Today's Competitive Business Environment Research Articles

Safety culture and accident analysis—A socio-management approach based on organizational safety social capital

One of the biggest challenges for organizations in today's competitive business environment is to create and preserve a self-sustaining safety culture. Typically, the key drivers of safety culture in many organizations are regulation, audits, safety training, various types of employee exhortations to comply with safety norms, etc. However, less evident factors like networking relationships and social trust amongst employees, as also extended networking relationships and social trust of organizations with external stakeholders like government, suppliers, regulators, etc., which constitute the safety social capital in the Organization—seem to also influence the sustenance of organizational safety culture. Can erosion in safety social capital cause deterioration in safety culture and contribute to accidents? If so, how does it contribute? As existing accident analysis models do not provide answers to these questions, CAMSoC (Curtailing Accidents by Managing Social Capital), an accident analysis model, is proposed. As an illustration, five accidents: Bhopal (India), Hyatt Regency (USA), Tenerife (Canary Islands), Westray (Canada) and Exxon Valdez (USA) have been analyzed using CAMSoC. This limited cross-industry analysis provides two key socio-management insights: the biggest source of motivation that causes deviant behavior leading to accidents is ‘Faulty Value Systems’. The second biggest source is ‘Enforceable Trust’. From a management control perspective, deterioration in safety culture and resultant accidents is more due to the ‘action controls’ rather than explicit ‘cultural controls’. Future research directions to enhance the model's utility through layering are addressed briefly.

A performance benchmarking system to support supplier selection

In today's competitive business environment, management of suppliers is essential for companies to monitor the value chain of the entire production network. Evidence suggests that undesirable occurrences in companies, such as extensive delays in the planned schedule, serious quality problems and cost overruns, are, to a certain extent, related to the unfulfilled promises of business partners. Subjective judgment and the lack of a systematic method for supplier selection hinder the analysis of the current and projected performance of the suppliers, which is necessary before making a final decision. This paper attempts to propose a generic model for supplier selection, focusing on the methodology to benchmark the potential suppliers and providing a comparison of performance measures based on a number of relevant criteria. To validate the feasibility of the proposed system, this paper makes use of existing AI tools that have been developed for selecting and benchmarking suppliers for manufacturing firms.

An innovative use of the web to build graduate team skills

Successful graduates in today's competitive business environments must possess sound interpersonal skills and the ability to work effectively in team situations within, and across, disciplines. However, developing these skills within the higher education curriculum is fraught with organisational and pedagogical difficulties, with many teachers not having the skills, time or resources to facilitate productive group processes. Furthermore, many students find their teamwork experiences frustrating, demanding, conflict-ridden and unproductive. This paper brings together the perspectives and experiences of an engineer and a social scientist in a cross-disciplinary examination of the characteristics of effective teamwork skills and processes. A focus is the development and operation of ‘TeamWorker’, an innovative online system that helps students and staff manage their team activities and assessment. TeamWorker was created to enhance team teaching and learning processes and outcomes including team creation, administration, development and evaluation. Importantly, TeamWorker can facilitate the early identification of problematic group dynamics, thereby enabling early intervention.

A genetic algorithm-based heuristic for the dynamic integrated forward/reverse logistics network for 3PLs

Today's competitive business environment has resulted in increasing cooperation among individual companies as members of a supply chain. Accordingly, third party logistics providers (3PLs) must operate supply chains for a number of different clients who want to improve their logistics operations for both forward and reverse flows. As a result of the dynamic environment in which these supply chains must operate, 3PLs must make a sequence of inter-related decisions over time. However, in the past, the design of distribution networks has been independently conducted with respect to forward and reverse flows. Thus, this paper presents a mixed integer nonlinear programming model for the design of a dynamic integrated distribution network to account for the integrated aspect of optimizing the forward and return network simultaneously. Since such network design problems belong to a class of NP hard problems, a genetic algorithm-based heuristic with associated numerical results is presented and tested in a set of problems by an exact algorithm. Finally, a solution of a network plan would help in the determination of various resource plans for capacities of material handling equipments and human resources.

THE IMPACTS OF AN INTEGRATED SOLUTION ON THE LOGISTICS NETWORKS OF THIRD-PARTY LOGISTICS PROVIDERS

Today's competitive business environment has resulted in increasing cooperation among individual companies as members of a supply chain. Accordingly, third party logistics service providers (3PLs) are playing an increasing role especially in transportation and warehousing operations. In addition, increasing opportunities for cost savings or customer satisfaction from returned products prompts 3PLs to get involved in reverse logistics operations. Consequently, these 3PLs must operate supply chains for a number of different clients who want to improve their logistics operations for both forward and reverse flows. However, in the past, the design of distribution networks has been independently conducted with respect to either forward or backward flows. Thus, this paper proposes a mixed integer- programming model for the design of an integrated distribution network and then illustrates the impact of forward and reverse flows for 3PLs.

Note on an economic lot scheduling problem under budgetary and capacity constraints

Setup reduction program has become an important manufacturing strategy in today's competitive business environment. Banerjee et al. (Int. J. Prod. Econom. 45 (1996) 321) studied the impact of capital investment in setup reduction on an economic lot scheduling problem with a limited budget. They followed the common cycle approach to formulate the problem and suggested a heuristic procedure for numerical computation. The solution they obtained for the model without setup reduction is infeasible perhaps due to mathematical and/or computational errors. In this note, we point out the mathematical errors involved in their paper and provide efficient solution algorithms to both setup reduction and without setup reduction models.

Successful branding of a commodity product: The case of RAEX LASER steel

In today's competitive business environment, industrial marketers must work harder than ever before to achieve some degree of differentiation for their products to avoid being viewed as a commodity. Many firms have sought to achieve this differentiation by branding their products. Branding, however, is more than simply putting the company's name on a product and broadcasting that name to its target audiences. For industrial products, branding is a multidimensional construct that includes not only how the customers view the physical product, but also the logistics, customer support, and corporate image and policy that accompany this product. This paper discusses how the Finnish steel company Rautaruukki was able to successfully incorporate these four components into their RAEX LASER steel, a brand specifically targeted for job shops who do laser cutting. The paper concludes with managerial implications and suggestions for how industrial marketers might implement their own branding strategy.

Energy conservation through structured audits: A quantitative approach

Conservation of energy is one of the most important ways to achieve increased productivity in today's competitive business environment. Conservation of energy is achievable through a system design to control the use of energy and monitoring and maintenance of this control system. Maintenance management can play a key role in this regard which is the subject of this article. In order to prepare an energy management program, an organization needs to identify areas with potential for improvement and audit them periodically in a structured manner to continuously evaluate for improvements. This paper provides a framework for structured audits for energy conservation. These audits will help in assessing the current status of the energy conservation quantitatively and identify major opportunities for continuous improvement.

On a responsive replenishment system: a fuzzy logic approach

In today's competitive business environment, it is important that customers are able to obtain their preferred items in the shops they visit, particularly for convenience store chains such as 7–Eleven where popular items are expected to be readily available on the shelves of the stores for buyers. To minimize the cost of running such store chains, it is essential that stocks be kept to a minimum and at the same time large varieties of popular items are available for customers. In this respect, the replenishment system needs to be able to cope with the taxing demands of minimal inventory but at the same time keeping large varieties of needed items. This paper proposes a replenishment system which is able to respond to the fluctuating demands of customers and provide a timely supply of needed items in a cost–effective way. The proposed system embraces the principle of fuzzy logic which is able to deal with uncertainties by virtue of its fuzzy rules reasoning mechanism, thereby leveraging the responsiveness of the entire replenishment system for the chain stores. To validate the feasibility of the approach, a case study has been conducted in an emulated environment with promising results.

Selection of management accounting systems in Just-In-Time and Theory of Constraints-based manufacturing

In today's competitive business environments, a firm's long-term survival rests heavily on its ability to sustain manufacturing superiority over its competitors. To provide the firm with detailed guidelines for sustaining manufacturing superiority, this paper examines the impact of different management accounting systems, manufacturing control systems and time horizon on manufacturing performance in an enterprise resource planning integrated environment. These management accounting systems include traditional costing, activity-based costing and throughput accounting. The manufacturing control systems include Just-In-Time- and Theory of Constraints-based manufacturing. Through a series of simulation experiments, it was found that activity-based costing provided higher short- and long-term profit, better customer service and lower work-in-process inventory than traditional costing and throughput accounting in situations where firms have high overhead costs and relatively low labour and material costs, while carrying ending inventories because of demand uncertainty. Traditional costing also outperformed throughput accounting by exploiting the real-time information sharing capabilities of an enterprise resource planning system. Just-In-Time manufacturing outperformed Theory of Constraints with respect to short- and long-term profitability, customer service, and work-in-process inventory because of differences in buffer inventory policies and sequencing rules. However, time horizon and its interaction with management accounting systems had no impact on the manufacturing performance. In addition, the results suggest that a management accounting system that depicts the manufacturing process tended to provide more accurate product cost information and resulted in a better system performance than the others.

Web Enabled Call Center

Call centers for providing customer service has a tremendous impact in the conduct of business in today's competitive business environment. The advancement in Information Technology associated with the phenomenal growth of Internet has transformed call centers into automated computerized help desks. This paper reviews the evolution of call center technologies over the recent years. As a case-study, it presents the CISCO Enterprise Agent, which uses modern Information Technology to enable an organization in customer contact management. Finally, the paper presents a new approach to implement automated web enabled call center, where software agents encoding domain ontology plays the role of the human agents in a traditional call center.

Achieving Competitive Advantage Through the Application of Open Systems Theory and the Development of Strategic Alliances: A Guide for Managers of Nonprofit Organizations

ABSTRACT To effectively compete in today's competitive business environment, nonprofit organizations need to operate as open systems developing strategic alliances with key actors. To help managers of nonprofit organizations develop such relationships, open systems theory is explained, the phrase “strategic alliances” is defined, and a system of alliances is presented as a tool for identifying and analyzing potential relationships.

Innovations in Customer Service: The Key to Business Success

In today's competitive business environment, organizations gain success through innovative customer service, the one that is difficult for competitors to imitate. Managing customer service spans the entire organization and focuses on the customers' value expectations. With rapid developments in information technology and telecommunications, customer service is getting increasingly differentiated with the prime aim not only to match but to exceed customer expectations. The paper highlights issues and suggests new ways to gain service differentiation, so as to succeed despite the aggressive competition.

A TWO‐COUNTRY COMPARISON OF THE USE OF INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY IN COMPETITIVE STRATEGY: SWEDEN AND THE UNITED STATES

Many factors in today's competitive and global business environment contribute to an organization's financial success. A business enterprise's management must adopt a strategy that fully exploits information technology's power as a key element in order to optimize the organization's competitiveness. Recent spectacular technological advances and breakthroughs have made the effective use of modern information technology a critical, competitive business weapon.

WWW-Based Collaborative System for Integrated Design and Manufacturing

In today's competitive business environment, a product development is the result of a team effort involving a multi-disciplinary group of designers, manufacturers, even supplier and customer representatives. Effective collaboration among various groups is impor tant for reducing cost and product development time. Hence, the aim of our study is to develop a WWW-based collaborative system for integrated design and manufacturing. The proposed system is composed of three modules—collaboration, design, and manufacturing. This paper focuses on its collaboration module and the design module. Its manufacturing module is discussed in References [1] and [2]. The collaboration module is WWW-based platform-independent and provides a virtual collaborative environment for a part designer to perform on-line communication with customers and manufacturers via the Internet. All participants in the collaborative environment can view, and manipulate the solid model of the design part as well as discuss their concerns on-line interactively. The design module utilizes the design by features approach to construct a part. Traditional design by features systems restrict the designer to a fixed set of pre defined features provided by the system vendor. The proposed design module includes an extension mechanism for designers to create user-defined features and an evaluation mechanism for designers to perform manufacturability evaluation. The design module is able to generate a very complicated user-defined feature and to provide feedback concerning potential manufacturing problems in the early design stage. Both proposed modules have been implemented on a Sun workstation using the ACIS geometric modeler, C++, and JAVA.

R&D Metrics: Evaluating R&D Performance Using the Cost Savings Metric

OVERVIEW:In today's hotly competitive business environment, most companies have Total Quality Programs operating, and are pursuing research projects to remove costs and become even more efficient in order to enhance or maintain their profit margins. The R&D “Cost Savings Ratio” (CSR) is the metric used to measure the impact of R&D on these cost savings efforts. CSR measures the reduction in cost of goods or cost of operations that are realized from technology changes. The actual calculation of CSR depends on its use—whether for internal performance measurement or external benchmarking.

Back to the basics: biblical wisdom for effective construction project management

While practices in the construction industry emphasize the use of modern-day management concepts, it was felt that conventional wisdom remains relevant in today's competitive business environment. The objective of this paper is to examine how lessons drawn from the Bible may be applied to achieve effective construction project management. It will, firstly, examine the project management approach as a procurement mode within the industry and how good teamwork is critical for achieving effectiveness. The paper then analyses team ministry within the context of the church and how biblical wisdom, as applied to effective team ministry, is equally relevant for construction project management.

How to restructure the accounting system to stay competitive

AbstractIn this age of computerized, databased accounting, traditional accounting information systems are no longer adequate for the needs of an organization's information customers. This article discusses how a system needs to be developed to add value to organizations by meeting the changing needs for information in today's competitive business environment.

Environmental management information systems: New tools for measuring performance

AbstractSuccessful implementation of environmental management information systems (EMIS) has become essential to the success of total quality environmental management (TQEM) programs. Effective TQEM programs will be early indicators of which companies survive and thrive in today's competitive business environment. Highly competitive industries such as chemicals, electronics, and oil and gas are becoming very effective in cooperating to develop metrics, models, and tools that are based on business processes rather than regulatory edicts. Now electric power companies, newly exposed to market competition, are starting to develop and implement these metrics, standards, and tools. That industry provides a model for joining TQEM and EMIS.

The search for value: measuring the company's cost of capital

In The Search for Value: Measuring the Company's Cost of Capital, Michael C. Ehrhardt analyzes the latest prescriptive techniques and models for determining the cost of capital. He provides a comprehensive framework for practitioners by detailing the various methods for accurately evaluating investment in projects, divisions, or entire companies. He begins with a general discussion of the cost of capital within the context of a firm's overall search for value and continues on to cover such topics as discounted cash flow analysis, flotation costs, long-term projects, and international projects, as well as situations in which traditional cash flow analysis may not apply, such as regulated companies. Ehrhardt moves easily through a variety of technical concepts, providing numerous step-by-step examples to explain how theoretical constructs can be applied to daily financial decisions. He also provides a particularly detailed analysis of estimating capital costs in multidivisional, multiproduct, and multinational firms. Each chapter features an extensive bibliography for further reading. Written for financial directors, planners, managers, and analysts as well as for those who study finance issues, this work successfully addresses the concerns of financial practitioners. In today's competitive business environment, the consequences of miscalculation can be devastating. Correctly evaluating the cost of capital and thereby determining the value-creating potential of investments is a business imperative. The Search for Value is a unique synthesis of the issues surrounding the cost of capital, presenting the most comprehensive treatment of the topic to date. Those who implement the ideas in this book will enjoy the returns made possible by accurate measurements of the cost of capital as an integral part of capital budgeting and strategic planning.