This paper examines the impact of the increasing global competition on the Dutch apparel industry and the changes in the whole apparel supply chain. The restructuring of the Dutch industry happened at a relatively early stage in Europe. Main trend was the delocalisation of production while the...

Building cost planning was originally developed in the framework of traditional procurement methods with conventional documentation, tendering and administration processes. With the advent of alternative forms of procurement with more fluid approaches to design stages and documentation, the need...

Office workers are hardly ever involved in the design of their buildings. Buildings, therefore, do not match the needs of the users. Today, more and more designers and managers are involving users in the design process. This paper describes different approaches to user involvement and the way...

This paper contributes to, and links the areas of quality management and buyer‐supplier relationships. In doing so, we seek to address two broad research questions. To what extent do quality practices impact upon the various dimensions of quality performance, manufacturing performance and, in...

Recent years have seen the market opportunity for innovative bioscience products grow rapidly. For instance, the human clinical diagnostics field is now a $17 billion world‐wide market, and in specific sectors, such as point of care (POC) and over the counter (OTC), there is an increasing...

Describes the evaluations, by potential customers, of a new logo of a Dutch bank. Evaluations were measured before and after the introduction, comparing perceptions of the new logo with the observations of the logos of two competitors (a larger and a smaller one). The study indicates that people...

Current planning practice takes little account of the interdisciplinary, iterative nature of the building design process. This leads to a compromised design process containing inevitable cycles of rework together with associated time and cost penalties in both design and construction. The...

Both the construction and the risk analysis and management literature have overlooked the highly disruptive influence of the loss of key project personnel. It is clear from other industries involved in managing projects, such as information technology, that the likelihood of this adverse event...

Growing emphasis on meeting client needs and improving project performance within the construction industry has led to increasing use of fully integrated “design and build” (D&B) construction project teams. Advocates of the D&B system contend that integrating design and construction this way...

This paper examines the product engineering relationships between a vehicle manufacturer and six key suppliers which contribute to the final design of products. The interaction of design information between each supplier and customer is termed a design chain. The paper presents findings of the...