Thesis (M.B.A.)--Boston University / This thesis deals with manufacturing costs in the electronics industry. More accurately, it deals with all costs - including engineering, purchasing and distribution, as well as the costs of labor, material and occupancy charges. They are all interrelated. It is impossible to properly consider costs without looking at the total picture. Further, since it examines costs in the electronics industry, the weight of importance of our set of cost factors is considerably different from those applying to another industry.

Thesis (Ed.M.)--Boston University

Thesis (M.B.A.)--Boston University

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The introduction of information system (IS) to an enterprise is a very important digitalizing stage in the manufacturing industries. The IS outsourcing is to leverage the information technology (IT) to improve the performance as well enhancement of competence. In recent years, the outsourcing is one of the major IS trends , and the IT outsourcing has become a very important management issue that is subject to the concept of specialization, insufficient resources and strategic focuses. In the process of IT outsourcing, some topics always been highlighted , like the selection of the best decision model, and how to bring the maximum profit to enterprise by using IT. This study is to explore the most decision factors of IT outsourcing in manufacturing industry of Taiwan . The purpose of this research focuses on studying the factors of Information System Outsourcing decisions for the manufacturing industry . The research method will be primarily based on AHP(Advanced Hierachical Program) , and the seclected target systems for outsourcing are ERP(Enterprise Resource Planning) , SCM(Supply Chain Management) and CRM(Customer Relation Management) ,those are the most popular systems that manufacturing industry is undergoing or considering outsourcing . The major findings in this study are : 1. Most industry experts surveyed tend to choose In-house instead of Outsourcing , that¡¦s diffenent to the world trend . 2. The most important factor for outsourcing decision is ¡¥Focus on enterprise competence¡¦, that¡¦s consistent with worldwide reports .

Overreliance on energy from fossil fuels is unsustainable because of their regional depletion and associated environmental impacts. The British industrial sector accounts for around one fifth of final energy demand and one third of carbon emissions nationally. This thesis attempts to quantify the potential for industrial energy efficiency from the current baseline, by adopting thermodynamic and economic perspectives. The methodology involves a top-down analysis of energy trends within the manufacturing sector to determine the baseline against which changes are measured, leading to bottom-up case studies which explicitly consider the detailed mechanisms affecting energy demand. Top-down analysis highlights the diversity between industrial sectors, for which a sectoral classification based on process homogeneity is proposed. It also enables the long term, systemic potential for efficiency improvements to be estimated and identifies the barriers to uptake. Bottom-up case studies are better suited to identifying the sectoral potential in the short to medium term. Firstly, the technical potential for heat recovery from industrial sectors is quantified by recourse to thermodynamic quality and spatial considerations. Secondly, an energy and exergy analysis of a glass furnace enables a distinction between avoidable and unavoidable losses, leading to the identification of economic savings. Thirdly, a process integration study at a pulp and paper mill based on a pinch analysis and optimisation of a heat exchanger network highlights economic efficiency improvements. This thesis demonstrates that realising the full industrial energy efficiency potential requires improvements to public policy intended to overcome market-related barriers, especially the EU Emissions Trading Scheme and the Carbon Trust, with additional scope for a mandatory efficiency standard relating to motors. Energy efficiency has to part of a company’s overall strategy to be effective. Future work should focus on heterogeneous sectors and the broader effects on industrial energy efficiency of globalisation and the shift towards services.

Twenty years ago, if someone said that every object could have its own identity, no one would agree and some might even think that was crazy. However, it turns out that the wild imagination is possible today. With the help of the Internet of Things (IoT), it is convenient to identify any objects with RFID (Radio Frequency Identification) and control the objects via the Internet. In the near future, people will even make the IoT network visible, thus all the information on the Internet can become dynamic and much easier to understand than numbers to be.   At the moment, Guiyang Municipal Science & Technology Bureau is planning to design and apply visualization technique to logistics, the focus of Guizhou Provincial logistic network in the IoT era. This is a good opportunity for different kinds of enterprises in theGuizhoudistrict or even in the whole country.   This thesis focuses on three problems, namely, discussion on the use of visualization techniques in IoT, the necessary preparation of manufacturing industry to join in the visible IoT and measures available that the government can adopt. The exploratory case study in this thesis is about the visualization technique in IoT in manufacturing industry in theGuizhouProvince. A company was selected for the case study to explore the situation inGuizhouProvince. The related information was collected through interviews with relevant personnel and observation in the company. To bring a clear view of the situation and provide enterprises with information for reference, SWOT analysis is adopted to evaluate the strength and weakness in both the internal and external environment. Those measures that government can take to promote its development include unification in standards, support in research and development of technology and emphasis on personal privacy.   The conclusion shows that the use of visualization techniques in IoT can promote information transmission both in effectiveness and efficiency, and control the supply chain as well as special processes in an efficient way. Discussions have been conducted on four techniques which are able to realize visualization, including GPS, RFID, bar code and machine vision. The preparation that needs to be done in a progressive way, of manufacturing enterprises mainly involves three aspects: equipment, system, and management; which have been discussed in detail in this study. Only totally combining the three aspects, not a single one can be omitted, can enterprises achieve the goal of growth in benefit and costs reduction through the use of IoT. Due to immaturity of the emerging network and technology, in the future, the IoT still has a long way to go. Certainly, we should not ignore the followed huge benefit and improvement that IoT can bring.

Cross-border acquisitions as effective strategic choicesare used widely to enhance competitive advantages inChinese enterprises in manufacturing industry. The decisionmaking is influenced by certain institutions under theuniqueness of Chinese socialism system. This study investigatesthe influence of institutions towards the decisionmaking of cross-border acquisitions. The study aims to build a conceptual model to identifythe major regulative institutions and how they are influencingthe decision making of cross-border acquisitionsin Chinese manufacturing industry. The study conducts a case study on Lenovo and Geelybased on secondary data to investigate the influence ofregulative institutions on cross-border acquisitions. The decision making of cross-border acquisitions inmanufacturing enterprises is influenced by regulative institutionsfrom international and national level which presentedin three ways. First, the supportive regulation institutionscreate a favorable environment for cross-borderacquisitions. Second, government promotes cross-borderacquisitions by using policy as guidance. Third, the imperfectof the legal system impede the organizationsprogress.

The major of this study is to examine human resource professionals¡¦ competencies in car manufacturing industry and identify their affectability.This study perceived 20 competencies in four domains: strategic human resource expertise, general human resource functional expertise, self-development and support & service for employee to examine their importance through the Analytical Hierarchy Process, AHP.The results of this study indicate that the HRM expert of car manufacturing industry weighting the strategic human resource expertise with 51.1% related to the other three domains, general human resource functional expertise with 21.8%, self-development 10.5% and weighting support & service for employee for 16.7%.The result emphasizes the importance of strategic human resource expertise and the general human resource functional expertise follows. The HRM competencies in Taiwan are still ranged in training and development of employee, usage of HRM information system, performance review and compensations & benefits. But the experts reach the common consensus that the strategic human resource expertise will be the most important competency for the requirement as the circumstance changing.

The core issues of traditional manufacturing industry are production and marketing. Adopting the suitable marketing strategies and production techniques based on each product characteristics will render competitive advantage. In this paper, the relationship between the knowing of production and application process of sales representatives and the marketing process was studied. Customers from different regions having various concerns of the quality and cost, require differently. The customer feedbacks collected and classified as quality and service issues, were delivered to both the production and marketing departments to help them finding the solution together. What is more, the production department can be engaged in the improvement and follow up the result for the execution according to the customer feedbacks collected from sales department and some problems which occur during production. This research provides opportunities for employees to exchange experiences, learn from each other, and improve techniques in order not to make the same mistakes again. They have learned to do everything of their own accords and increase the efficiency of management as well. It also helps the marketing personnel to understand that their knowledge on product properties and production process and successfully stimulates to learn more and enhance the skills of selling and negotiating as well.