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Although the dial-a-ride problem currently plays a crucial role in providing transportation services to specific demographics such as the elderly, those with serious illnesses, or individuals with limited mobility due to disabilities, its potential impact on the overall mobility of the population remains underexplored. Surprisingly, the focus is often narrow, leaving potentials untapped and negatively impacting service providers'profitability. This book proposes several solutions, including strategies for increasing revenue, offering supplementary services, and fostering collaboration. Further, it presents ideas and approaches that address the corresponding problems using operations research methods. The proposals presented here can be used not only to enhance the economic viability of dial-a-ride systems but also boost their impact and visibility. As such, the book shares fundamental insights into solving the dial-a-ride problem and anticipates future trends, leading the way to new frontiers of research. The book offers a valuable resource for academics and professionals engaged in the field of transportation or those interested in the design and development of advanced mathematical programming techniques.

The book is an exhaustive assessment of the innovative farmer producer companies or co-operative companies in India based on 23 case studies of such companies, including all-women member PCs, across four states of India. It not only assesses the physical and financial performance of the producer companies (PC) as business entities per se but also examines their impact on members compared with their situation before they became members and also compared with their non-member counterparts. It makes an assessment of performance and impact based on quantitative and qualitative data from various stakeholders like producer companies'employees, board members, and member and non-member farmers. The book analyzes data collected from farmer members and non-members of these PCs and compares performance of PC across promoters within a state and thus assesses the goodness of promotion model of each promoter studied. The methodology used is mixed methods approach wherein case study approach as well as interview survey method have been adopted. More importantly, the case studies also include some PCs which were more of a failure than a success story, to identify existing challenges. The book also examines aspects of governance and management of these PCs for practical and policy lessons. Not just for research and academic fraternity, the book is also a very timely resource for policy makers, promoters and practitioners of collective action among smallholders given that Government of India has promoted 10,000 new Farmers Producer Organisations (FPO) over the last five years by now (2024) with large producer organization and promoter funding; and has framed a new FPO policy (2024) while many states already had FPO promotion policies and schemes.

This book delves deeply into the research progress on three-way risk decision for risk management under complex social environment. From the new perspective of collective wisdom, it systematically explores three-way group decision-making methods and practical applications by considering group information fusion, consensus reaching process, group social network and group complex network. This book intends to provide a reference for researchers, practitioners and graduate students in the fields of risk management and decision analysis.

This book provides fundamental knowledge of theories on the circular economy and circular supply chain management. It also discusses theories that have been developed or adopted in circular economy research. Traditional supply chains organizations have felt the importance of transforming their activities to become more circular. This book provides insights into the need for adopting circular supply chain practices and the circular business models they can adopt. Barriers that supply chain organizations will encounter in their efforts to expediate the transformation, and the drivers that they will need to achieve these goals, are elaborated in the book. The key factors that help in the decision-making process and modalities involved in modelling the circular chains are also discussed. These will be of great value to managers and other stakeholders. Additionally, the role of I4.0 technologies in future supply circular chains is elucidated. This book also offers solutions to supply chain organizations for achieving the sustainable development goals. Case studies and illustrations are provided in each chapter for easy understanding of theory to practice.

This book focuses on analytical and quantitative methods that align improvement opportunities with organizational goals and metrics. The book describes a framework that starts with developing a holistic view of an organization and then defining the organization's goals, objectives, decision criteria, and metrics to result in meaningful measures for process, project, and product investment decisions. The author describes how to utilize decision-making tools, analytical methods, and optimization techniques to enhance the objectivity and robustness of the readers'decisions. This framework supports the use of these tools and enables readers to make decisions that drive bottom-line performance. Aspects of this approach have been used in corporate, military, and government agencies to drive the efficient use of available resources.

This volume presents the proceedings of the 20th International Probabilistic Workshop (IPW), which was held in Guimarães, Portugal on May 8-10, 2024. Probabilistic methods are currently of crucial importance for research and developments in the field of engineering, which face challenges presented by new materials and technologies and rapidly changing societal needs and values. Contemporary needs related to, for example, performance-based design, service-life design, life-cycle analysis, product optimization, assessment of existing structures and structural robustness give rise to new developments as well as accurate and practically applicable probabilistic and statistical engineering methods to support these developments. These proceedings are a valuable resource for anyone interested in contemporary developments in the field of probabilistic engineering applications.

This book examines multiple criteria decision making (MCDM) and presents the Sequential Iterative Modelling for Urban Systems (SIMUS) as a method to be used for strategic decision making. It emphasizes the necessity to take into account aspects related to real world scenarios and incorporating possible real-life aspects for modelling. The book also highlights the use of sensitivity analysis and presents a method for using criteria marginal values instead of weights, which permits the drawing of curves that depicts the variations of the objective function due to increments/decrements of criteria values. In this way, it also gives quantitative values of the objective function allowing stakeholders to perform a comprehensive risk analysis for a solution when it is affected by exogenous variables. Strategic Multi-Criteria Decision Making: A Practical Guide for Complex Scenarios is divided into four parts. Part 1 is devoted to exploring the history and development of the discipline and the way it is currently used. It highlights drawbacks and problems that scholars have identified in different MCDM methods and techniques. Part 2 refers to what can be done using the MCDM process. Part 3 proposes the SIMUS method as a strategic procedure to deal with MCDM problems, and addressing how to approach complicate scenarios. Part 4 is entirely devoted to support practitioners through more than 100 questions a user may ask, and their corresponding answers, as well as a collection of solved six complex real-life scenarios. The decision-making process can be a complex task, especially with multi-criteria problems. With large amounts of information, it can be an extremely difficult to make a rational decision, due to the number of intervening variables, their interrelationships, potential solutions that might exist, diverse objectives envisioned for a project, etc. The SIMUS method has been designed to offer a strategy to help organize, classify, and evaluate this information effectively.

This book presents machine learning approaches to identify the most important predictors of crucial variables for dealing with the challenges of managing production units and designing agriculture policies. The book focuses on the agricultural sector in the European Union and considers statistical information from the Farm Accountancy Data Network (FADN).Presently, statistical databases present a lot of information for many indicators and, in these contexts, one of the main tasks is to identify the most important predictors of certain indicators. In this way, the book presents approaches to identifying the most relevant variables that best support the design of adjusted farming policies and management plans. These subjects are currently important for students, public institutions and farmers. To achieve these objectives, the book considers the IBM SPSS Modeler procedures as well as the respective models suggested by this software.The book is read by students in production engineering, economics and agricultural studies, public bodies and managers in the farming sector.

Based on the shared journey of two researchers, this book explores enhancing algorithms for the resource-constrained project scheduling problem. It examines the search for and significance of project data from multiple, distinct perspectives. In the first part, the quest for project data is presented as a continuous exploration of the complexity of the resource-constrained project scheduling problem. This quest is pursued by solving this challenging problem with the aid of state-of-the-art algorithms from the literature, each time gaining a deeper understanding of its challenging nature. To provide insights into the problem's complexity, project data is created, manipulated, and analyzed in depth to make current projects easier or harder to schedule. This challenging quest for project data has resulted in new project databases for academic research, new ways of testing future algorithms, and insights into how to improve future algorithms to solve this project scheduling problem with limited resources. In turn, the second part discusses the relevance of project data, demonstrating to the reader the importance of the academic research presented in the first part for the professional world. It shows how project data can be used to calibrate real project data, leading to improved decision-making, e.g. for project scheduling, forecasting, and risk analysis. The book extends a warm invitation to academics and practitioners alike, as fellow seekers of knowledge, to enhance their project management skills.

This book introduces the grey prediction model methodology and its applications as a professional book. It involves the key concepts, data characteristics of modelling objects and the latest research achievements in grey system. The grey prediction models for homogeneous and non-homogeneous exponential sequences, saturated S-shaped sequences and special sequences have been introduced. This book combines the classical models and the latest models, case studies and model applications, modelling methods, and MATLAB programs in grey system. It is a guidebook for both new learners and professionals of grey prediction models.

As public awareness of social and environmental issues grew, more consumers began to support firms committed to developing and operating environmentally sustainable and socially responsible supply chains. Consumers, investors, and regulators began demanding transparency and accountability, pushing companies to address the environmental footprint of their products and operations. The book addresses essential questions, such as how a firm shifts its focus from being profit-focused to being triple-bottom-line driven and how a firm develops its supply chain with a conscience. Written by practice leaders and leading scholars, it sheds light on different paths a firm can take to embrace its role as a sustainability champion, paving the way for a future where profit and the planet coexist. The book is intended as a tribute to Professor Hau Lee's seminal contributions, elevating the triple bottom line to the forefront of the Operations Management (OM) research agenda. It stimulates practitioners and researchers to engage in deeper and broader discussions about ways to strike a better balance among profit, people, and the planet.

The proceedings volume is the documentary of IEIS 2023, held online on 26-28 July 2023. IEIS 2023 (International Conference on Industrial Economics System and Industrial Security Engineering), which is co-organized by Beijing Jiaotong University and The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, is a prime international forum for people involved in the conference in the world to discuss the problems in industrial economics and industrial security theories and practices. It aims to provide insights in solving the problems in national economy, social development and economic security. The conference theme is “Industrial development, industrial security and national economic security under the background of globalization”.

Combinatorial Optimization represents a major component of Operations Research, Mathematical Programming, and, in a broader sense, the development of digital intelligence (and society). It covers, in particular, such important areas as network design, location, routing, and scheduling, with major applications in transportation, logistics, health systems, production, communications, and energy.Starting from the exceptional contribution Professor Bernard Gendron made to combinatorial optimization and its applications in multiple areas, the book presents a state-of-the-art view on the field through a combination of surveys, expository articles, and focused methodological and applied research. The authors hail from various Operations Research areas and institutions around the world. Having collaborated closely with Professor Gendron, they drew on his foundational work to showcase a variety of models and algorithms that draw a living picture of the multifaceted word of applied combinatorial optimization.

This book introduces a'triple-bottom-line'approach to the concept and practice of family business sustainability. It is geared towards a broad audience covering social, economic, and environmental issues, to focus on implementation of sustainable practices. Having this in mind, this book provides possible ways of successfully managing family businesses in a sustainable manner, which should also lead to long-term business longevity. The social perspectives addressed by this book discuss the social responsibility of the family business, using a two-way approach contributing to the development of society. The economic outlook is introduced by aiming at a sustainable competitive advantage with an economic impact, and how a family business should adapt to changes and be proactive to gain economic sustainability. The environmental dimension is focused on actions against global warming and global agreements aimed at businesses to change their policies to prioritize the environment as part of their strategy. This book thus explores possibilities for family firms to add values along all chains in business activities and to contribute to introducing green environment products, or environmentally safe products. Each part of the book represents an important pillar of the family business unit that helps the firm to achieve and sustain its competitive advantage using the triple-bottom-line approach. Besides the objectives and the content, each chapter provides one short story applicable to a chapter's content and a case study for each chapter or topic. As learning tools besides case studies, the book provides key summaries, terminology, group assignments, and projects.

This proceedings volume provides in-depth research in the fields of quality innovation, sustainability, and operations management. It features contributions from the 4th International Conference on Quality Innovation and Sustainability (ICQIS) that explore how research in quality and innovation boost sustainability and includes solutions to complex industrial problems presented by researchers, professionals, and managers in the field. It also examines the drivers of quality management and sustainability in VUCA environments, with a special focus on supply chain management and innovation. Featuring real business cases on quality and sustainability, this book is useful for researchers, scholars, students, and academics interested in quality management, supply chain management, circular economy, and sustainability.

This textbook examines how service firms manage their international operations. For the first time, it brings together insights from the fragmented literature on this subject into an accessible textbook. Further, it is unique in its focus on service firms'internationalization and international management. Beginning with an overview of the international environment in which service firms operate, it subsequently describes multinational service firms and their internationalization processes, strategies and organization. Unlike most texts on international services, the book goes beyond internationalization to address the ongoing management of service firms. It not only addresses functions such as global service marketing, financial management and human resource management, but also discusses aspects such as global account management, global service delivery and international project management, as well as the topical issue of managing distributed virtual teams. A dedicated chapter focuses on offshore shared services and business process outsourcing. These chapters are complemented by a discussion on international corporate governance and corporate social responsibility. The book is intended for students preparing for international careers in the service sector. Each chapter includes case studies, illustrations, highlighted definitions, a chapter summary and exercises.

This book explores how transformative changes driven by the new-age economy can bring about improvements in a company's engineering and manufacturing capabilities. The new-age economy is driven by advanced engineering and manufacturing practices, processes, and technologies, including the Internet of Things (IoT), Cloud Computing, Blockchain, Artificial Intelligence, Robotics, Cyber-Physical Systems (CPS), and Internet-enabled systems to automate industrial processes. Today's business dynamics are governed by uncertainties, disruptions, complexities, and ambiguities that demand quicker and more intelligent decisions. These changes could relate a renaissance in the company's engineering and manufacturing capabilities. To sustain these volatile and ever-changing business dynamics, Industry 4.0 and 5.0 have revolutionized how organizations operate and make intelligent business decisions. Moreover, the extensive role of business analytics has overcome the limitations ofclassical computing through new technologies and intelligent computing methodologies. Over the past few years, much emphasis has been given to investing in developing hardware and programming frameworks for achieving computational intelligence using fuzzy logic, evolutionary computation, neural networks, probabilistic methods, and learning theory. Within this frame of reference, the reliability, quality, and maintenance of complex industrial and manufacturing systems are essential for organizations to utilize them successfully for informed decisions. This book focuses on studies that provide new solutions for system reliability, quality, security, and maintainability using quantitative and qualitative research. It emphasizes developments and problems in systems engineering management, systems integration, software and hardware engineering, and the development process.

This graduate textbook is focused on digital transformation. It answers key questions regarding: which technologies can be used to transform an organisation, which activities within an organisation can be transformed, and what the aim of digital transformation should be. Now fully updated and expanded in this second edition, the content is divided into three main parts, the first of which offers an introduction to the topic, highlights fundamental examples of digital transformation, defines the terminology, and enables readers to quickly understand the main components of digital transformation. The second part of the book addresses examples of digital transformation from several industries, including: government; finance; health; manufacturing; and education. The third and final section of the book describes the activities and processes within a typical digital transformation programme. The pedagogical approach to the process makes the book beneficial to both students who have never been involved in such a programme and practitioners who plan to implement digital transformation in their organisation.

This book illustrates innovative support-decision models, methods, and advanced automation and robotic technologies aimed at enhancing the overall performance of Warehousing and Material Handling (WMH) in terms of time and space efficiency, service levels, labor safety, and ergonomics. It provides a collection of cutting-edge issues commonly faced in warehousing systems worldwide, along with a structured set of methodologies and technological solutions to address them.Warehousing and Material Handling (WMH) are pivotal processes within supply chain and production systems. They involve the handling, consolidation, and storage of goods such as raw materials, parts, components, and finished products within distribution centers. WMH is also a key component of distribution networks, serving as a hierarchy of facilities dedicated to receiving materials from vendors and shipping to customers while meeting service level and performance targets.The book offers readers the opportunity to explore this topic from multiple knowledge levels and perspectives. At the basic level, it introduces readers to the problems, issues, nomenclature, fundamental models, and methods to support the decision-making process. At an intermediate level, it delves into the state-of-the-art on critical issues in warehousing and material handling systems. Finally, at an advanced level, it delves into the most challenging and recent research and industry issues, addressing both providers and users of WMH solutions and technologies.The book's intended audience includes undergraduate students, graduate students, PhD students, post-doc researchers, scholars, and researchers from academia and industry. It is also relevant for practitioners and managers working in production, logistics, and supply chain environments. The authors'approach is multidisciplinary, with a special focus on logistics, automation, optimization, safety, ergonomics, and the overall sustainability of WMH systems and operations.

This book presents selected proceedings of DEA45: International Conference on Data Envelopment Analysis, which was held September 4-6, 2023, at Surrey Business School, University of Surrey, Guildford, UK. It contains theoretical and empirical papers on Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) and related fields with a focus on performance measurement and management. It discusses the latest research and developments and their application in various areas such as regulation, agriculture, education, financial and health services. The book is of interest to both researchers and practitioners working on or utilizing the DEA method for examining efficiencies across various organizations.

This book lays out a foundation and taxonomy for Behavioral Decision Analysis, featuring representative work across various domains. Traditional research in the domain of Decision Analysis has focused on the design and application of logically consistent tools to support decision makers during the process of structuring problem complexity, modeling uncertainty, generating predictions, eliciting preferences, and, ultimately, making better decisions. Two commonly held assumptions are that the decision maker's cognitive belief system is fully accessible and that this system can be understood and formalized by trained analysts. However, in past years, an active line of research has emerged studying instances in which such assumptions may not hold. This book unites this community under the common theme of Behavioral Decision Analysis. The taxonomy used in this book categorizes research based on task focus (prediction or decision) and behavioral level (individual or group). Two theoretical lenses that lie at the interface between (1) normative and descriptive research, and (2) normative and prescriptive research are introduced. The book then proceeds to highlight representative works across the two lenses focused on individual and group-level decision making. Featuring various methodologies and applications, the book serves as a reference for researchers, students, and professionals across different disciplines with a common interest in Behavioral Decision Analysis.

This book describes cutting-edge research and technologies aimed at increasing the efficiency of production processes and supporting the implementation of Industry 4.0 and Industry 5.0 solutions in production. Gathering peer-review contributions to the 8th International Scientific-Technical Conference MANUFACTURING 2024, held on May 14–16, 2024, in Poznan, Poland, it reports on research on and applications of artificial intelligence and digital technologies to improve the production process. It also presents augmented/virtual and mixed reality tools that can be used or have been tested in the manufacturing industry and for education and training purposes. Last but not least, it highlights cutting-edge solutions for green and sustainable production. Offering a timely, practice-oriented reference guide for both researchers and practitioners in manufacturing, this book is also intended to bridge the gap between university and industry, fostering a closer communication and cooperation between them

This book is a rigorous but practical presentation of the Bayesian techniques of uncertainty quantification, with applications in R. This volume includes mathematical arguments at the level necessary to make the presentation rigorous and the assumptions clearly established, while maintaining a focus on practical applications of Bayesian uncertainty quantification methods. Practical aspects of applied probability are also discussed, making the content accessible to students. The introduction of R allows the reader to solve more complex problems involving a more significant number of variables. Users will be able to use examples laid out in the text to solve medium-sized problems.The list of topics covered in this volume includes basic Bayesian probabilities, entropy, Bayesian estimation and decision, sequential Bayesian estimation, and numerical methods. Blending theoretical rigor and practical applications, this volume will be of interest to professionals, researchers, graduate and undergraduate students interested in the use of Bayesian uncertainty quantification techniques within the framework of operations research and mathematical programming, for applications in management and planning.

This book is about the relationship between Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) and new technologies that have emerged in the early years of the twenty-first century. The technologies addressed include the Internet of Things (IoT), Artificial Intelligence (AI), Digital Thread, Digital Twins, Big Data, digital transformation, sustainable products, and Systems Engineering.Product Lifecycle Management is the business activity of managing, in the most effective way, a company's products all the way across their lifecycles—from the very first idea for a product all the way through until it is retired and disposed of. PLM is a key technology for all manufacturing and engineering companies as it manages their products from Ideation, through Definition, Realisation, and Use to Retirement. The basics of PLM have been addressed in previous volumes in this series. Due to its wide span across a company, PLM has many interactions with other key technologies and systems. This Volume 6 of Product Lifecycle Management looks at the relationship of PLM to other technologies and strategies that have emerged in the twenty-first century and are used by manufacturing companies. The book also includes chapters addressing PLM education in different industry sectors such as mechanical engineering and electronic engineering.

Digital supply chains increase companies'competitiveness. A systematic approach describes the development of strategies to achieve challenging corporate goals with the supply chain and its digitalisation. These include better fulfilling customer requirements, increasing sales, and simultaneously reducing costs. Strategy patterns are presented, and their implementation in companies is described. Entrepreneurs, supply chain, and operations managers receive a practice-oriented guide on how to align their company for the future. The tried-and-tested methods and approaches accelerate and facilitate strategy development, implementation, and support through digital solutions. The focus is on making/buying decisions, finding solutions for skills, digital solutions in production technology (3D printing), and the impact of Industry 4.0 and environmental aspects on the supply chain. Practical examples will show how new solution concepts support the design of future-oriented supply chains. The trigger points that could jeopardise a successful supply chain will also be presented, as well as the design for time and cost optimisation in the overall chain. How must a company fundamentally question the historically grown supply chain? What is essential in supply chain optimisation? The strategies presented define the processes, architectures, the use of digital technologies and the deployment of resources - considering the overarching corporate strategy, which calls for shorter delivery times and lower costs to remain competitive.

In this book, readers will be exposed to the Data and Decision Analytics Framework which helps a business analyst to first identify the root cause of business problems by collecting, preparing, and exploring data to gain business insights, before proposing what objectives and solutions should be developed to solve the problems. To guide the reader through the learning and application of this framework, several cases are included in the book to illustrate the typical operations management problems faced by businesses. These cases are based on experiences in business domains such as retail, healthcare, transportation and logistics operations, and banking, and they are related to demand forecasting, inventory management, distribution management, capacity planning, resource allocation, workforce scheduling, and service system management. For each case, a complete mapping of the case into the Data and Decision Analytics Framework was done to explain how the framework was applied to derive the data insights from data analytics, to define the business objectives, make the necessary assumptions, and then develop the solution to the business problem. This book aims at senior-year undergraduate or graduate students studying industrial engineering, business management with a focus on operations, or data science. They will learn how to use data analytics to first analyze problems to identify the root cause of problems, before developing the solutions supported by decision analytics.

Production and logistics companies can achieve significant competitive advantage with their supply chain and production processes. This book provides managers, practitioners, consultants and students with a comprehensive understanding of process optimisation. It covers a wide range of tools, methods and tried-and-tested procedures for improving performance in these areas. The methodological toolbox from the various optimisation philosophies - Lean Production, Supply Chain, Six Sigma, Continuous Improvement Processes and Theory of Constraints - is presented and evaluated. Digital tools for process analysis, such as process mining, are described. Procedures and approaches are described for the individual steps of comprehensive process optimisation. These include process analysis methods such as ARIS, value stream mapping, the supply chain operations reference model (SCOR), and numerous process evaluation methods. One focus of the book is the presentation of pragmatic implementation approaches and procedures, including agile project management methods. Three project examples from the author's consulting practice are used to describe the results of complex changes. The book contains many hints and tips for extensive process improvements. The author has many years of industry experience and has been advising leading companies in various sectors for over 25 years. It presents end-to-end improvement approaches for systematically increasing supply chain and production performance. Using tried-and-tested tools and examples, the reader learns how to successfully handle supply chain projects from the initial idea to implementation. Based on the author's implementation experience, a set of methods covers all aspects of production and supply chain process optimisation. With the detailed procedures, the book offers recommendations on running supply chain projects efficiently and successfully and which tools effectively support the work in the individual project phases.

This guide complements traditional project management by focusing on the critical pre-project stage. It addresses a major challenge: only 12% of projects finish on time and within budget, often due to poor initial pre-project analysis. This leads to wasted resources. The content offers proven best practices for implementing ISO 56007 recommendations, enhancing project calibration, selection, and overall success rates. Liberating innovators from the constraints of traditional business plans, the guide suggests, along with ISO 56007, a'Concept/Opportunity Case'as an investor-friendly alternative. This template is rooted in the robust IpOp Decision Tree, an ISO 56007-recommended checklist of 11 fundamental questions to thoroughly address essential decision-makers'concerns. This rigorous method ensures reliable project selection and optimal resource allocation. The IpOp Model serves as a structured roadmap, enabling project managers and innovators to transform ideas into compelling projects. It provides clear guidance for making informed decisions, whether to pivot or abandon projects that aren't viable. By following ISO 56007 recommendations, the IpOp Model helps navigate uncertainties and manage critical project factors effectively. Ideal for decision-makers, project managers, executives, professionals, intrapreneurs, and entrepreneurs engaged in project management and innovation, this guide is an essential tool for any pre-project analysis and for turning innovative ideas into successful projects.

Im Rahmen einer Podcast-Reihe im Jahr 2021 wurde die Entstehung eines Brettspiels - Von der Idee zum fertigen Produkt betrachtet. Im Rahmen dieses Herausgeberbandes erfolgt nun eine schriftliche Dokumentation durch Expertinnen und Experten aus der Brettspielbranche. Einleitend erfolgt eine Darstellung der Branche und der Branchenstrukturen orientiert an den Netzwerkstrukturen moderner Wertschöpfung. Bekannte Autorinnen und Autoren erläutern Ihre Vorgehensweisen zur Entwicklung von Brettspiel-Ideen und deren Weiterleitung an die Redaktionen in Verlagen. Führende Experten aus verschiedensten Aufgabengebieten in Verlagen stellen Ihre Aufgabenbereiche vor und erläutern die Prozesse in der Entstehung von Brettspielen (Redaktion, Illustration, Grafik, Lokalisierung, Lizenzierung). Der Produktionsprozess wird ausgehend von der Kalkulation, über den Einkauf, unterschiedliche Materialkomponenten, die Produktionsstätten bis zu Qualitätssicherung und Produktsicherheit. Unterschiedliche Vertriebswege für Brettspiele werden ebenso betrachtet wie die Medien- und Kommunikationsarbeit in Verlagen. Es erfolgt eine Betrachtung der verschiedenen Mediensegmente, über die Inhalte mit Brettspiel-Bezug rezipiert werden, sowie eine Betrachtung der für die Branche relevanten Auszeichnungen. Der Betrachtung des Kulturguts Brettspiel aus verschiedenen Blickwinkeln ist die abschließende Sektion dieses Buches gewidmet. Das Handbuch ist nicht nur für Brancheninsider von Interesse, sondern auch für Brettspielfans, die einen tieferen Einblick in das Hobby gewinnen möchten.

This book brings together original, peer-reviewed research papers from the 2024 10th International Conference on E-Business and Applications, held in Singapore from February 26 to 28, 2024. The papers delve into AI-enabled business innovation, data-driven value creation, and the emerging IoT landscape, providing in-depth insights into these rapidly evolving fields. The book bridges the gap between business intelligence, artificial intelligence, and e-commerce trading technologies, offering a holistic perspective on the intersection of these disciplines. Readers can gain valuable knowledge through real-world examples, data visualization techniques, and business analytics applications, enhancing their understanding of how these concepts translate into tangible business outcomes.

This book presents a systematic framework for Service 4.0, including service digitization, digitalization, and digital transformation, which is an integral part of Supply Chain 4.0 in coping with complex, dynamic, and interdependent systems. It provides a comprehensive state-of-the-art review of digital technologies to support Service 4.0 and Supply Chain 4.0, and discusses important pillars of customer-centric supply chain models. It then explains the role of big data in customer-centric service-based supply chains and links the different types of data needed to promote end-to-end transparency and value co-creation activities to promote these key pillars. Moreover, the book introduces practical models to support analytics for customer-centric supply chains and sheds light on how the industry practically uses existing models to promote service co-creation. A chapter of a case study on women's clothing e-commerce reviews and demonstrates how various data visualization and text mining methods can be used to uncover meaningful insights within the review data. The book is intended to help students and researchers quickly navigate through various technologies and future research directions in the areas of Service 4.0 and Supply Chain 4.0. It is also a valuable read for practitioners in this field.

This contributed volume guides researchers and practitioners on resource collaborative management of supply chains and manufacturing enterprises within an industrial internet technological environment. The book comprises 10 chapters that cover two major topics in the subject of logistics 4.0, namely the utilization of both disruptive technologies and optimization techniques in smart logistic management. With global research on the book's topic expanding rapidly across various directions and disciplines, it provides a structured framework for international experts to showcase outstanding work and unique approaches. Researchers and students will find the comprehensive outline on collaborative optimization and management of smart manufacturing and production, warehousing, inventory, logistics, transportation, integrated supply chain, and supply network within the industrial internet platform a beneficial guide to understanding current and future practical problems that arise in manufacturing and supply chain management.

This book provides a broad picture of solution concepts that are highly applicable to operations and supply chain settings and to explicate these concepts with some of the relevant problems in operations management in multi-agent settings. It discusses different strategic situations like games in normal form, games in extensive form, games of incomplete information, mechanism design, and cooperative games, to solve operations problems of supply chain coordination, capacity planning, revenue and pricing management, and other complex problems of matching supply with demand. The recognition and adoption of game-theoretic modeling for operations and supply chain management problems in multi-agent settings have been a hallmark of operations and supply chain literature research during the last few years. Despite research in operations and supply chain management having embraced both non-cooperative and cooperative game-theoretic solution concepts, there is still an abundance of underutilized concepts and tools in game theory that could strongly influence operations management problems. Additionally, with the increasing digitization of operations and supply chain management, the narrative of problems in these areas focuses on blockchain and smart contracts, platforms, and shared economy. The book profits from these new issues being predominantly multi-agent settings and lending themselves to game-theoretical solution concepts. The book's intended audience is the advanced undergraduate and graduate student community of operations and supply chain management, economics, mathematics, computer science, and industrial engineering. It is also relevant for the research community and industry practitioners who use multi-agent architecture in business problems.

This book brings together a diverse range of findings on current and emerging business concerns when the authors were developing a series of 12 working Analytic Research Consortium (ARC) White Papers. It presents several, differently configured scenarios, drawing on cyber as an example; the use and further optimization of estimative/probabilistic language; communicating analytical insights and other findings concerning ‘(un)certainty'to decision-maker end-users; and mitigating risk. It also evaluates in detail today's rapidly evolving Gen-AI systems and technologies, e.g. those underlying OpenAI's ChatGPT and Google's Bard/Gemini. This includes their respective value concerning scenario development and other business-relevant methods, tools and techniques, e.g. ‘Red Teaming'. The topics discussed are assessed using the multi-methodologies of, firstly, ‘Intelligence Engineering'(IE) and, secondly, ‘Strategic Options Analysis'(SOA). The latter half of the book introduces an alternative scenario planning process, including use of new computer-software and AI tools. In addition to Gen-AI, we identify that the emerging discipline of Causal AI may work better for foresight and scenario activities. The book is a valuable read for a diverse readership from the public and private sectors, spanning government, the military, law enforcement, education, industry, commerce, retail, and enterprises of all sizes. Also, students at business schools and high-level decision-makers, including politicians, military commanders, and C-Suite leaders in various fields, will benefit from it.

This book applies a decision systems science perspective to social systems, using the case of Southeast Asia to illustrate the concepts it sets forth. Southeast Asia is one of the most culturally diverse parts of the world, comprising 11 countries with a combined population of approximately 647 million people. The focus is on Indonesia, the largest and most populous country in the region. Indonesia is an archipelago that is highly heterogeneous. It is the world's fourth most populous country, with some 280 million people spread over 17,508 islands. Great diversity is seen in its culture; however, most of the people greatly value collectiveness or exhibit high sociability and solidarity, i.e., a communal culture. In the culture of business in Indonesia, relationships are absolutely essential as a basis of decision making, thus it is quite different than that found in the West. The ensuing daily complexities require intensive interaction, negotiation processes, and coordination. In this context, common theories and best practices that are generated on the basis of more simplified assumptions often fail. Systems science offers an approach that can take these issues into account and potentially overcome such complexities. This book defines a social system as a complex interconnected set of entities that organize the life of human beings and that are implemented through a process of shared experience and creative tension such that they demonstrate emergent characteristics. To elucidate this definition, the discussion in the book aims to bridge and integrate basic research founded in systems concepts, logic, theories, and models of systems practices and methodologies into a process of social systems research. That process involves engaging various stakeholders in academia, business, and government so that in collaboration they can solve common problems based on multidisciplinary approaches—ones that encompass hard and soft and quantitative and qualitative systems as well as negotiations and simulations. The book has three major parts, the first of which discusses the importance of decisions in social system science that can be applied in managing complexities. The second part describes the use of multidisciplinary approaches for social systems, and the third deals with efforts to apply previously accepted concepts to real cases in Indonesia.

This book critically examines the concept of'supply chain agility'(SCA) in a novel context, shedding light on its implications for executives and professionals. While much literature has explored SCA in manufacturing, this book pioneers a comprehensive exploration of its application in the service sector, an often-overlooked domain in operations management, supply chain management, and innovation literature. The analysis, based on data from 245 service firms in Australia, employs a unique approach, revealing a positive relationship between firm innovativeness and SCA, with SCA in turn positively impacting firm performance. By bridging gaps in previous research, this book offers conceptual, methodological, and empirical contributions, emphasizing the critical role of innovation in achieving SCA, particularly in uncertain contexts. It provides valuable insights for firms navigating the service economy, offering a holistic examination of the benefits of SCA and empirically validating its role in managing market changes cost-effectively for a competitive advantage. The findings encourage a re-evaluation of firm performance, urging business professionals and managers to adopt a comprehensive perspective. The insights presented serve as a valuable tool for measurement, estimation, assessment, and benchmarking—key drivers for improving and predicting performance in dynamic supply chain environments. Overall, this book is a timely and essential resource for those seeking to understand and enhance supply chain agility in the evolving landscape of the service industry.

This book presents selected proceedings of the International Conference on Business Analytics in Practice (ICBAP2024), which was held on January 8–11, 2024, at the University of Sharjah, UAE. The book presents advanced modeling and examples to explore the practical applications of business analytics across various industries and domains. In addition, it dives deep into the world of data-driven decision-making, showcasing real-world case studies and best practices to illustrate how organizations can harness the power of analytics to optimize their decision-making processes. From descriptive analytics to predictive modeling and prescriptive analytics, readers will gain valuable insights into the different techniques and methodologies employed in business analytics.

This is the first volume in the CIRP Novel Topics in Production Engineering (CNTPE), a collection of essays addressing novel research areas in production engineering, published regularly in book volumes. Each essay provides a systematization and explanation of a technology, an approach, a process, etc., and covers a novel research area once it has been published in the scientific literature for few years. The essays provide focused and structured knowledge of a defined and limited subject in terms of detailed implementation, a systematic description of theoretical hypotheses and results, constructive and design characteristics for a product/process or experiment, and exemplary applications to real cases. These constitute the background knowledge for scientists/professionals to approach a novel scientific and technological area - addressing background concepts, relevant tools and methodologies, language, and theory.

This book presents the cutting-edge research showcased at the XXXII International Congress INGEGRAF, held in Cádiz, Spain from 21-23 June 2023. It highlights the latest advances in product design and manufacturing, including industrial methods for integrated product and process design, innovative design, and computer-aided design. The book covers a broad spectrum of topics, including virtual simulation and reverse engineering, additive manufacturing, product manufacturing, engineering methods in medicine and education, representation techniques, and nautical, engineering and construction, aeronautics and aerospace design, and modeling.The book is organized into main sections that reflect the focus and primary themes of the conference. The contributions in this book provide extensive information and insights to support the daily work of researchers, engineers, and experts in various industrial engineering subfields. Additionally, the book intends to inspire new research directions, promote advanced applications of the discussed methods, and foster future interdisciplinary collaborations.

This book presents a comprehensive framework for developing Industry 4.0 and 5.0 solutions through the use of ontology modeling and graph-based optimization techniques. With effective information management being critical to successful manufacturing processes, this book emphasizes the importance of adequate modeling and systematic analysis of interacting elements in the era of smart manufacturing. The book provides an extensive overview of semantic technologies and their potential to integrate with existing industrial standards, planning, and execution systems to provide efficient data processing and analysis. It also investigates the design of Industry 5.0 solutions and the need for problem-specific descriptions of production processes, operator skills and states, and sensor monitoring in intelligent spaces. The book proposes that ontology-based data can efficiently represent enterprise and manufacturing datasets. The book is divided into two parts: modelingand optimization. The semantic modeling part provides an overview of ontologies and knowledge graphs that can be used to create Industry 4.0 and 5.0 applications, with two detailed applications presented on a reproducible industrial case study. The optimization part of the book focuses on network science-based process optimization and presents various detailed applications, such as graph-based analytics, assembly line balancing, and community detection. The book is based on six key points: the need for horizontal and vertical integration in modern industry; the potential benefits of integrating semantic technologies into ERP and MES systems; the importance of optimization methods in Industry 4.0 and 5.0 concepts; the need to process large amounts of data while ensuring interoperability and re-usability factors; the potential for digital twin models to model smart factories, including big data access; and the need to integrate human factors in CPSs and provide adequate methods tofacilitate collaboration and support shop floor workers.

This book is a compilation of the papers presented at the COPERMAN 2023 conference, a meeting that bridges the gap between academia and industry in the field of performance management. This international conference brought together scientists and engineers from around the world to discuss and address many themes related to performance management, including the development of new methods and systems for performance measurement and management, the evaluation of human performance in various industrial contexts (including modern Industry 4.0 factory environments), and methodologies for business deployment. The book is for academics, graduate students, researchers, and industrial practitioners working in performance management. Its comprehensive coverage of diverse topics and cutting-edge research will provide readers with insights and knowledge that can be applied in their daily work, as well as inspire new research directions and interdisciplinary collaboration.

This book explores the convergence of stochastic modeling, reliability tools, and the quest for solutions in an era of globalized challenges. The tools have become only more important in the unforeseen emergencies such as the COVID-19 pandemic and the conflict in Ukraine. This comprehensive book is an invaluable resource for graduate students seeking practical knowledge on probability and statistics in real-world applications. The book is divided into four parts: reliability, computer science, management science, and operations research. Each part includes surveys, recent results, and tools used. Moreover, it offers an essential reference point for researchers, engineers, and managers operating in laboratories, industries, businesses, and government agencies. Through the exchange of academic achievements, ideas, and discussions, this book serves as a catalyst for progress and innovation.

This book contains a selection of papers from the 13th International Conference on Engineering, Project, and Production Management (EPPM) held in Auckland, New Zealand from 29 November to 1 December 2023. The conference was organized by the School of Built Environment, Massey University in collaboration with the EPPM Association. The book comprises of quality-assured theoretical discussions, data analysis, case studies, and industry practices, presented by global researchers and practitioners. The conference theme was “Creating capacity and capability: re-energizing supply chain for sustainable management of projects and productions in engineering,” and this volume focuses on papers related to engineering project, production, and technology. The papers are comprehensive, multidisciplinary, and advanced, and will be of interest to researchers and practitioners from various industries seeking the latest updates on the fields of engineering, project, and production management.

The book introduces dependability (security metric) ideas, gives a general overview of the security analysis of Safety-Critical Systems (SCSs), explains why the study is necessary and defines key terms relevant to this research. It makes an effort to emphasize the significance of security in comparison to other dependability indicators and illustrates the key drivers of this research's purpose. The mathematical foundation of the security analysis process is briefly illustrated, and key mathematical terminology and concepts are presented that are crucial for the security evaluation of critical systems. This book's objective is to provide a thorough understanding of the security analysis process. It will be a research-focused book designed for undergraduate, graduate, and doctoral courses in software and cyber security. The fundamentals of reliability, security, metrics, and mathematical foundation have been covered in this book. Each technique's actual applications, along with benefits and drawbacks, are also shown. Applying each technique to the various case studies serves as a demonstration of how it works. By using the many case studies of safety-critical systems, the students can also learn different analysis approaches and how to model them. Students will be able to use these tools, in particular, on a case study of their choice to analyze system security. The book includes a comparison of various strategies and appropriate recommendations for further reading on these subjects. Moreover, this book's target audience includes software professionals who are interested in security analysis.

17th WCEAM Proceedings provides a record of some of the intellectual discussions (including keynote addresses, research paper presentations, panel debates and practical workshops) that took place among the attendees and participants of the 17th World Congress on Engineering Asset Management (WCEAM), held from 18 - 20 October 2023 at the Sheraton Saigon Hotel and Towers, Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam. The events were organized by the International Society for Engineering Asset Management (ISEAM) and hosted by RMIT University Vietnam LLC (RMIT VN), Ho Chi Ming City. The content of the book includes topics listed below under a general theme of Sustainable Management of Engineered Assets in a Post-Covid World: Industry 4.0, Digital Transformation, Society 5.0 and beyond Sustainable asset investment, acquisition, operations, maintenance, and retirement strategies Production-service transformation and product-service systems Sustainable asset acquisition, operations, maintenance, and retirement processes Modeling and simulation of acquisition, operations, maintenance, and retirement processes Reliability and resilience engineering Applications of the Fourth Industrial Revolution (4IR) technologies in EAM, e.g., Digital Twins Cybersecurity issues in asset management Asset condition, risk, resilience, and vulnerability assessments Asset management and decision support systems Applications of international and logical guidelines and standards in EAM Human dimensions and asset management performance Case studies of asset management in various industries and sectors This proceedings is an excellent resource for asset management practitioners, researchers and academics, as well as undergraduate and postgraduate students.

This book is a comprehensive exploration of the latest theoretical research, technological advancements, and real-world applications of artificial intelligence (AI) for safety and reliability engineering. Smart manufacturing relies on predictive maintenance (PdM) to ensure sustainable production systems, and the integration of AI has become increasingly prevalent in this field. This book serves as a valuable resource for researchers, practitioners, and decision-makers in manufacturing. By combining theoretical research, practical applications, and case studies, it equips readers with the necessary knowledge and tools to implement AI for safety and reliability engineering effectively in smart manufacturing contexts.

The automotive aftermarket is a part of the global value network that involves manufacturing, trading, distributing and developing goods and services to global and local automotive markets. Sustainable mobility and automobiles, from passenger cars to heavy-duty vehicles, are existentially linked to transforming systems and multiple stakeholders across their life-cycles. Through diverse perspectives, this book reveals relevant trends and data, while shedding light on managerial aspects, circularity, institutions, operational linkages, and emerging challenges shaping future mobility. Further, it connects discussions on automotive aftermarket with global consumption of mobility, its sustainability, technology, sectoral knowledge, talent dynamics and relevant actors. The chapters offer global and interdisciplinary viewpoints, including theoretical and practical perspectives alike, of the under-researched automotive aftermarket. The sector represents a major source of revenues in the overall automotive industry contributing to functioning societies. The authors illustrate ongoing transformations of the global aftermarket addressing different challenges and opportunities posed by the globalization of markets and technological change. The book contributes to managerial understanding of the automotive aftermarket and its complexity.

The proceeding volume focuses on the “AI and data driven technical and management innovation in logistics, informatics and services”. In detail the included scientific papers analyze the latest fundamental advances in the state of the art and practice of logistics, informatics, service operations and service science. The proceedings volume is documentation of LISS 2023 at Beijing and Hong Kong in July 26-28, 2023. It is co-organized by Beijing Jiaotong University and The Hong Kong Polytechnic University.