In engineering companies, intensified competition has increased interest in effective performance measurement particularly in manufacturing operations. More recently, it has been realised that significant potential for improving competitiveness may well be available by applying suitable measures...

The purpose of a product is to satisfy the needs of the people that are going to acquire it. In order to do so, it has to incorporate characteristics and features that fulfill a series of requirements set by users' expectations and external conditions. In this essay, we are focusing on the...

Organizations increasingly seek solutions to their open-ended design problems by employing a contest approach in which search over a solution space is delegated to outside agents. We study this new class of problems, which are costly to specify, pose credibility issues for the focal firm, and...

We endogenize product design in a model of sequential search with random firm-consumer match value à la Wolinsky (Quart J Econ 96:493–511, <CitationRef CitationID="CR21">1986</CitationRef>) and Anderson and Renault (RAND J Econ 30:719–735, <CitationRef CitationID="CR1">1999</CitationRef>). We focus on a product design choice by which a firm can control the dispersion of...</citationref></citationref>

The standardization of partially substitutable components destined to meet a set of needs is studied. The monocriterion approach to standardization proposed in the last century is highlighted by taking into account several criteria and an economic valorization through modeling by linear...

The author analyzes in the paper the role of creativity and design in innovations, with emphasis on three theoretical models linking creativity, design and innovations. The effective use of design is linked to design management. The concept of design management relates to certain management...

Organizations need to share and acquire new information to sustain competitive advantage in complex environment. They communicate through IT-based integrated systems to fasten communication and knowledge sharing for the creation of innovative products. Firms are, thus, extending their operations...

Coordination within organizations has been recognized as an issue of central importance in the organizational economics literature, where the degree of interdependence between individuals’ actions is taken as given. In reality, however, the degree of interdependence is affected by the choice...

We study quality design and the environmental consequences of green consumerism in a remanufacturing context. Specifically, a firm has the option to design a non-remanufacturable or a remanufacturable product and to specify a corresponding quality, and the design choices affect both the...

Increased concern for the environment has lead to new techniques to design products and supply chains that are both economically and ecologically feasible. This paper deals with the product - and corresponding supply chain design for a refrigerator. Literature study shows that there are many...