Thesis (M.S. in Management of Technology)--Vanderbilt University, May 2006. / Title from title screen. Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (M.Sc.)--City University of Hong Kong, 2006. / Title from title screen (viewed on Oct. 5, 2006) "Submitted to Department of Manufacturing Engineering and Engineering Management in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Science in enterprise technology and management." Includes bibliographical references.

Arnoldo C. Hax and Nicolas S. Majluf. / "October 1983." / Bibliography: p. 35-36.

Development and implementation of effective marketing strategies during various stages of product life cycle in the pharmaceutical industry are critical to an organization's successful performance in the marketplace in the 21st century. Guided by the general systems theory developed by Bertalanffy and the evolutionary systems theory developed by Laszlo and Laszlo, the purpose of this single case study was to explore best practices among marketing managers within pharmaceutical companies related to marketing strategies during various stages of product life cycle. Data were gathered via semistructured interviews with 3 purposefully selected managers who have successfully developed marketing strategies in a central Ohio pharmaceutical company in business for more than 10 years. A review of secondary data included company documents, such as annual reports, news releases, and websites, in addition to government databases. Member checking was conducted to ensure accuracy of the interpreted data and trustworthiness of the research findings. Yin's 5-step process and thematic analysis were used to analyze the data. Four themes emerged from data analysis: marketing function, product life cycle phases, factors influencing the decision-making process, and strategic activities in executing business strategies. Findings may have implications for positive social change such as assisting organizational leaders to understand the challenges and business practices in implementing marketing strategies to successfully deliver products that improve patients' health.

A life cycle cost based methodology for choosing among mutually exclusive design alternatives is presented in this study. The methodology places emphasis on the iterative nature of the design process. That is, choosing among design alternatives involves the pairwise comparison of the current design iteration to a "baseline" design. An Equivalent Cost Function provides the cause-effect framework on which the methodology is based. In generating a design alternative, the designer alters design features (cause). These features manifest themselves as design dependent parameters (effect), and for each set of such values, optimal values of design variables are sought. This design development process occurs in the face of design independent parameters, with the final result being a value of equivalent life cycle cost. / Master of Science

A life-cycle cost evaluation model is presented to assess the effect of design decisions (made in an attempt to induce higher degrees of producibility) upon a product's life-cycle cost. The model provides a measure of effectiveness in terms of an expected annual equivalent total system life-cycle cost for a deployed population of the product being evaluated. Parametric relationships are established between aspects of the product and the level to which the product is designed for producibility. These aspects include areas of cost arising during each phase of the product life cycle. The model limits the number of product design alternatives to three scenarios which are defined as a product designed to be highly, moderately, and less producible. The best of the three design alternatives is selected based upon the life-cycle costs calculated. / Master of Science

Agile manufacturing has become a topic of great interest over the past several years. The entire domain of modeling and analyzing different types of agile manufacturing environments and systems, however, remain largely unexplored. The objective of this research is to provide fundamental insight into how manufacturing systems should be designed and reconfigured over time in order to cope with different agile manufacturing environments. To achieve this objective, three approaches are developed and integrated into one simulation-based model. The first approach is used to model different agile manufacturing environments. The second approach is used to define various ways in which manufacturing systems can be designed and reconfigured (i.e., design/reconfiguration strategies). The third comprises the cost and objective functions used to measure system performance when different design/reconfiguration strategies are used in different agile manufacturing environments. Based upon the assumptions adopted during this thesis, the experimental work performed suggests that despite the fact that agility incurs high costs, agile manufacturing systems are indeed necessary for certain manufacturing environments in which product life cycles are short yet demand per product type is high. Therefore, it is important in certain manufacturing environments to focus on reconfiguration in short periods of time, even at the expense of higher reconfiguration costs. / Master of Science

Einleitung Der Faktor Zeit nimmt in unserer heutigen Gesellschaft einen bedeutsamen Platz in den unterschiedlichsten Bereichen unseres Lebens und Wirkens ein. Beispielsweise verbreiten sich Nachrichten weltweit innerhalb von Minuten, Reisezeiten verkürzen sich von Tagen auf mehrere Stunden (Kurpjuweit 2013) und die Hersteller von Unterhaltungselektronik verkürzen die Produktlebenszyklen um neue Produkte schneller am Markt zu platzieren (Scheimann 2011). Die Reduzierung des Produktlebens ist bei vielen anderen Produkten des Konsum- und Investitionsgütermarktes festzustellen, da die Markteintrittsstrategie den möglichen Absatz des Produktes bestimmt (Meffert et al. 2008, S. 445f.). Der Erfolg eines Produktes ist jedoch eine Folge aus unterschiedlichen Aspekten, wobei die Zeit, neben der Qualität und den Kosten, einer der Hauptparameter ist. Demzufolge ist das Zusammenspiel dieser drei voneinander abhängigen Faktoren auch im Produktentwicklungsprozess zu berücksichtigen, um die geforderten Ziele zu erreichen (Burghardt 2013, S. 23). Diese werden durch den technologischen Fortschritt, die veränderten Bedürfnisse der Kunden und den internationalen Wettbewerb bedingt (Cooper 2010, S. 8ff.). Durch den Einsatz von strukturierten Produktentwicklungsprozessen können die Zielvorstellungen abteilungs- und aufgabenübergreifend berücksichtigt und kontrolliert werden. Anwendungsbeispiele für komplexe, aber systematische Produktentwicklungsprozesse sind in der Automobil- und IT-Branche zu finden (Braess 2013; Ruf & Fittkau 2008). Für die Produkte der Sicherheitstechnik muss bei der Entwicklung, Konstruktion und Fertigung jedoch ein Aspekt gesondert betrachtet werden – die Qualität. Es sind sehr hohe Anforderungen und Ansprüche zu erfüllen, die teilweise vom Gesetzgeber festgesetzt wurden, da die Sicherheit von Mensch und Maschine zu gewährleisten ist. Im Bereich des Explosionsschutzes, welcher als ein Teilgebiet der Sicherheitstechnik gilt, ist die Einhaltung von Richtlinien und Normen bei einer Produktentwicklung für den Markteintritt zwingend erforderlich. Neue Bauteile werden u.a. durch aufwändige Prüfungen von benannten Stellen erprobt. Diese Bedingungen beeinflussen den Produktentwicklungsprozess und die Konstruktionsmethodik im Explosionsschutz fundamental und charakterisieren den kosten- und zeitintensiven Vorgang durch aufwändige Iterationen (Träger et al. 2005).

Ao mesmo tempo em que o turismo é reconhecido como uma atividade potencialmente causadora de danos ao meio ambiente, motivando diversas pesquisas e ações que visam fomentar a sustentabilidade do setor, a imaterialidade permanece como característica amplamente aceita no entendimento da natureza dos serviços em geral. Nesse sentido, a pesquisa tem como objetivo discutir, à luz de teorias da economia de serviços, a materialidade dos serviços de hospedagem. Para tanto, utiliza se revisão da literatura e a estrutura analítica do conceito de ciclo de vida para abordar as entradas e saídas associadas aos aspectos ambientais do produto fornecido pelos meios de hospedagem. Foram considerados os estágios de produção e uso dos serviços de hospedagem. Assim, diferentes entradas e saídas associadas às fontes de materialidade desses serviços podem ser identificadas. As entradas são: consumo de energia, água, alimentos e bebidas, produtos de higiene pessoal, produtos de limpeza, produtos químicos, combustíveis fósseis e outros produtos. Já as saídas identificadas são: geração de resíduos orgânicos e inorgânicos, descargas de efluentes, emissões atmosféricas, emissões de ruídos e emissões de odores. Tais entradas e saídas decorrem do conteúdo material dos serviços de hospedagem, o qual se manifesta nos locais físicos de produção e na operação dos fatores de produção utilizados. Discutir a materialidade dos serviços e impulsionar um bom desempenho ambiental dos meios de hospedagem é parte importante de um contexto de promoção do turismo sustentável / While tourism is recognized as a potential cause of damage to the environment and motivates several researches and actions designed to promote the sector\'s sustainability, the immateriality remains a widely accepted feature in understanding the nature of the services. In this sense, the research aims to discuss, in the light of service economy theories, the materiality of the accommodation services. Therefore, the research uses literature review and the analytical framework of the life cycle concept to address the inputs and outputs associated with the environmental aspects of the product provided by the accommodation businesses. The stages of production and consumption of accommodation services were considered. Thus, different inputs and outputs associated to the materiality sources of accommodation services can be identified. The inputs are: consumption of energy, water, food and beverage, personal care products, cleaning products, chemicals, fossil fuels and other products. The outputs are organic and inorganic waste generation, effluent discharges, atmospheric emissions, noise emissions and odor emissions. These inputs and outputs are derived from the material content of the accommodation services, which is manifested in the physical sites of production and in the production factors operations. Discussing the services materiality and promoting a good environmental performance of accommodations businesses is important in a context of promoting sustainable tourism

<div>The mirroring hypothesis states the organization architecture and the product architecture tend to “mirror” or mimic each other. There are two types of investigations into this phenomenon: descriptive and normative. Descriptive studies ask whether mirroring is present in an organization/product pair. Normative studies ask whether mirroring affects the performance of an organization/product pair. Much of the mirroring hypothesis literature claims to observe mirroring or claims mirroring improves the performance of the product. While there is still work to be done in the descriptive and normative realms of mirroring hypothesis research, there is a distinct gap in research investigating mirroring in the design phase of products and whether it can be used as a strategy during that phase. This work aims to demonstrate that differently mirrored organization/product pairs working the same example problem produce different design solutions. This demonstration leads into an investigation on where in the life cycle mirroring would be most useful as a design parameter when designing a product. The results of this thesis show that for this specific example problem, mirroring has an effect on the design solutions, and given a Department of Defense acquisition life cycle, there are opportunities where mirroring could be advantageous to use as a design strategy. This work challenges others interested in the topic to not just ask why does mirroring occur in design, but how can it be used to make the design better.</div>