Achieving world class performance step by step

Bridgestone of Japan acquired Firestone, a United States corporation, in early 1988. This article describes the integration process of the two organizations' cultures. There are many lessons in the approach that should apply to a variety of organizations. The Strategic Improvement Process, a rather highly structured approach, harnesses the strengths of both the Japanese and American organizations and starts the manufacturing and technical departments on the road to excellence.     

Strategic planning for telecommunications—a systems approach

This paper outlines the practical application of a systems approach to designing and implementing the Strategic Planning Process in a mid-sized, capital/technology intensive Canadian telecommunications company. The basic General Systems concepts used are briefly mentioned, the design of the Organization Structure and the Information Structure for the Strategic Planning Process are reviewed, the Operational Dynamics of the Strategic Planning Process outlined, outputs and application case described and conclusions reached.     

Planning for strategic decision support systems

The emergence of Strategic Decision Support Systems has opened up new vistas for the true integration of formal models into the strategic planning process. However, with these new opportunities also come the need to develop planning mechanisms that will permit these sophisticated systems to achieve their potential. The process of strategic planning for Strategic Decision Support Systems that is described in this article serves to cast the organization's overall plans, strategies and strategic attributes into a framework that can be used to develop formal SDSS plans.     

Book Reviews

Book Reviewed in this article:
Transportation for the Nuclear Industry Edited by D. G. Walton and S. M. Blackburn
Reproductive Health Hazards in the Workplace Office of Technology Assessment Task Force Philadelphia: J.B. Lippincott Co.
Metal Speciation: Theory, Analysis and Application Edited by James R. Kramer and Herbert E. Allen Chelsea
Environmental Hazards: Communicating Risks as a Social Process By Sheldon Krimsky and Alonzo Plough
The Risk Ranking Technique in Decision Making By John C. Chicken and Michael R. Hayns
Drinking Water and Health: Selected Issues in Risk Assessment , Vol. 9 Safe Drinking Water Committee, Board on Environmental Studies and Toxicology
Risk Analysis: A Guide to Principles and Methods for Analyzing Health and Environmental Risks By John J. Cohrssen and Vincent T. Covello
Film Badge Dosimetry in Atmospheric Nuclear Tests Committee on Film Badge Dosimetry in Atmospheric Nuclear Tests     

A longitudinal analysis of the impact of firm resources and industry characteristics on firm-specific profitability

Using a dynamic heterogeneous panel data model, we examine the relationship between firm-specific resources (corporate management capabilities, employee value-added and technological competence) and firm-specific profitability and the potential moderating effects of industry characteristics on this relationship. We find that firm-specific resources enhance both accounting-based measures (return on assets and return on sales) and market-based measure (Tobin’s q) of firm-specific performance. Moreover, industry characteristics moderate the relationship between firm-specific resources and firm-specific profitability. Managerial implications are discussed.

Developing a strategy for an Industrial Training Board—a participative approach

The article presents the experience of the authors of designing and working in a participative strategic review and decision making process which involved representatives of employers, trade unions and education; and the analysis and presentation of the results on behalf of an Industry Training Board (a government funded organization) to the Manpower Services Commission, its parent body and link to Government. It considers past practice and the new approach adopted in October 1975, with particular reference to: The Overall Programme of Activities The Review Process The Strategic Workshop Process and gives the authors' conclusions and thoughts to date on the results together with possible developments and improvements to both the process and their own organization's future strategy.     

Enhancing efficiency: step by step

The debate over which mechanism for health care delivery will provide the widest, most efficient access has reached a crescendo. While the debate on the macro level accelerates, many significant approaches continue to be discussed and implemented on a micro level. Among these activities are imminent release of the final rule on "Criteria and Procedures for Making Medical Services Coverage Decisions that Relate to Health Care Technology--Medicare," implementation of the Safe Medical Devices Act of 1990 by the FDA, and a proposal that payers establish a cooperative national technology assessment program.     

Planning in a free market economy

This paper is based on a research study project on Premises and Process of Introducing Strategic Planning in a Company. It presents and discusses some major findings of the study concerning the content of strategic decisions, the elements of a planning system, the process of introducing strategic planning and the impact of environmental conditions upon the strategic planning system.     

Integration of BPR and TQM: Past,present and future trends

During the past decade, some efforts have been put forth by researchers towards integrating Total Quality Management (TQM) and Business Process Reengineering (BPR) principles. The results of the majority of research work carried out in this direction have been scattered and have not been applied in practice. In this context this paper is being brought out with the aim of reporting the literature survey conducted with the objective of evolving future direction of research imperatives for integrating TQM and BPR principles. The literature survey was carried out by using CD-ROM journal called Anbar Electronic Intelligence (AEI) (published by MCB University Press, UK) and by visiting the site maintained by Emerald Library, UK. On systematic analyses, it was found that the integration of BPR with the quality strategies identified in a theoretical Strategic Quality Management model would make a meaningful start in this direction.     

Decision Style in British and Swedish Organizations: A Comparative Examination of Strategic Decision Making

In this paper results from parallel large scale studies of strategic decision making in Sweden and the United Kingdom are reported. Swedish decision makers are found to employ a decision making style which emphasizes negotiation within a restricted group. This style, which involves considerable information search, leads to very long decision times. Strategic decisions in Britain are made among groups which include fewer strongly committed participants. Delays are common and often serious, but do not lengthen the process unduly. Decision styles in both countries include contrasting tendencies which produce a dynamic tension in the decision arena.     

基于DEA的作业消耗资源效率分析

将数据包络分析(DEA)引入了作业成本管理(ABM),给出了适用的定量化分析方法,从不同角度分析了作业消耗资源的效率.确定作业消耗资源的DEA有效性;确定各DMU在有效生产前沿面上的"投影",并为下一期间的作业改进提供信息;确定资源投入的总体利用率和各项输入可变资源的利用率.最后,用该模型对某企业的作业进行了实证分析.     

A modified DEA cross efficiency method with negative data and its application in supplier selection

Basic Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) models are designed for non-negative data. However, negative data is inevitably used in many real-world issues. Also, multiple units with a maximum relative performance score (equal to one) can be obtained due to the benevolent view of evaluating Decision Making Units (DMUs) consistent performance. Therefore, the researchers proposed ranking models to differentiate efficient units. Cross efficiency is one of the most useful tools for DMUs ranking in the DEA. There are two major drawbacks to implementing this process. First, it gives different results in the presence of other optimal solutions; second, it does not provide a compelling reason to use the arithmetic mean to aggregate the results of the cross efficiency matrix. In this paper, first a new non-radial model is proposed to evaluate the performance of DMUs in the presence of negative data and then based on this model a new secondary goal model is proposed to eliminate the first drawback in the cross efficiency method. Also, to solve the second drawback in this method, a hybrid Multi-Attribute Decision Making (MADM)-DEA process with the help of fuzzy VlseKriterijumska Optimizacija I Kompromisno Resenje method is proposed. Finally, to show the applicability of the proposed methods, the results are used to select the supplier in a real-world problem.

     

Extended lexicographic goal programming: a unifying approach

This article starts reviewing the satisficing philosophy of Goal Programming (GP) and interpreting their solutions from the point of view of the utility theory. This interpretation leads to a very general optimisation structure called Extended Lexicographic Goal Programming (ELGP). It is then demonstrated that there are a significant number of Multiple Criteria Decision Making (MCDM) approaches that, from a logical point of view, can be reduced to the ELGP structure. The paper ends assessing the theoretical and practical advantages of the proposed unified approach.     

多属性决策决问题的满意度与赋权研究

多属性决策问题的决策中,决策者往往对属性上的数值存在一定的心理预期。首先,通过心理预期与实际数据获得决策对象在每个属性上的满意度,对决策对象进行筛选过滤;其次,提出属性值信息相容关系,利用属性值之间的相容度进行赋权,信息融合对满足决策者心理预期的决策对象排序择优;再次,提出决策对象满意度,并指出传统的排序方法获取的最优决策对象与决策者总体满意度最大的决策对象并不等价。具体算例表明,该方法科学有效且可行。     

Assigning machines to incomparable maintenance strategies with ELECTRE-SORT

The increasing demand on productivity and quality requires machines to be constantly available for production. It is therefore crucial to develop an adequate maintenance programme. To facilitate this, several criteria need to be considered, such as: downtime, maintenance frequency, spare parts costs, bottleneck impacts, etc. In the literature, a strategy is selected for each machine with a multi-criteria decision choice method. However, before making an informed decision, each strategy needs to be tested on each machine and then their performances evaluated with a multicriteria decision method. This is time-consuming, inefficient and often unfeasible. As machines׳ performances are usually systematically collected by industries, a much more practical approach is to assign machines to a maintenance strategy. This is referred to as a sorting problem. However, this problem cannot be solved by existing multi-criteria sorting methods because maintenance strategies cannot always be completely ordered: incomparable strategies exist. Recently, a Decision Making Grid was proposed to allocate machines to incomparable strategies. However, this technique can only be applied to problems with two criteria. In this paper, we have developed ELECTRE-SORT, a new sorting method that is able to consider an unlimited number of criteria in order to assign machines to incomparable strategies. A case study illustrates that ELECTRE-SORT provides more precise and flexible maintenance strategies than the Decision Making Grid.     

基于DEA的作业分析与评价模型

论文将数据包络分析(DEA)引入了作业成本管理(ABM),用定量化分析模型从不同角度分析了作业消耗资源和提供价值的效率,并进行了实证分析。基于DEA的作业分析与评价模型可以得到以下信息:(1)确定作业消耗资源的DEA有效性;(2)确定各DMU在有效生产前沿面上的投影,并为下一期间的作业改进提供信息;(3)确定资源输入的总体利用率和各项输入可变资源的利用率;(4)采用复合DEA模型评价非财务指标对作业有效性的影响。     

A review of analytical models in strategic planning

Strategic management is a process that deals with the entrepreneurial work of the organisation, with organisational renewal and growth, and more particularly, with developing and utilising the strategy which is to guide the organisation's operations. Strategic management approaches emphasise the processes of strategic decision-making and adaptation to change. The paper reviews the literature to date and the modern strategic management paradigm and examines strategy formulation from an analytic perspective.     

存在保证域的模糊非径向偏好DEA模型——基于中科院24个研究所的实证分析

数据包络分析（DEA）是一种非参数化的方法,用于评价具有类似输入和输出的决策单元的效率。传统的非径向DEA模型假设输入和输出数据均为准确值,且对权重变量不加以限制,本文构建了存在保证域的模糊非径向偏好DEA模型,并给出了一种基于模糊数截集的模型求解方法,有效地解决了输入和输出全部或部分为模糊数的决策单元评价问题。最后给出了一个中科院研究所效率评价的实例说明了方法的有效性。     

BOOK REVIEWS

Book Reviewed in this article:
Biotechnology Risk Assessment Edited by Joseph Fiksel and Vincent T. Covello
Science Policy, Ethics and Economic Methodology By K. S. Schrader-Frechette
The Emergency Public Relations Manual (Revised Edition ) By Alan Bernstein
Judgment and Decision Making Edited by Hal R. Arkes and Kenneth R. Hammond
Violent Forces of Nature Edited by Robert Maybury Mt. Airy     

Multiple Criteria Hierarchy Process with ELECTRE and PROMETHEE

Robust Ordinal Regression (ROR) supports Multiple Criteria Decision Process by considering all sets of parameters of an assumed preference model, that are compatible with preference information elicited by a Decision Maker (DM). As a result of ROR, one gets necessary and possible preference relations in the set of alternatives, which hold for all compatible sets of parameters, or for at least one compatible set of parameters, respectively. In this paper, we propose an extension of ELECTRE and PROMETHEE methods to the case of the hierarchy of criteria, which was never considered before. Then, we adapt ROR to the hierarchical versions of ELECTRE and PROMETHEE methods.