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  • About
  • The Global ETD Search service is a free service for researchers to find electronic theses and dissertations. This service is provided by the Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations.
    Our metadata is collected from universities around the world. If you manage a university/consortium/country archive and want to be added, details can be found on the NDLTD website.
31

Supply chain management and inter-organisational accounting : a Brazilian case

Meira, Juliana Matos de January 2012 (has links)
The main purpose of this study is to extend knowledge of inter-organisational accounting (IOA). The role of accounting in the development of a supply chain management (SCM) initiative is analysed through an actor-network theory (ANT) lens, which allows recognition of accounting as a non-human actor capable of influencing the outcome of social relations. ANT is used to understand how accounting can be an actor in contributing to the mediation, building, and shaping of a SCM project. The field research consists of an action research (AR) case study based on a Brazilian glassware manufacturer. AR involves both taking action and developing knowledge about action. AR was chosen in response to the call for further studies using this methodological approach according to the management accounting literature. Moreover, AR enhanced access to the case company and followed an ongoing situation, which is essential from the ANT perspective. The innovative combination of ANT and AR is a distinctive aspect of this research, facilitating its contribution to both the theory and practice of management accounting. Despite potential controversies that can arise, the findings of this research emphasise that the combination of ANT and AR is worth pursuing. This research brings new insights regarding resistance to change in the lOA context. It was observed that accounting can be, at the same time, a source of motivation and resistance to change. The findings also show that accounting may need to change in order to adapt to the SCM environment and reinforces that there is a strong and complex relationship between trust and accounting in this context. Moreover, this research confirms that accounting may play a constitutional, but controversial role in the development of inter-organisational relationships. Thus, this thesis contributes to the body of literature on IOA, highlighting new controversies and providing insights into the Brazilian context. Since Brazil is one of the 'BRIC' (Brazil, Russia, India, China) countries, it is anticipated that this research will help to inform the growing debates on the application of accounting and SCM practices in emerging economies.
32

Total quality environmental management (TQEM) framework towards sustainability (UK Novated D&B principal contractors)

Khadour, Lina January 2010 (has links)
To reduce the substantial environmental damage of the built environment, contractors have to comply with an increasing number of environmental building regulations. Apart from the purely practical implications of compliance, there is a perception of a gap emerging from not joining up the construction cycle with management-based solutions for performance development, especially in newer areas of interest such as the environment and sustainability. Research has shown that out of the variety of the procurement routes the UK construction industry offers, there has been a continuous increase in the use of novated Design-and-Build (D&B) over the last 15 years. Many clients regard it as providing value for money and the contractors see it as an opportunity to apply their key strengths in management and coordination of design and construction works. The situation of high adoption of D&B, despite its poor quality and environmental performance, motivated this research to develop a management-based solution for performance improvement from the novated D&B principal contractors’ perspective. To date, the bulk of empirical research on environmental management issues has been directed toward quality, strategy, supply chain, and process management. The development of Total Quality Environmental Management (TQEM) may improve environment, quality, sustainability, client’s value for money, and at the same time reduce contractors’ risks. TQEM has emerged, in the manufacturing sector, from integrating strategic Environmental Management (EM) into the holistic approach of Total Quality Management (TQM). TQEM embodies four key principles: customer identification, continuous improvement, doing the job right the first time and a system approach. The impact of TQEM on construction management, design, performance, and procurement are not always as visible to the end-users as they are to the contractor. To be able to define these elements in a construction project, contractors’ perspectives need to be studied with regard to the corporate-level TQEM (cultural and business aspects) and project-level TQEM (construction performance and procurement arrangements). The aim of this research therefore is to establish the suitability of TQEM for D&B main contractors across the major classification of project types. The triangulation approach in the study combines two levels for investigation; a survey and case studies. There are two main reasons for selecting this approach: 1) the two different methods are used for different purposes as the survey focuses on corporate-level TQEM while the case studies are concerned with the project-level TQEM; and 2). This use of multi-methods enables triangulation to take place in order to ensure that the data is reliable. For the survey, a primary group of top D&B contractors who are likely to be most affected by the new environmental regulations are included in the sample frame. For the case studies, within the three selected reputable D&B main contractors, secondary groups of top, middle and project level managers’ opinions, are investigated. The findings illustrate the demand for TQEM and suggest extending TQEM processes over the project development stages. The survey results are analyzed to refine a primary TQEM framework which would hopefully be sufficiently general for implementation purposes. Understanding the case studies’ informants’ professional standing and the significance of their comments is enhanced for ensuring the primary TQEM framework external validity. The framework is developed further through the provision of rich, thick detailed description out of the case studies which allow any other D&B contractor interested in transferability to have a solid framework for comparison. Hence, this research provides the basis for further studies into how TQEM can be enhanced in a way that will provide contractors with sustainable competitive advantages. The research contribution to knowledge is born from reasoned reflections and principled convictions. A new concept of Const.TQEM and a new framework for performance improvement towards sustainability for novated D&B main contracts are developed by this research. The Const.TQEM framework has a potentially massive impact on the timing and nature of the design, of contractor intervention, recognition, and of the contractual and working relationships of the parties involved in a project. By picturing the interaction between the whole parties involved in a novated D&B project, this new framework overcomes many of the shortcomings of the conventional D&B method of construction procurement, enables greater concurrency in design development and project planning, balances priorities, and generates realistic plans. A combination of originality & credibility increased resonance and usefulness and subsequently value of contribution. This research develops a solution for the gap found in the literature by refining and extending current practices of compliance with the new environmental regulations from the design phase, to the managerial and procurement arrangements picturing the interaction among all the parties involved in a project realisation.
33

Management innovation, radical innovation and business performance : the role of knowledge resources for high technology SMEs

Bakry, Faridah Mustaffa January 2013 (has links)
According to the strategy, innovation, and knowledge-based literatures, the notion that SMEs can enhance their innovation ability by developing knowledge resources has become important for achieving competitive advantage and long-term survival. Building upon theoretical work on the knowledge-based view and innovation management literature, this research examines how the management innovation related to radical innovation and how knowledge resources and management innovation influences on business practices and these effects differ across context of an economy. The conceptual model was developed and aims to answer three important questions. RQ1: What is the relationship between management innovation and radical innovation? RQ2: How does this relationship mediate between the development of company resources and business performance? RQ3: What is the impact of the economic environment (developed vs. developing economy) on the relationships between resources, management innovation, rad ical innovation and performance? This study examines the four knowledge resources: humanware (employees' knowledge and learning), techware (technological skills and knowledge), infoware (information management) and orgware (organization's values and norms) that impact a firm's management innovation and radical innovation and affects the success of SMEs. The model is tested with data collected from 123 British high technology SMEs and 133 Malaysian high technology SMEs. The empirical result for the UK dataset shows that humanware and techware contributed to the development of management innovation. The result specified that management innovation is an antecedent to radical innovation. The results also found that the indirect effects of infoware and orgware on performance occur through management innovation. The Malaysian dataset shows that techware and orgware are antecedents for the management innovation, which in turn are antecedents to radical innovation and business performance. Humanware and infoware have an indirect impact on business performance by facilitating management innovation that in turn fosters business performance. The results show that management innovation is important for a developed country, meanwhile for a developing country radical innovation is important. The evidence shows that management innovation is the mediator for the developed country and not for the developing country. Therefore, this finding concludes that the innovation model in the developed country is not applicable for the developing country. This research has noteworthy implications for both researchers and practitioners by (1) Providing guidelines for high-technology SME's in developed and developing countries about knowledge resources, management innovation, radical innovation and firms' business performance, (2) The innovation literature needs to consider empirically how knowledge resources enhance radical innovation and performance when management innovation is implemented and (3) Indicating that the most important manifestation of the different knowledge resources leads to the success of management innovation for SME success in the high - technology industry. Limitations in current research may create avenues for future research in terms of number of countries, companies, methodologies, innovation types and resources.
34

Effect of ISO certification on the safety performance level of petrochemical industries in Arabian Gulf countries

Al Mulla, Mohammed January 2007 (has links)
Safety in the work place is a critical management issue and has serious dimensions in a petrochemical industry. Safety performance is closely linked with quality management. Quality being a competitive weapon has been the motivation for ISO 9001 certification. The primary objective of this research was to study and analyse the effect of ISO certification on the safety performance level of petrochemical industries in the Arabian Gulf region. The literature review revealed the gaps that exist in the research efforts until now relating to the effects of ISO 9001 certification on the safety performance in petrochemical companies. It also helped in identifying the 'instruments' for assessing safety performance more objectively. The reactive safety performance data before and after ISO certification was collected from 10 ISO certified Petrochemical companies. Proactive safety performance data was collected from the same 10 ISO certified companies as well as from another 10 non-ISO certified companies. The safety culture data was collected through questionnaire surveys conducted in these companies. Qualitative safety data obtained were quantified using conventional scaling techniques. Statistical analysis of the data showed significant improvement in safety performance level after the ISO certification. Results endorsed the view that positive safety culture is predominant in ISO certified companies. The research demonstrated the expediency of applying statistical models in analysing safety culture in Petrochemical industries. It is concluded that implementation of ISO 9001 significantly improved the safety performance in petrochemical industries in Arabian Gulf countries, and it can be assessed objectively through statistical techniques. Based on the findings of the research a revised ISO/TS29001 process model with 'safety at the centre' is suggested.
35

An economic study of control charts and sampling plans

Chiu, W. K. January 1974 (has links)
No description available.
36

Improving product design and development performances in SMEs with user centred design activities

Bolton, Simon Mark January 2013 (has links)
The study is framed within the context and knowledge that companies that continually achieve product design and development success, habitually work more closely with customers and users. They do this to discover needs and wants in order that these might be translated into new or improved product or service offerings. It is widely recognised that many companies achieve success by reaching-out to customers and users directly in order to tap into what matters most to the people that will purchase and use their products and services: such engagement enables the development of a healthy pipeline of breakthrough products and services. The importance of connecting with customers and users is not a new phenomenon: building-in the voice of the customer is a critical element of well-established tools such as Quality Functional Deployment (QFD) in large organisations. Awareness of this sparked the simple question, ‘why, with so much support and clear evidence of the benefits of customer- and user-involvement in identifying and fulfilling needs has the practice not become universally embedded within product design and development activities?’ The main aim of this study is to build upon the work of organisations such as the Design Council and NESTA, and authors such as Herstatt and von Hippell, Cooper and Kleinschmidt and Ulrich and Eppinger. These agencies and researchers have indicated - in numerous studies and publications - that direct contact with customers and end-users is one of the best means of generating information about new product ideas. They also assert that ‘experiencing’ the use environment of a particular product or function is a prerequisite for generating high quality information. Many studies provide useful insights into generic best practices and offer evidence to support the assertion that direct contact with customers and end-users is important for large organisations. The research reported below continues in this vein but extends the analysis to examine specifically: (i) the importance (to business success) of fulfilling customer needs, (ii) the extent of customer and user involvement in identifying and fulfilling needs, (iii) the range of activities in which stakeholders and users are typically involved, (iv) the classes of issues discussed in engagement practices, and (v) the issues that contribute to success and failure in product development in SMEs. The study is important in two key respects. First, because even though organisations such as the Design Council and NESTA have highlighted the positive impact that fulfilling user needs can have on business growth, there remains a mismatch between perceived wisdom and practice. Second, from a research perspective, it builds upon existing theory and provides a level of granularity that both extends understanding and provides novel insights with respect to how the gap between theory (known value) and practice (adoption and use) might be bridged. The research was undertaken in three key phases. The first involved a series of scoping and context-setting interviews with respondents in selected, innovating SMEs. The second phase involved the development of a sector-based sample of SMEs and the distribution of a comprehensive qualitative-quantitative survey questionnaire. Following data analysis, a third phase witnessed the validation and nuancing of initial results via further engagement with selected innovating SMEs in the safety, general products, and healthcare sectors. Key findings from the study include the following: users and customers are an excellent source of ideas and intelligence in the product development process, however, many companies fail to exploit customers optimally (or at all) as a development resource; identifying user needs is an integral component in the product design process, but many companies lack the skills and knowledge to undertake this work adequately; where customer/user engagement is witnessed, it is frequently at non-optimal phases in the development process and limited in ambit (or undertaken by functions that are poorly-equipped to reap full benefits); and, whilst theory relating to user-involvement is widely recognised in the SME community, this is rarely translated effectively into cutting-edge practice. The study provides a contribution to new knowledge by focusing on the improvement of front-end product design and development performance via the deployment of user-centred design activities. It unpacks and details the factors that impact on identifying and fulfilling customer needs in front-end product development in UK SME manufacturing companies, and develops a framework that aids in reducing uncertainty and maximising effective practice in the development process. Further, the work maps and analyses state-of-the-art research in the domain and presents an agenda for future investigation designed to stimulate and support improved user-engagement activity and thus improved product development outcomes.
37

Production scheduling by branch and bound : advances in branch and bound methods for practical production scheduling problems

Bestwick, P. F. January 1976 (has links)
No description available.
38

An agent-based approach for manufacturing production scheduling with emission consideration

Lu, Ruiqiang January 2012 (has links)
In the current business climate with increasingly changing customer requirements and strong business competition, manufacturing organisations need to enhance their productivity and adaptability in order to survive in the current business environment and raise their competitiveness. As a result, the optimisation of production scheduling in manufacturing systems has attracted increasing attention by manufacturers. The optimisation of manufacturing scheduling can be simplified as an optimisation problem for minimising processing cost and time with a set of constraints reflecting the technical relationships between jobs or job features and the resource capability and capacity. Conventional optimisation approaches including mathematical approaches, dispatching rules, heuristics and meta-heuristics have been applied in this research area but optimal solutions cannot be achieved in a reasonable computational time. In this PhD research, an agent based approach is developed for solving the manufacturing production optimisation problem. There is an agent iterative bidding mechanism coordinated by a Genetic Algorithm (GA) which facilitates the search for optimal routing and sequencing solutions for processing an entire job with shared manufacturing resources. A shop agent in the system works as a mediator which announces bidding operations, collects bids and decides winner machines according to a weight-based function. Machine agents with specific technical capability calculate the total production cost and lead time for job operations according to the predesigned operational sequence, and decide whether to submit their bids based on local utility. Another agent self-adjusting mechanism is employed for resource agents updating the priorities of unprocessed jobs in their buffers. The objective of each machine agent is to maximise local utility, i.e., to increase individual profit. After genetic generations for updating parameters with agent self-adjusting, the near optimal schedule plans can be found. On the other hand, the use of energy in all organisations has become a key issue worldwide. Carbon emissions from manufacturing processes of a company are under the pressure of government and also affect the public opinion. In the previous works from the literature, however, economic and environmental issues are not considered simultaneously in manufacturing production scheduling. Based on the basic agent based optimisation mechanisms, two extensive models with the consideration of the carbon emission during production are built in this research work, where the emission factor is set to be a constraint and another objective respectively. Numerical tests are utilised in order to examine the effectiveness and efficiency of the proposed approaches. Furthermore, two previous approaches from the literature for solving the same problems are rebuilt and results are compared for testing the comparative performance of the proposed approaches. Test results show that near optimal schedule plans can be achieved in a reasonable computational time.
39

Influencing factors for sustainable design implementation in the front-end of new product development process within the Fast-Moving-Consumer-Goods sector

Park, Curie January 2015 (has links)
This study examines and verifies the influencing factors for sustainable design implementation in the front-end stages of New Product Development (NPD) process within the Fast-Moving-Consumer-Goods (FMCG) sector. Despite many arguments that the early consideration of sustainable design is key to successful sustainable product development, there is a paucity of research that approaches sustainable design implementation from an NPD front-end perspective. Moreover, sustainable design research in the FMCG sector is rare in spite of the sector’s substantial impact to the environment and society. In order to gain holistic insights of the subject, this study explores different epistemic communities ranging from industrial sustainable design, engineering sustainable design, NPD front-end studies, to corporate social responsibility (CSR) studies. Subsequently, multiple FMCG case studies are conducted to confirm and elaborate the literature findings. Among a total of 11 factors and 32 elements of case studies findings, nine factors and 19 elements confirm the previous findings, and two factors and 13 elements are newly identified. Six confirming factors including senior management support, internal communication, cross-­‐functional team, and supportive corporate culture are common sustainable design and NPD front-end factors. Three other confirming factors including sustainability tools, and sustainability champions are distinct sustainable design factors, and two new factors including balanced focus on growth and maturity of external contexts and seven elements are specific to the FMCG context. Also a disparity between the perception and practice of the factors is highlighted. More positive, frequent evidence of the factors is observed in higher sustainability maturity level companies. A conceptual framework is suggested to explain the interrelationships of factors. The research findings contribute to a holistic understanding of the nature of sustainable design implementation in the front-end of NPD for FMCG. The research is hoped to serve as guide for FMCG practitioners in diagnosing their sustainable design implementation within the NPD process, and developing more holistic sustainability strategy in a long-term view.
40

Integrating product lifecycle management systems with maintenance information across the supply chain for root cause analysis

Madenas, Nikolaos January 2014 (has links)
Purpose: The purpose of this research is to develop a system architecture for integrating PLM systems with maintenance information to support root cause analysis by allowing engineers to visualise cross supply chain data in a single environment. By integrating product-data from PLM systems with warranty claims, vehicle diagnostics and technical publications, engineers were able to improve the root cause analysis and close the information gaps. Methodology: The methodology was divided in four phases and combined multiple data collection approaches and methods depending on each objective. Data collection was achieved through a combination of semi-structured interviews with experts from the automotive sector, by studying the internal documentation and by testing the systems used. The system architecture was modelled using UML diagrams. Findings: The literature review in the area of information flow in the supply chain and the area of root cause analysis provides an overview of the current state of research and reveals research gaps. In addition, the industry survey conducted, highlighted supply chain issues related to information flow and the use of Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) systems. Prior to developing the system architecture, current state process maps were captured to identify challenges and areas of improvement. The main finding of this research is a novel system architecture for integrating PLM systems with maintenance information across the supply chain to support root cause analysis. This research shows the potential of PLM systems within the maintenance procedures by demonstrating through the integration of PLM systems with warranty information, vehicle diagnostics and technical publications, that both PD engineers and warranty engineers were benefited. The automotive experts who validated the system architecture recognised that the proposed solution provides a standardised approach for root cause analysis across departments and suppliers. To evaluate the applicability of the architecture in a different industry sector, the proposed solution was also tested using a case study from the defence sector. Originality/Value: This research addressed the research gaps by demonstrating that: i) A system architecture can be developed to integrate PLM systems with maintenance information to allow the utilisation of knowledge and data across the product lifecycle; ii) Network can be treated as a virtual warehouse where maintenance data are integrated and shared within the supply chain; iii) Product data can be utilised in conjunction with maintenance information to support warranty and product development engineers; iv) Disparate pieces of data can be integrated where later data mining techniques could potentially be applied.

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