Prerequisites for and impediments to success in logistics reengineering projects

The purpose of this research was to determine the most important prerequisites for success and the most important impediments to success in logistics reengineering projects. The research design was based on a hypothesized relationships between the independent variables (the prerequisites for success and the impediments to success) and the dependent variable, the outcome (success or failure) of reengineering projects, it was further hypothesized that some of the independent variables help the outcome of reengineering projects, while others have little or no impact. In order to fulfill this objective, a three-part research questionnaire was developed to measure logistics practitioner\u27s reengineering project experiences. This instrument was designed to capture measurements of success in reengineering projects and the determinants of success, prerequisites and impediments, in these projects. This instrument was also designed to collect data regarding the firms. The firms selected for this survey were firms where logistics would play a major role in the firm, such as manufacturers, transportation providers, warehousing, and distribution companies. The information regarding the firms was used to classify the firms to determine if there were any differences in the success or failure of reengineering projects within any given classification of firms. The practitioners to be surveyed were selected from three sources. The first two sources of survey practitioners were the membership roles of the American Production and Inventory Control Society (APICS) and the Council of Logistics Management (CLM). The third source of survey practitioners was the Standards and Poor\u27s database. This research found that there was a relationship between project success in reengineering projects and prerequisites for success and impediments to success. This research further found that there was also a relationship between project schedule performance and project budget performance in reengineering projects and prerequisites for success and impediments for success. Further analysis of these relationships resulted in the development of a short list of the most important prerequisites and impediments. Managers now have an opportunity to field test and verify the findings of this research. The list of 34 prerequisites to success and impediments to success developed mainly from the work of consultants has now been shortened to a manageable list. The scope of this research was the determination of the most important prerequisites for success and impediments to success in reengineering projects at firms classically categorized as logistics firms. Beyond this limited scope of reengineering projects initiated at logistically sensitive firms, an examination of other types of projects and other type of firms would be warranted

Islets of Langerhans Are Protected from Inflammatory Cell Recruitment during Reperfusion of Rat Pancreas Grafts

Background: Ischemia/reperfusion (I/R) injury plays a pivotal role in the development of graft pancreatitis, with ischemia time representing one of its crucial factors. However, it is unclear, whether exocrine and endocrine tissue experience similar inflammatory responses during pancreas transplantation (PTx). This study evaluated inflammatory susceptibilities of islets of Langerhans (ILH) and exocrine tissue after different preservation periods during early reperfusion. Methods: PTx was performed in rats following 2 h (2h-I) or 18 h (18h-I) preservation. Leukocyte-endothelial cell interactions (LEI) were analyzed in venules of acinar tissue and ILH in vivo over 2 h reperfusion. Nontransplanted animals served as controls. Tissue samples were analyzed by histomorphometry. Results: In exocrine venules leukocyte rolling predominated in the 2h-I group. In the 18h-I group, additionally, high numbers of adherent leukocytes were found. Histology revealed significant edema formation and leukocyte extravasation in the 18h-I group. Notably, LEI in postcapillary venules of ILH were significantly lower. Leukocyte rolling was only moderately enhanced and few leukocytes were found adherent. Histology revealed minor leukocyte extravasation. Conclusion: Ischemia time contributes decisively to the extent of the I/R-injury in PTx. However, ILH have a significantly lower susceptibility towards I/R, even when inflammatory reactions in adjacent exocrine tissue are evident. Copyright (C) 2010 S. Karger AG, Base

National Councils for Sustainable Development – an appropriate tool of common use?

W kontekście bieżących kwestii dotyczących zrównoważonego rozwoju, Unia Europejska (UE) podkreśla ostatnio znaczenie Narodowych Rad ds. Zrównoważonego Rozwoju (NRZR; ang.: National Councils for Sustainable Development – NCSD) jako skutecznego i efektywnegoinstrumentu służącego wdrażaniu zrównoważonego rozwoju (ZR). Odkąd mogą one udzielać niezależnych porad i sprzyjać dialogowi pomiędzy społeczeństwem a interesariuszami na temat ZR, NRZR zdają się jawić jako właściwe narzędzie na szczeblu rządowym. Mimo to przegląd ich działalności w krajach Europy Środkowo-Wschodniej daje różnorodny obraz. NRZR znacząco różnią się między sobą pod kątem definicji, składu, stopnia niezależności oraz dostępnych zasobów, jak też efektów działania. Biorąc od uwagę pozytywne doświadczenia związane ze skutecznymi NRZR w niektórych państwach członkowskich, można postawić następujące pytanie: Jakie cechy powinny posiadać NRZR? Czy NRZR są powszechnie wykorzystywane w Europie Środkowo-Wschodniej? W tym celu w poniższym artykule przeanalizowano NRZR w kilku państwach Europy Środkowo-Wschodniej poprzez wskazanie podobieństw oraz różnic pomiędzy poszczególnymi NRZR, włączając w to ich zasięg oraz podejście, aby wyjaśnić rozbieżności w ich osiągnięciach w skali krajowej. UE rekomenduje zestaw cech i właściwości, którymi powinny charakteryzować się NRZR w celu funkcjonowania jako efektywne narzędzie rządowe podczas dążenia do osiągnięcia zrównoważonego rozwoju

An XML-Based Streaming Concept for Business Process Execution

Service-oriented environments are central backbone of todays enterprise workflows. These workflow includes traditional process types like travel booking or order processing as well as data-intensive integration processes like operational business intelligence and data analytics. For the latter process types, current execution semantics and concepts do not scale very well in terms of performance and resource consumption. In this paper, we present a concept for data streaming in business processes that is inspired by the typical execution semantics in data management environments. Therefore, we present a conceptual process and execution model that leverages the idea of stream-based service invocation for a scalable and efficient process execution. In selected results of the evaluation we show, that it outperforms the execution model of current process engines

EU Communication on Corporate Social Responsibility and the effects on national and corporate sustainability agendas

Niedawne komunikaty Unii Europejskiej dotyczące celów zrównoważonego rozwoju zawierały wytyczne, jak korporacje powinny reagować na społeczne i polityczne potrzeby poprzez społecznie odpowiedzialne działania gospodarcze. Biznes społecznie odpowiedzialny (ang.:corporate social responsibility – CSR) staje się coraz powszechniej wykorzystywanym i spornym terminem, mającym obejmować zaangażowanie świata biznesu w działania ukierunkowane na zaspokajanie społecznych i środowiskowych wymagań. Niniejszy artykuł omawia, w jaki sposób komunikat Unii Europejskiej wpływa na politykę CSR korporacji pod kątem zrównoważonego rozwoju. Wskazano na najświeższe kroki Komisji Europejskiej dotyczące CSR i przedstawiono ich odzwierciedlenie w polityce szczebla narodowego i europejskiego. Poniżej skoncentrowano się na przedsiębiorstwach z trzech europejskich państw, a mianowicie z Węgier, Niemiec i Wielkiej Brytanii. Ponadto z każdego kraju wybrano po jednej firmie reprezentującej sektory paliwowy i / lub energetyczny, aby zaobserwować sposób implementacji określonej polityki, a także jej wpływ na zachowanie korporacji (przejawiające się w raportach finansowych i  raportach CSR). Polityka CSR przedsiębiorstw będzie oceniana według 20 elementów CSR wskazanych przez Welforda (2005), bazujących na podobnych przesłaniach międzynarodowych  kodeksów i konwencji, takich jak konwencja ILO czy program Global Compact, które zaadoptowała Komisja Europejska

Directed PCR-free engineering of highly repetitive DNA sequences

Background: Highly repetitive nucleotide sequences are commonly found in nature e.g. in telomeres, microsatellite DNA, polyadenine (poly(A)) tails of eukaryotic messenger RNA as well as in several inherited human disorders linked to trinucleotide repeat expansions in the genome. Therefore, studying repetitive sequences is of biological, biotechnological and medical relevance. However, cloning of such repetitive DNA sequences is challenging because specific PCR-based amplification is hampered by the lack of unique primer binding sites resulting in unspecific products.Results: For the PCR-free generation of repetitive DNA sequences we used antiparallel oligonucleotides flanked byrestriction sites of Type IIS endonucleases. The arrangement of recognition sites allowed for stepwise and seamless elongation of repetitive sequences. This facilitated the assembly of repetitive DNA segments and open reading frames encoding polypeptides with periodic amino acid sequences of any desired length. By this strategy wecloned a series of polyglutamine encoding sequences as well as highly repetitive polyadenine tracts. Such repetitive sequences can be used for diverse biotechnological applications. As an example, the polyglutamine sequences were expressed as His6-SUMO fusion proteins in Escherichia coli cells to study their aggregation behavior in vitro. The His6-SUMO moiety enabled affinity purification of the polyglutamine proteins, increased their solubility, and allowed controlled induction of the aggregation process. We successfully purified the fusions proteins and provide an example for their applicability in filter retardation assays.Conclusion: Our seamless cloning strategy is PCR-free and allows the directed and efficient generation of highlyrepetitive DNA sequences of defined lengths by simple standard cloning procedures

Cost-Based Vectorization of Instance-Based Integration Processes

The inefficiency of integration processes - as an abstraction of workflow-based integration tasks - is often reasoned by low resource utilization and significant waiting times for external systems. With the aim to overcome these problems, we proposed the concept of process vectorization. There, instance-based integration processes are transparently executed with the pipes-and-filters execution model. Here, the term vectorization is used in the sense of processing a sequence (vector) of messages by one standing process. Although it has been shown that process vectorization achieves a significant throughput improvement, this concept has two major drawbacks. First, the theoretical performance of a vectorized integration process mainly depends on the performance of the most cost-intensive operator. Second, the practical performance strongly depends on the number of available threads. In this paper, we present an advanced optimization approach that addresses the mentioned problems. Therefore, we generalize the vectorization problem and explain how to vectorize process plans in a cost-based manner. Due to the exponential complexity, we provide a heuristic computation approach and formally analyze its optimality. In conclusion of our evaluation, the message throughput can be significantly increased compared to both the instance-based execution as well as the rule-based process vectorization