathematical models for the performance of the extrusion press were established according to a central composite rotatable design. The best combination of the four critical factors and the optimum performance indexes were determined by optimum design. The results were verified by conducting a confirmatory experiment. Finally, a number of conclusions became evident.

Reference Models for Production Planning and Control Systems: A Bibliometric Analysis and Future Perspectives

The activity of modeling business processes is still not a common practice among organizations which contributes to increase the cost and time of systems deployment, improvement projects and educational software, due to the need to develop new models related to Business Processes. In this context, one of the Business Processes essential for organizations, especially those located in countries such as Brazil, where production activities are more pronounced than product development, is Production Planning and Control (PCP). In this scenario, in order to present a picture of scientific production, contribute to the literature review and identify gaps in the scientific literature within the framework of the Reference Models and PCP approach. This work aims to perform a bibliometric research in these areas of study. In this study, we used the bibliometric revision method composed of four phases: definition of database, definition of research keywords, selection of papers and analysis of papers. As a result, it was found that most scientific studies are focused on very specific situations in industrial planning or addressing particular business sectors

Scheduling in the manufacture of evaporative air conditioners

The MISG examined the problem of scheduling production of air conditioners at Seeley International. Seeley's objective was to meet their demand in a more cost-effective way. Two models are proposed to achieve this objective. A long term master production schedule with a yearly planning horizon was formulated to give Seeley a broad based schedule for planning production to meet forecast demands and production constraints. Output from this model is designed to provide the appropriate number of units of each product type or sub-assembly item to be produced in the following week. This output is then designed to be the input to a more detailed short term model for scheduling production at the machine level. The short term model is formulated to handle a mixture of both finished products and sub-assemblies. The objective of the short term model is to minimise total production time to free up the use of resources in order to allow for external orders. Directions for further work are discussed

High-Tech Urban Agriculture in Amsterdam : An Actor Network Analysis

The agriculture and horticulture sector in the Netherlands is one of the most productive in the world. Although the sector is one of the most advanced and intense agricultural production systems worldwide, it faces challenges, such as climate change and environmental and social unsustainability of industrial production. To overcome these challenges, alternative food production initiatives have emerged, especially in large cities such as Amsterdam. Some initiatives involve producing food in the urban environment, supported by new technologies and practices, so-called high-tech urban agriculture (HTUA). These initiatives make cultivation of plants inside and on top of buildings possible and increase green spaces in urban areas. The emerging agricultural technologies are creating new business environments that are shape d by technology developers (e.g., suppliers of horticultural light emitting diodes (LED) and control environment systems) and developers of alternative food production practices (e.g., HTUA start-ups). However, research shows that the uptake of these technological innovations in urban planning processes is problematic. Therefore, this research analyzes the barriers that local government planners and HTUA developers are facing in the embedding of HTUA in urban planning processes, using the city of Amsterdam as a case study. This study draws on actor-network theory (ANT) to analyze the interactions between planners, technologies, technology developers and developers of alternative food production practices. Several concepts of ANT are integrated into a multi-level perspective on sustainability transitions (MLP) to create a new theoretical framework that can explain how interactions between technologies and planning actors transform the incumbent social\u2013technical regime. The configuration of interactions between social and material entities in technology development and adoption processes in Amsterdam is analyzed through the lens of this theoretical framework. The data in this study were gathered by tracing actors and their connections by using ethnographic research methods. In the course of the integration of new technologies into urban planning practices, gaps between technologies, technology developers, and planning actors have been identified. The results of this study show a lacking connection between planning actors and technology developers, although planning actors do interact with developers of alternative food production practices. These interactions are influenced by agency of artefacts such as visualizations of the future projects. The paper concludes that for the utilization of emerging technologies for sustainability transition of cities, the existing gap between technology developers and planning actors needs to be bridged through the integration of technology development visions in urban agendas and planning processe