Industrial Engineering: Innovative Networks

We analyze the appropriateness of the intervention of the government outsourced through Relationship Management tutoring in order to address the new companies to reduce enterprise output rate or failure. The purpose of this research is to help explain how the government through professional associations may increase the know how of entrepreneurs or managers of new enterprises. Of the cases studied we have learned that starting a business is a difficult and bureaucratic administration that acts more of a bureaucratic intelligent tutoring that is outsourced by the AAPP but they must control the outsourced service, to be generalized the use of New Information Technologies (hereinafter, NIT) by all actors involved, both as professionals and entrepreneurs AAPP and that there is a perception that the Administration is not widely used in the NIT, that subsidies are supported but difficult to obtain and ineffective, it is proper mentoring by professionals and entrepreneurs who have experienced business failure tutoring prefer that economic subsidies, we propose a structural change in economic grants subsidies replacing no consistent economic support for the direction of new firms by professionals.

Outsourcing is a technique implemented and consolidated through the organisation of production in the automotive sector, which consists of fragmenting the value chain into more specialised stages and deciding which activities, products and services are to be seen to within the firm and which externally. This article seeks, from among all the factors involved in the practice of outsourcing, to find indicators associated with the factors that are significant to the carrying out of outsourcing and to quantify the evolution, trends, causes, effects and consequences of its practice in the automotive auxiliary industry in Spain.

A stock market index weighed by the market capitalization presents the drawback of overweighing overpriced stocks and underweighing underpriced stocks. Therefore, market capitalization-weighed indices should underperform other indices avoiding that bias, such as the “Fundamental Index” (FI). This article compares the relative performance of FI vs. IBEX-35 (main Spanish stock index), in the Spanish stock exchange, from the IBEX-35′s inception in 1992, to the end of 2010. The results of the study show a relative overperformance of the FI over the IBEX-35 of more than 1.12% compound annual rate, during the 19 years covered by the study. This excess return, in favour of the FI, reaches 5.55% compound annual rate during the 7 years, within the study period, in which the IBEX-35 showed a negative return. However, during the 12 years in which the IBEX-35 showed a positive return, the FI underperformed the IBEX-35 by 2.90% compound annual rate.

This paper analyses “academic entrepreneurship” as a key factor during the creation process of academic spin offs at the Costa Rica Institute of Technology (ITCR). This initiative is the first of its kind and it includes variables such as: personality, skills, professional background and willingness to be involved in business activities. It uses the methodology of case study and key factors proposed by O’Shea R, Chugh H, Allen T (2008) Determinants and consequences of university spinoff activity: a conceptual framework. J Technol Transf 33(6):653–666.

Tourism in rural areas is a wide concept that refers to the various leisure activities that can be carried out in rural zones, which include such modalities as: rural tourism, ecological tourism, agro-tourism, adventure tourism, cultural tourism, business tourism, young person tourism, social tourism, health tourism and sport tourism. These activities, little valued in the past, have come to integrate true productive chains involving, amongst other pursuits: properties, agrarian industries, transport, restaurants and communications, all of which constitute an impeller of growth, mainly for non-agricultural activities in the rural zone.

This paper presents some factors influencing investment decision of investors in smaller industrial site location, where the accessibility of the site where industrial activities will take place is of the main concern. There was a need for empirical analysis to identify factors which influence location of investments in Central European Countries and to evaluate how the accessibility to a central place and to the other activities influences investment attractiveness. Empirical study of factors has been completed in Czech Republic, Slovenia and Croatia and the hypotheses about similarities and differences among regions have been tested. The paper is the result of complementary study to the core of ATTREG ESPON project, which strive to achieve a better understanding of the contribution of European regions’ and cities’ attractiveness to economic performance. Here we have to differentiate two groups of factors influencing migrations: (a) internal factors which influence the quality of places and (b) those which influence accessibility to region.

Modern Industrial urban development requires that location and land use are adapted to the functions and needs of the productive sector. The Spanish legislation on urban development has established that the way municipal land is used is via the General Plans of Urbanization. The General Plan of Urbanization of the municipality of Cartagena, passed in 1987, classified some of the areas for industrial use. Afterwards the initial forecasts were proved to be insufficient by the development of economic activities in the district of Cartagena, so successive modifications of the Plan of Cartagena were necessary in order to enlarge the area destined to be used by industrial units. This article describes the plans of the private sector initiative in the reversal of the shortcomings of urban development plans; in particular, the activity of fruit and vegetable industries in order to create an appropriate area for their production facilities in the Cartagena region.

Nowadays, an organization or institution works with a huge amount of information about itself and its environment. This data has the potential to predict the evolution of interesting variables or trends in the outside environment. Data mining is the process that uses a variety of data analysis tools to discover meaningful patterns, trends and relationships in data that may be used to make valid predictions. In the last decades, artificial neural network-based technology stands out as one of the most suitable approaches. The goals of this work are to give a comprehensive analysis of the data mining process, to present the last advances on neural networks and its application for modeling financial data. In particular, an efficient neural network model is constructed for modeling the return on assets from other financial variables.

This paper presents an empirical analysis of income statements in 1,000 Spanish companies. Firstly, the relation between the components of an income statement is studied, focusing on the operative profit/loss. Then, the most influential components in the operative profit/loss are identified and their effects measured. Finally, we conclude that they provide business groups with higher predictable profits.

In this paper we propose five common points for companies to innovate and adapt to constant change. For this, we study the interdependence between the organizational structure and information flows in generating ideas. It has been observed that to practice innovation, a company must develop an efficient and effective information management, considered as a principal resource or value for making decisions. This research is based in grounded theory which allows, through the collection and analysis of qualitative data, to build new theory.

Public health institutions are making a great effort to develop patient-targeted ICT-based services in an attempt to enhance their effectiveness and reduce expenses. However, if patients do not use those services regularly, public health institutions will have wasted their limited resources. Hence, patients’ e-loyalty is essential for the success of ICT-based healthcare services. In this research, an extended Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) is developed to test e-loyalty towards ICT-based healthcare services from a sample of 256 users. The results obtained suggest that the core constructs of TAM (perceived usefulness, ease of use and attitude) significantly affect users’ behavioural intentions (i.e. e-loyalty). This study also reveals a general support for patient satisfaction as a determinant of e-loyalty in ICT-based healthcare services. Finally, the implications of the findings are discussed and useful insights are provided on what policy to follow to establish the appropriate conditions to build patients’ e-loyalty.

The use of tech-mining tools in Science and Technology databases can provide vital information to understand and foresee innovation processes. Some of that information can be visualized by using a wide variety of maps, which gives fast, intuitive comprehension of the social and cognitive structure of the analyzed topic. Among these, the maps of science are used to reflect graphically the structure, evolution and main actors of a given scientific field. Institutions can use maps of science with various purposes, ranging from benchmarking to the assessment of strategic choices about their position and direction in R&D efforts. The aim of this paper is to give a brief state-of-the-art review of science maps as visualization tools.

In the quest for regional economic growth and sustainable development increasingly greater significance is being attributed to the need for a change of attitude towards what is referred to as the knowledge-based economy. Within this context, higher education plays a leading role through its support for the creation and development of technology-based firms (TBFs). Accordingly, in view of the importance that such firms have for the regions of the Basque Country and Aquitaine, the objective of this paper is to clarify the factors that underpin the success of university TBFs, and also to pool existing knowledge in each of these regions. An additional aim is to remove the barriers between these two territories in order to increase potential cross-border activity. The settings chosen for the study are the University of the Basque Country (UPV/EHU—Basque Country) and the École Supérieure des Technologies Industrielles Avancées (ESTIA—Aquitaine), where an analysis has been made of the case of 20 firms through personal in-depth interviews conducted with entrepreneurs in different university TBFs.

This paper deals with two new approaches to cost accounting: Time-Driven Activity-Based Costing (TDABC) and Value Stream Costing (VSC). First, the paper introduces both methods, focusing on TDABC. Next, we analyse the experience of an auto parts manufacturer who shifted from ABC to TDABC. Finally, we test how both methods work in a multiproduct/multi-process manufacturing environment adapted from reality, and we compare them. Although their aims are very different, they yield similar results.

The relocation of industry to countries with lower labour costs means that business approaches which have been valid so far are now becoming obsolete. With this in mind, the search and exploitation of opportunities constitute one of the current ways for companies to get ahead, and the project’s success becomes even more critical due to its performance. On the other hand, technology transfer, which is not a new concept, has taken a special relevance in the last two decades. This paper examines the link between project management standards and the results of technology transfer and aims to find the way to work at the lowest level of technology transfer, through a case study analysing 44 projects in R&D Centres in the Basque Country in Northern Spain. The most important findings are connected with the interactions between the project management variables and their influence on project success.

Previous studies indicate that the open innovation model is a central operating logic for innovative firms and leading countries in innovation which have developed public support for this open approach. This paper examines the basic premise of this model by analyzing the continuity in using institutional, vertical and horizontal alliances, and the recruitment of skilled R&D personnel over time, and their influence on innovation performance, in 541 Spanish industrial firms. The results show that each external knowledge source has a different impact on innovation, although the simultaneous use of external knowledge sources has a positive effect on innovation performance.

The objective of this study is to analyze the main benefits and constraints of the implementation of eco-design solutions in wooden products manufacturers and furniture companies in Spain, and whether this results in significant differences between both sectors. Although the level of eco-design implementation in both sectors is rather low, companies have considered some new eco-design strategies in product process development which are mainly related to energy and raw material optimization, use of non-hazardous substances and reduction of waste, obtaining some benefits but sometimes facing impediments that hinder its application. This study reveals that there are not statistical differences between both sectors in terms of their level of understanding of the benefits and constraints of eco-design. Most of the companies surveyed agreed that the main benefits derived from eco-design are not only related with reducing their environmental impact but also with other advantages such as improved company´s image, new market opportunities and meeting normative and legal requirements. On the other hand, limitations are mainly related to lack of knowledge and conflict with functional and quality product requirements.

The hospitality industry is extremely competitive due to factors such as overcapacity, low entry barriers, perishable nature of services and long lead times, in addition to rising customer expectations. One possible way to address this challenge is for hotels to use their large customer database to adapt their products and services to specific customer requirements. However, efficient and effective utilization of customer data requires that hotels align their data management and infrastructure with decision-making processes, thus ensuring that the right data are available at the right moment. Within a research on hotel decision making, this paper discusses the various issues that hotels need to deal with in order to make a more effective use of their customer data. First, we provide a classification of hotel decision-related customer data. Then we analyze the availability of customer data for decision-making during the various stages of the customer life cycle. Finally, we discuss how hotels can prioritize their data management efforts in accordance with the criticality of data-supported decision making, and conclude the paper with a summary.

This paper consists of an analysis of environmental management in different enterprises. A classification of the factors that affect the environmental management in a company has been made through a multiple case study of nineteen different companies. Some of the main factors that affect all businesses have been identified, such as customers, the law and competitors. Every company has to comply with the law, although the law affects each sector differently. Depending on the markets in which they operate, customers are more or less aware of environmental aspects. Moreover, it is important to distinguish public from private clients. On the other hand, competitors also need to be taken into account when company decisions are made. All these aspects can be found in different companies with different activities and different characteristics, so enterprises should be aware of them when taking environmental decisions.

There has been a long-standing concern that strategy literature needs a better understanding of how organizational structure can affect performance and decision making within organizations. Previous research indicates that the relationship between organizational structure and performance is unexpectedly asymmetric. The balance between too much and too little structure is critical for an organization’s high performance in dynamic environments. Organizations with too little structure lack enough guidance but can be flexible, while organizations with too much structure are too constrained and lack flexibility. In addition, less structured emergent strategies tend to be high performing in dynamic environments, whereas more structured prescriptive strategies tend to perform well in stable environments. Accordingly, the optimal amount of structure decreases with increasing environmental dynamism, a consistent finding in existing literature. In this paper a review of literature on how organizational structure influences performance within organizations and the role of the environment is presented. It also incorporates and signifies the role of the Strategy, Structure and Performance (SSP) paradigm, which has played a central role within strategy research. By means of this, we will be able to know how the core knowledge required for decision-making and the coordination challenges within firms drive their internal structures, and how the implication of the appropriate degree of strategy-structure fit on the performance of a firm. The aim here is to develop a more precise theory of the fundamental relationships among structure, performance and the environment.

The main objective of this paper is to present a justified, well-supported model for the implementation of Employee Participation Systems (EPSs) in companies. The model is based on state-of-the-art literature, on the results of a research carried out among 40 Spanish leading companies regarding the implementation of Employee Participation Systems (EPSs) and, finally, on our experience in developing EPSs-related action research projects with companies for more than 20 years.

In this paper we define the European electricity market liberalization problem as a game with electricity producers as players, while the consumers’ electricity demand is exogenous. The model is based on real data. The producers maximize their profit by investing and choosing how much electricity they will produce by available means of electricity production. The aim of the research presented in this paper is to analyze different scenarios: a market with one electricity producer being a Stackelberg leader, a market with two electricity producers being Stackelberg leaders noncooperative among themselves, and a perfectly competitive market. As expected, in our case studies the perfectly competitive market yields the lowest electricity prices for the consumers.

This paper discusses how the elasticity of final demand influences the bullwhip amplification when sudden economic changes appear along the entire multi-level supply chain. Increased variability of prices does not affect added value substantially in a supply chain where the price elasticity of demand is small (around 0.1) but with an elasticity of 10 or more, high price variances may result in significant losses. A traditional model of dynamic supply chain structure is used for our study, based on the seminal work of Forrester. A simulation platform for supply chain management with stochastic demand has been developed to study such a phenomenon. Vensim

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simulation software was used for developing the appropriate supply chain dynamic models. The aim of our study is to gain a deeper insight into the processes in a logistic chain, at different elasticities of price demand.

Occupational Safety is a complex issue and several factors are related to accident occurrence. Safety Management Systems have impact in safety performance. In this paper we used data from the National Survey of Safety Management (Instituto Nacional de Seguridad e Higiene en el Trabajo) to identify management and organizational predictive variables related to injury rates. As an improvement compared to some other previous studies, multivariate models are used. This study shows the importance of safety management and some characteristics of the successful implementation, at least in terms of injury rates, among manufacturing companies in Spain.

The continuous evolution of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) implies that the governance paradigm lies in the processes of integration and collaboration which seek to integrate business processes in a more efficient way, aiming to increase the flexibility of the organization and to have information systems and technologies that interact easily with the resources of the organization (systems, personnel, etc.). In this evolving environment and as a response to the

concepts relating to IT governance

, this paper defines and designs a method that facilitates the change in an organization towards the new paradigms of IT design and management, and deals mainly in their interaction with inter-organization networks. The application of the defined method on the organization of the information and communications service of a University has facilitated the integration of different tools (for example GTI4U model, Maturity Model, Enterprise Integration Methodology) in the IT governance process, thanks to the modelization of the business processes and the flows related with this.

An interesting possibility for the differentiation of the industrial activity of enterprises is to evolve from the production of goods to the provision of systemic solutions consisting of product-service systems (PSS). This change can mean the creation of a collaborative network and reveals significant implications at strategic and operational levels. In this context, and from an operational perspective, a conceptual framework has been developed to facilitate the identification, classification and study of the implications in business processes of using the PSS concept. The conceptual framework proposed allows identifying, classifying and determining implications in business processes when a PPS is going to be marketed commercially in a collaborative environment.

Researchers and practitioners have found that focusing on mapping value is a key issue. Several mapping tools have been used for improving and redesigning manufacturing systems making them to become more competitive, flexible and efficient in order to face market economic challenges in their manufacturing environment. This chapter analyzes mapping techniques their evolution, strengths, weaknesses, key aspects and to consider how they have been adapted to real environments with different characteristics.

Manufacturers continue facing the never ending challenge of finding the best way to increase productivity levels in order to remain competitive. Significant level of productivity are given by the efficient utilization of production equipment, thus manufacturing companies use the overall equipment effectiveness (OEE) rate as an indicator to control equipment utilization related to the maintenance activity; however they do not take into account other valuable OEE-information to improve their entire manufacturing operations. This paper presents a continuous improvement model Plug&Lean-CiMo, whose aims are the accurate calculation of the OEE indicators, the appropriate classification of losses, and the systematic integration of lean manufacturing philosophy tools in an improvement methodology. The model has the advantage of using a portable wireless system to support the automated collection, of data to make the continuous improvement process easier. A case study is presented to illustrate the validation of the model.

The capital goods sector is characterized by complex and heavily engineered products. Moreover, customers demand customized features of such products. For this reason, the choice of the most appropriate Order Fulfilment Strategy and the position of the Customer Order Decoupling Point are key aspects to manufacture products in such a sector. This study analyzes the different strategies used by capital goods sector companies depending on the customization degree of the products manufactured. The research is based on an empirical study among capital goods sector companies and explores relationship between four types of products, depending on their customization degree (standard, configurable, customizable and unique) and four different Order Fulfilment Strategies: Make-to-stock, Assemble-to-order, Make-to-order and Engineer-to-order.

This paper focuses on the improvement of inventory policies of repairable parts of the airline company Air Nostrum. The company uses the sales replacement policy to manage their repairable parts and the base stock is determined by means of an approximated expression of the fill rate assuming Poisson distributed demands. However, this paper shows that real data may not always be modelled with the Poisson distribution and the only exact method available in the literature fall into significant deviations when other discrete distribution is used. According to that, this paper derives an exact method to compute the fill rate in the presence of any stationary, discrete and

i.i.d

demand pattern for the policy the company uses. Illustrative examples show that deviations which arise from using approximate methods can lead to overestimate the fill rate so the inventory policy does not reach the target fill rate.

Demand forecasts are crucial to drive supply chains and enterprise resource planning systems. Improved accuracy in forecasts directly affects all levels of the supply chain, reducing stock costs and increasing customer satisfaction. Usually, this problem is faced by testing various time series methods with a different level of complexity to find out which one is the most accurate. From our point of view, the problem should be re-addressed. In this sense, the effort should be focused on incorporating more efficient sources of information that are frequently overlooked. This paper explores different sources of information (apart from past observations) that might enhance the capability of a company to produce accurate forecasts. Such sources are: (i) Judgmental forecasting at SKU level and (ii) Information sharing. Additionally, new models are proposed to integrate such information well. Data collected from a manufacturer of household cleaning products and a major UK grocery retailer are used to illustrate the procedure.

This article extracts a set of simple tools from the performance modelling of the elements which make up the logistic system of a container terminal in a hub port. These tools will allow us to give a heuristic solution to sea operations by optimizing the assigned resources and gauging their suitable quantity in order to minimize idle times and maximize productivity. Our work is focused on dealing with the problem of each independent element, by achieving a suitable performance level for each of them without causing waiting times in the rest. The process of resources assignation has been denominated Logistic Optimization Model (simplified). The application of the model could increase the global productivity of the terminal by approximately 5%.

The Vehicle Routing Problem seeks to attain the optimal determination of the routes to be used by a fleet of vehicles stations at one or several depots. When investigating acceptable solutions in this context, researchers favour the optimization technique based on simulation models, which permits descriptions of complex systems without too many assumptions. This paper presents a new solution to add onto the mathematical model developed by Ros et al. (2010), where orders are grouped by route with the objective of improving the efficiency of the transported load and the reduction of associated costs. This new work changes the previous situation by introducing additional constraints. Fleet variations are modeled for the different cases studied by using the Monte Carlo simulation technique. The aim is to find a variety of operative solutions since they have been validated by Google Maps web application.

The work presented in this paper focuses on the analysis of processes the fruit-and-vegetable supply chain. It is in a context of innovation and new technologies where the project is defined and initiated due to the need for improvements in logistics and transport of perishable goods. The paper presents the operational model of enterprises currently working within the fruit-and-vegetable supply chain, and an analysis of the collaborative network will be carried out throughout the enterprises or agents integrating it, as well as on the processes performed by each of these agents.

The aim of this paper is to propose an mixed integer linear programming (MILP) model for operations lot-sizing and scheduling (assignment and sequencing) in the supply chain of an international company which produces and delivers customized products through several geographically distributed assembly plants. The model schedules the purchase of raw materials in the various plants considered, the transshipments, shipments to customers and the various operations to assemble the product. The model considers different alternative production operations such as product substitution (upgrading), alternative procurement and transport operations. It also addresses the different lead times associated with these operations. Specific constraints such as space availability on each plant and workforces are contemplated. A novel approach based on the stroke concept is applied to the MILP model to model alternatives.

This paper presents the ECOnometrics TOOLbox (ECOTOOL), a new MATLAB forecasting toolbox that embodies several tools for identification, validation and forecasting of dynamic models based on time series analysis. Tools to perform a wide range of exploratory and statistical tests with visual counterparts are included, designed in easy-to-use front ends. The models implemented so far are classical in essence (in the very first version of the toolbox), among them, ARIMA, Exponential Smoothing, Unobserved Components, ARX, ARMAX, Transfer Function, Dynamic Regression and Distributed Lag models. The main idea of this development is providing a tool that, with a few code lines, performs a great number of tasks. The toolbox is presented in all its potentiality on the Spanish Industrial Production Index.

We present some results attained with the bounded dynamic programming algorithms to solve the Fm|

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problems using the well-known Taillard instances as experimental data. We have improved four of the best-known solutions of the Taillard’s instances for the Fm|

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In this study we present a formulation for the MMSP-W (Mixed Model Sequencing Problem with Work overload Minimization) for productions lines with both serial workstations and rules for interrupting operations. We propose a combination of the models M5 and M6 proposed by Bautista and Cano (Eur J Oper Res 210:495–513, 2011) and analyze the results obtained, using the BDP (Bounded Dynamic Programming), through a case study of the powertrain line of the Nissan plant in Barcelona.

This paper valuates different solution approaches of a fuzzy linear programming model to be applied to an MRP (Material Requirement Planning) problem with capacity constraints and uncertainty in costs data. The proposed model represents the possible lack of knowledge or epistemic knowledge in the inventories maintenance cost coefficients, delayed demand and idle time, and considers all constraints to be deterministic. In order to obtain the solution to this model, various solution approaches are analysed in terms of modelling complexity and computational efficiency, and the accomplished solution is presented.

The competition in industries force many companies to reduce production costs in order to gain more profit. This decision requires a good planning for production schedule. In production planning, forecasting theory to estimate future demand is an important aspect. The problem in this article is to choose the best forecasting method based on the characteristics of historical data in seasonal demand patterns. Results forecast error is then used to calculate the safety stock as a form of anticipatory strategies shortage of material. The results indicate that the best forecasting method is a combination method of Holt-Winters Exponential Smoothing and Naïve, it can decrease Mean Absolute Percentage Error (MAPE) up to 63%.

One of the most common criteria used to measure the performance of a inventory system is the fill rate. In the literature we find two easy-to-compute approaches: the traditional and the Hadley-Whitin approximations, but unfortunately they only apply for normally distributed demand. In practice stock managers can use any of them, even when demand is not normal or discrete. This paper assesses the performance of these approximations in a periodic inventory system for different demand scenarios such as intermittent, erratic, lumpy and smooth. However, in the discrete context, simulation results show that both approximations present a significant bias including negative fill rate values. In keeping with these results, we re-formulate both approximations to be able to cope with any discrete demand distribution and asses their performance. In this case, simulation results show that the proposed discrete formulation of the Hadley-Whitin approximation seems to avoid the systematic bias observed before.

Thinking flexibility and security on labour markets together is a new paradigm because business as well as labour is in need of security as well as flexibility. The flexibility will increase with accessibility of individual regions in Europe. A study of migration may show us not only how these aims can be achieved, but also may highlight other policies needed for inducing growth. Accessibility is especially increased by investments in European transportation corridors and by removing barriers on the borders (Schengen Agreement). ESPON ATTREG project aims to investigate also the motivation and behaviour of migration flows and daily commuting of human resources in gross migrations and commuting between regions.

Ant Colony Optimization (ACO) is an effective meta-heuristic for the solution of a wide variety of problems. Its computation is intrinsically massively parallel, and it is therefore theoretically well-suited for implementation on Graphics Processing Units (GPUs). In this paper, we propose a parallelization strategy to solve the VRP with ACO on the GPU.