Cultivating Collaborative Improvement: An Action Learning Approach

As competitive pressure mounts to innovate in the global knowledge economy, many organizations are exploring new ways of collaborating with their supply chain partners. However, the process of implementing collaborative initiatives across disparate members of supply networks is fraught with difficulties. One approach designed to tackle the difficulties of organizational change and inter-organizational improvement in practice is `action learning¿. This paper examines the experiential lessons that arise when cultivating collaborative improvement in an interorganizational learning environment. The authors, acting as action researchers, facilitated a practical learning program in an Extended Manufacturing Enterprise involving a large system integrator in the automotive industry and three of its\ud suppliers. Based on this experience, a practical learning model is offered to promote and facilitate inter-organizational change as part of a collaborative improvement process

Stabilized determination of geopotential coefficients by the mixed hom-BLUP approach

For the determination of geopotential coefficients, data can be used from rather different sources, e.g., satellite tracking, gravimetry, or altimetry. As each data type is particularly sensitive to certain wavelengths of the spherical harmonic coefficients it is of essential importance how they are treated in a combination solution. For example the longer wavelengths are well described by the coefficients of a model derived by satellite tracking, while other observation types such as gravity anomalies, delta g, and geoid heights, N, from altimetry contain only poor information for these long wavelengths. Therefore, the lower coefficients of the satellite model should be treated as being superior in the combination. In the combination a new method is presented which turns out to be highly suitable for this purpose due to its great flexibility combined with robustness

Total data quality management: a study of bridging rigor and relevance

Ensuring data quality is of crucial importance to organizations. The Total Data Quality Management (TDQM) theory provides a methodology to ensure data quality. Although well researched, the TDQM methodology is not easy to apply. In the case of Honeywell Emmen, we found that the application of the methodology requires considerable contextual redesign, flexibility in use, and the provision of practical tools. We identified team composition, toolsets, development of obvious actions, the design of phases, steps, and actions, and sessions as vital elements of making an academically rooted methodology applicable. Such an applicable methodology, we name “well articulated”, because it incorporates the existing academic theory and it is made operational. This enables the methodology to be systematically beta tested and made useful for different organizational conditions

Mapping Europe into local climate zones

Cities are major drivers of environmental change at all scales and are especially at risk from the ensuing effects, which include poor air quality, flooding and heat waves. Typically, these issues are studied on a city-by-city basis owing to the spatial complexity of built landscapes, local topography and emission patterns. However, to ensure knowledge sharing and to integrate local-scale processes with regional and global scale modelling initiatives, there is a pressing need for a world-wide database on cities that is suited for environmental studies. In this paper we present a European database that has a particular focus on characterising urbanised landscapes. It has been derived using tools and techniques developed as part of the World Urban Database and Access Portal Tools (WUDAPT) project, which has the goal of acquiring and disseminating climate-relevant information on cities worldwide. The European map is the first major step toward creating a global database on cities that can be integrated with existing topographic and natural land-cover databases to support modelling initiatives