Development of B2B digital infrastructure

 Electronic (e) commerce has been expanding ever since the Internet came into existence, although trading data had been digitalized before use of the Internet. The development of B2B is analyzed on the aspect of the digital infrastructure in this paper. I applied the three-layer model in the interface between the enterprises, which has been proposed before, and I verify the validity of the model. After that I discuss recent B2B trends.     

Power planning in ICT infrastructure: A multi-criteria operational performance evaluation approach

It is critical for information and communications technology (ICT) companies to carry our effective power planning, in order to support the growing number of services they provide, and this traditionally relies on the tacit knowledge and experience of senior staff. The loss of such domain knowledge resulting from the retirement of staff is an important issue for organizations such as Chunghwa Telecom (CHT), the largest ICT operator in Taiwan. This study thus develops a systematic power planning model using a multi-criteria operational performance evaluation. A group version of the fuzzy repertory grid and fuzzy TOPSIS approaches is applied to elicit a set of evaluation criteria that senior staff agree on, and then the priorities of the telecom rooms are evaluated against this. In addition, a new factor, reflecting the attitudes of the decision makers with respect to the degree of strictness, is defined to determine the superiority and inferiority of each alternative compared to the others. Furthermore, a novel decision aggregation strategy regarding the degree of variation among decision makers is proposed, and a quantitative assessment is carried out to analyze its impact on the ranking results in an objective manner. The proposed model may help ICT organizations to more effectively manage their power resources, and thus obtain competitive advantages.     

Development of corporate planning staff

This article considers the problems associated with the development of corporate planning staff in multi-divisional organizations. The author points out that formal planning has grown phenomenally during the last decade and there is a need to consider the development of corporate planning staff to meet the exacting challenges of the job.     

Development planning—An adaptive approach

The author argues that Adaptive Planning is necessary for managing development projects. Given the many interdependencies between the project and its environment, and between activities and stages of the Project Cycle, learning-by-doing is essential. The key tasks of planning and coordination cannot be managed in advance through the blueprint planning approach favoured thus far. The rationale and implications of following the Adaptive Planning approach are explored, and examples are given to illustrate the argument.     

Development and teaching a computer-assisted course in production planning

Abstract. Course development and student activities are described for a successful computer-assisted senior level course in production planning. Development was guided by the view that students must (1) understand the elements being integrated, (2) understand the problems that are being resolved through integration, and (3) participate in the integration activity. Production planning is treated as a hierarchy of individual decision situations which are to be integrated. Each decision is assisted by a software-based technique. A menu program and a common database were developed to allow a student to become the 'integrator' by directing the information flow among the individual decision situations. The paper describes the development tasks, the course elements, and student activities which provide guidelines for others developing similar courses.     

关键基础设施及其安全管理

关键基础设施(CI)系统是复杂的、高度相互依存的、网络化的社会-技术系统,一旦系统被中断或者被破坏,将会对国民健康、国土安全、经济稳定以及政府的正常运转等产生重大的影响.主要研究关键基础设施及其安全管理过程中的若干问题,对CI的特点进行了分析和总结,建立了网络化CI系统的体系结构,并利用视图模型来描述系统,同时还给出了灾难处理的一般过程.最后,进一步探讨了如何使用系统工程的方法来分析和模拟网络化CI系统的运行方式、潜在的薄弱环节以及改进这些薄弱环节的实施方法.     

Marketing planning and corporate planning

The market planning subset of the corporate planning process has unique difficulties associated with technical, organizational and behavioural problems. A major technical problem is that of getting the company sales forecast right. The paper suggests a check-list for budget reviewers aimed at producing more realism in forecasting (Section II).Organizational problems are discussed in terms of allowing time for full concurrence between budget framers and reviewers (Section III). The little-discussed behavioural problems associated with the interface between line management and marketing staff specialists are outlined in Section IV with some suggestions for overcoming them.     

The development of global IT infrastructure

A research model of the impact of a multinational corporations’ (MNC) global strategic orientation on global IT infrastructure was developed using global integration, or the degree to which a global strategy is actually implemented, as a mediator. A “matched pair” survey of 94 MNCs was conducted (two respondents per firm) in order to guard against common source bias. The results showed that the firms that pursue a globally oriented strategy actually enacted these strategies as indicated by a wide-variety of resource flows across national units. The role of the level of global integration as a mediator between global strategic orientation and global IT capabilities was empirically demonstrated. This confirms that a global strategy is not sufficient to ensure that an enabling IT infrastructure will be developed; rather it is the actual level of integration and interdependence that is achieved as a result of the strategy that drives IT infrastructure. The primary areas in which global integration was found to be closely linked to the global IT infrastructure were human resources, which significantly influenced the reach, range, support services and planning of the global IT infrastructure, and information resources which significantly influenced the planning dimension of the infrastructure. These results strongly suggest that the transfer of people among national units creates an information needs “pull” which leads to the development of better IT infrastructure and that the “push” of standardized information also contributes positively.     

Development, application, and evaluation of an "action-reaction" planning method.

It is difficult to design and implement new public policies and programs, at least partially owing to the fact that few useful methods are available to help shape the planning, decision-making, and implementation processes required for change. Planning often tends to focus on wishful thinking rather than on a realistic assessment of the probable outcomes. In this article we describe an action-reaction approach to planning that explicitly recognizes the restrictions on program impact arising from the system in which change is being attempted. A hypothetical example shows the application of this method to the design of a health-care delivery program. The article concludes with a discussion of the long-term uses of the data base that may be compiled with this method.     

Cost minimization of large-scale infrastructure for electricity generation and transmission

Electricity infrastructure confronts societies with immense costs as it must ensure the generation of power and its transmission to locations with consumption requirements. We minimize these costs by formulating an electricity generation and transmission problem that facilitates the design of electricity infrastructure on a macro level. Our problem specifies the capacity, type, and location of power plants and, at the same time, determines the appropriate arrangement of high-voltage transmission lines in order to fulfill the demand of individual cities. We specifically incorporate the non-linear nature of cost functions for power generation that are common in practice. This results in a mixed integer non-linear problem, for which the branch-and-reduce solver from GAMS exceeds runtime constraints, even for small instances with 25 locations. As a remedy, we develop heuristics based on the reduced variable neighborhood search and the greedy randomized adaptive search procedure (GRASP). Their performance enables us to address large-scale problems that arise in real-world applications. We demonstrate this with an actual, nationwide example that spans all 4537 municipalities in Germany.     

The contribution of measurement and information infrastructure to TQM success

There is currently some debate about which TQM practices contribute most to superior performance outcomes. Several proponents argue that softer TQM practices such as leadership, human resource management, and customer focus have more impact than benchmarking, process analysis or performance measurement. The evidence for which TQM factors contribute most to improved performance is not yet conclusive, and sometimes contradictory. Using data from a longitudinal study of 67 TQM firms we contribute to this debate. Our central hypothesis is that measurement of key TQM practices and performance outcomes is essential for TQM success. We examine the measurement practices of this cohort of firms, and report on the changes in their measurement behavior over time. Specifically, we analyze seven dimensions of measurement relating to customer satisfaction, employee satisfaction, process performance, impact of TQM on costs, impact of TQM on sales, self-assessment, and benchmarking. We calculate a measurement-intensity score for each firm, based on how many of these seven parameters were being measured, and we show that increased measurement intensity is strongly associated with perceived TQM success. Finally, using multivariate discriminant analysis, we identify eight variables that explain the level of TQM success with a classification accuracy of almost 90%. We conclude that to attain the highest levels of TQM success, firms need to engage in the measurement practices of self-assessment and benchmarking, but our data suggest that an appropriate measurement framework needs to be in place beforehand.     

The public affairs function in American corporations: Development and relations with corporate planning

The increase of social and political turbulence has led to the development of new organizational response mechanisms. Public affairs units are among the most widely adopted forms in U.S. companies. This paper reports findings from a major research study of the public affairs function in American corporations. Analysis of the public affairs function in several hundred firms strongly suggests that a critical stage in the organization's response to environmental change involves the integration of the corporate planning and public affairs perspective. This paper reviews data from the study and discusses the planning/public affairs relationship in terms of survey and case research data.     

Integration of process planning and production planning and control in cellular manufacturing

Organisations willing to succeed in global competition have to integrate their internal and external processes. This especially includes planning and production control (PPC) processes. Optimised allocation of the production resources and quick response to demand changes result in lower cost and improvement of production performance. Practitioners and researchers have been trying to achieve these goals using production planning techniques. Although the results are significant, it seems necessary to integrate production operations in order to improve the production performance. The goals, information and decisions taken in production planning and control and process planning are often very different and difficult to integrate in Cellular Manufacturing (CM) environments. Designing an efficient PPC system and integrating it with process planning in a cellular environment is of the same importance. The following paper proposes first a comprehensive framework of integrated process planning and production planning and control in CM. Then, with respect to this framework and utilising the domain knowledge in the area of CM systems, an integrated model based on Integrated Definition Modeling Language is developed. The application of the models has been considered as a case study for a production system in electronics and telecommunication sector in a plant in Iran. The validity and completeness of the proposed model is tested by a panel of experts in the areas of production planning and control in CM environments.     

Futurology and planning

This paper is not intended to be an exhaustive exposition of futurological and predictive studies, but rather an indication of the kinds of approach which institutes devoted to this subject are making, methods used and the ideas which are being developed.     

Concurrent consideration of product design,process planning and production planning activities

In manufacturing engineering, product design, process planning and production planning activities are often considered independently. However, in order to effectively respond to changes in business situations, such as changes in demand forecast, product mix and technology, it is desirable to consider them concurrently. For this purpose, a large-scale linear programming model has been developed. The model considers minimization of the sum of processing cost, late shipment cost and inventory holding cost as the objective, and concurrently selects product designs, and generates process plans and production plans. The number of columns in the formulation can be large and, hence, an efficient column generation scheme is developed to solve the model. The model and solution procedure are illustrated with examples.     

Strategic planning and inflation

The author of this article argues that inflation is a neglected area in corporate planning despite the events of 1974/1975. The planning problem which companies face because of inflation is defined, while acknowledging that it is difficult to solve. Recent experience has shown that inflation has a direct impact on every major area of business. Thus it is essential that there is a meaningful attempt to handle these problems in planning. The author discusses his approach to grasping this nettle.     

Integrating forecasting and planning

Specialization inhibits or prohibits interdisciplinary communication among diverse areas. It contributes to segmentation, which becomes a serious problem when several of those areas should depend upon knowledge which exists in other fields. Forecasting and Planning are two such areas, and it is the purpose of this article to show how planning can benefit by the proper utilization of existing knowledge in the field of forecasting.     

Systematic planning and re-organization

In the last decade wages and salaries have more than doubled in most industrial countries. The amount of capital behind each person in industry has in many countries increased even more, partly to rationalize and compensate for the higher manpower costs. This high rate of investment made discount rates increase 50 – 100 per cent in most industrialized countries in the same period. On the other hand low-cost countries have steadily been pushing more and better products into the international markets. This increases competition. The strongest competition and challenge, however, may come from new technology, new materials, new products and above all from better management.

This development leads to a profit-squeeze for the static company. It gives smaller margins for slow and wrong decisions, and demands a dynamic forward-looking management that understands how to organize, how to develop and involve individual human resources, and how to draw up and use objectives, goals, plans, and programmes, both for present and future growth and progress.

In this article, which is based on management and consultant experience, the focus is put on the need of developing and using as management tools systematic planning and reorganization.     

Computers and financial planning

This article discusses the principal application areas of models in the financial planning field together with the main reasons for adopting this approach. The various techniques available are compared with special emphasis on the now widespread ‘financial modelling systems’. Finally, an indication is given as to future developments.