Competitive manufacturing strategies for the manufacturing industries in Turkey

In this study, results of the research into competitive manufacturing strategies of companies in four different sector studies covering 82 companies from the electronics, cement, automotive manufacturers, and appliances part and component suppliers in Turkey are presented. The data used in the study are gathered by conducting four sector surveys in 1997 and 1998 using a questionnaire supported by some follow-up interviews and site visits. A competitive manufacturing strategy is represented here by its components being the competitive priorities, the manufacturing objectives, and the action plans the companies plan to adopt in the near future. The results indicate that the manufacturing industry in Turkey bases its competition strategy mainly on low price, although there is a growing trend towards increasing emphasis on product differentiation. Quality and quality related issues constitute the top priority issues for the manufacturing industries in Turkey with Total Quality Management being the most preferred action plan

An assessment of supply chain and innovation management practices in the manufacturing industries in Turkey

This paper aims at assessing the supply chain and innovation management in the manufacturing industries in Turkey on an empirical basis. The assessments presented are based on parts of the data and information collected through the execution of the Competitive Strategies and Best Practices Benchmarking Questionnaire in 82 companies from four sectors of the manufacturing industries in Turkey. Results of these sectoral benchmarking studies reported elsewhere indicate the need of adopting product differentiation particularly through more knowledge intensive products as the dominant competitive strategy and also the need for improvement in various areas of supply chain as well as innovation management. In this paper, these issues are analysed through the survey results and some conclusions are drawn. Several policy measures applicable in near future are suggested for improving the areas found in need of improvement

Determination of the bundle price for digital information goods

The fast emergence of Internet as a media to distribute digital information goods created many new opportunities for the packaging and pricing of these goods. The pricing of information goods introduces a challenge since the cost structure of information goods differs from that of conventional physical goods in that they can be costly to introduce but are relatively cheap to reproduce. The bundling strategy for digital information goods helps producers to extract more value from customers and can result in cost savings due to the presence of economies of scale. This study aims to determine the optimum price a producer of digital information goods has to charge for a bundle in order to maximize his gross margin. The bundle pricing model is constructed for both uniform and exponential distributions of the fraction of information goods in the bundle that has positive value for the customers

An equitable approach to the payment scheduling problem in project management

This study reports on a new approach to the payment scheduling problem. In this approach, the amount and timing of the payments made by the client and received by the contractor are determined so as to achieve an equitable solution. An equitable solution is defined as one where both the contractor and the client deviate from their respective ideal solutions by an equal percentage. The ideal solutions for the contractor and the client result from having a lump sum payment at the start and end of the project respectively. A double loop genetic algorithm is proposed to solve for an equitable solution. The outer loop represents the client and the inner loop the contractor. The inner loop corresponds to a multi-mode resource constrained project scheduling problem with the objective of maximizing the contractor's net present value for a given payment distribution. When searching for an equitable solution, information flows between the outer and inner loops regarding the payment distribution over the event nodes and the timing of these payments. An example problem is solved and analyzed. A set of 93 problems from the literature are solved and some computational results are reported

Multi-project scheduling with 2-stage decomposition

A non-preemptive, zero time lag multi-project scheduling problem with multiple modes and limited renewable and nonrenewable resources is considered. A 2-stage decomposition approach is adopted to formulate the problem as a hierarchy of 0-1 mathematical programming models. At stage one, each project is reduced to a macro-activity with macro-modes resulting in a single project network where the objective is the maximization of the net present value and the cash flows are positive. For setting the time horizon three different methods are developed and tested. A genetic algorithm approach is designed for this problem, which is also employed to generate a starting solution for the exact solution procedure. Using the starting times and the resource profiles obtained in stage one each project is scheduled at stage two for minimum makespan. The result of the first stage is subjected to a post-processing procedure to distribute the remaining resource capacities. Three new test problem sets are generated with 81, 84 and 27 problems each and three different configurations of solution procedures are tested

Innovation performance and competitive strategies in the Turkish manufacturing industry

In this paper, we report on empirical investigation within the context of the Innovations in Manufacturing Industries in Turkey Study 2004/2005. The data was gathered in nine different cities in Turkey during the period August 2004 – January 2005. The survey was conducted through face-to-face interviews due to the complex nature of the survey and was implemented in 135 manufacturing firms operating in four sectors: Textiles, chemicals, food, and metal. The study has been an extension of the European Manufacturing Survey 2004 (EMS 2004) coordinated by the Fraunhofer Institute for Systems and Innovation Research and covering nine countries: Germany, Turkey, Austria, Switzerland, France, Slovenia, Croatia, Italy, and United Kingdom. An extended version of the questionnaire form used in EMS 2004 has been employed. Some of the basic results concerning competitive priorities, new product development, and operations management are presented

Disiplinlerarası araştırma ve eğitim

Bu Bölümde disiplinlerarası yaklaşım ve küreselleşme ve getirdiği sorunlar arasındaki ilişki irdelenmekte; yönetim ve ekonomideki değişimlerin disiplinlerarası araştırma ve eğitim için yarattığı talep üzerinde durulmakta; üniversite paradigmasındaki değişikliklerin, idari yapılanma biçimlerinin ve akademik yükseltme kriterlerinin disiplinlerarası yaklaşıma etkileri değerlendirilmekte; eğitimde disiplinlerarası yaklaşım irdelenmekte ve Sabancı Üniversitesi lisans programındaki uygulama örneklenmektedir

Proje planlamada kaynak kısıtlı çizelgeleme

Proje yönetimine 1950li ve 1960lı yıllarda gösterilen yoğun ilgi daha sonra azalmış ancak yaklaşık son on yılda yeniden hem araştırmacıların hem de uygulamacıların yakın ilgisini çekmeye başlamıştır. Konu ile ilgili yayımlanan makale ve kitapların sayısındaki büyük artıştan, bilgisayar yazılımlarının yaygınlaşmasından ve düzenlenen konferans ve seminer adedinin giderek artmasından proje yönetimine olan ilginin yoğunlaştığını anlayabiliyoruz. Ozellikle kaynak kısıtlı çizelgeleme alanında yogun bir arastırma ve yayın soz konusudur. Bu Bölümde, kaynak kısıtlı çizelgeleme alanındaki çalışma ve gelişmeler derlenme ve değerlendirilmeye çalışılacaktır

Resource dedication problem in a multi-project environment

There can be different approaches to the management of resources within the context of multi-project scheduling problems. In general, approaches to multiproject scheduling problems consider the resources as a pool shared by all projects. On the other hand, when projects are distributed geographically or sharing resources between projects is not preferred, then this resource sharing policy may not be feasible. In such cases, the resources must be dedicated to individual projects throughout the project durations. This multi-project problem environment is defined here as the resource dedication problem (RDP). RDP is defined as the optimal dedication of resource capacities to different projects within the overall limits of the resources and with the objective of minimizing a predetermined objective function. The projects involved are multi-mode resource constrained project scheduling problems with finish to start zero time lag and non-preemptive activities and limited renewable and nonrenewable resources. Here, the characterization of RDP, its mathematical formulation and two different solution methodologies are presented. The first solution approach is a genetic algorithm employing a new improvement move called combinatorial auction for RDP, which is based on preferences of projects for resources. Two different methods for calculating the projects’ preferences based on linear and Lagrangian relaxation are proposed. The second solution approach is a Lagrangian relaxation based heuristic employing subgradient optimization. Numerical studies demonstrate that the proposed approaches are powerful methods for solving this problem