Purpose – The impacts of information technology on business relationships have been of interest to managers for decades, and this stream of research has also steadily gained recognition among academics. However, the emergence of mobile technologies and the use of mobile solutions within...

Purpose – The purpose of this paper applies to Indian steel manufacturing industries to evaluate the technical and scale efficiency (SE). Design/methodology/approach – Data envelopment analysis (DEA) has been employed to calculate the relative efficiency of the steel manufacturing units. The...

Provides case study information regarding Dofasco, Inc., Canada’s second largest steel manufacturer. Notes the economic difficulties of the late 1980s and 1990s, brought on by the effects of globalization. Reports how the company perceived equipment reliability as being key to improving...

Presents a simulation model for studying the availability of an iron‐ore production plant interconnected logistically with a large Integrated Steel Manufacturing System (ISMS). The objective of the simulation experiment is to validate whether there exists adequate capability of the existing...

This article explores the industrial relations factors associated with the adoption of teamworking and allied new working practices. A survey of trade union representatives in the UK steel industry reveals evidence that managers are less likely to introduce teamworking when they have to...

It is vital that an enterprise establishes the relative performance of its processes within any market sector. As an enterprise measures and monitors the performance of its competitors’ processes vis‐à‐vis their own, the enterprise can be described as initiating a benchmarking study. This...

Illustrates a two‐level hierarchical system structure for solving the production planning problems of a steel manufacturing system. The structure is basically a goal‐diffusion mechanism between two levels. At the lower level a goal programming problem is solved and at the higher level a...

Proposes a method to assess the relative value of organizational human resource (HR) based on total performance. The total performance of the man‐machine resource base of an organization includes its profitability together with how it affects the interests of consumers, the national economy...

Develops a linear programming model for integrated production planning based on the practice of a major Canadian steel making company. Considers the entire planning activity in the company as an integrated process involving a number of closely related sub‐functions, such as raw material...

Production responsiveness refers to the ability of a production system to achieve its operational goals in the presence of supplier, internal and customer disturbances, where disturbances are those sources of change which occur independently of the system’s intentions. A set of audit tools for...