Summary The rise of the East-German economy in the 1950s and 1960s and its decline in the 1970s and 1980s is difficult to explain by neoclassical economics. However; the observed life cycle may be explained by the inclusion of concepts from old and new institutional economics and from functional...

Practitioners often are confused by theories that offer ambiguous prescriptions for designing the institutional forms or governance structures in which business activities are conducted. Unclear prescriptions for organizing tasks within the main governance alternatives leave key design decisions...

Describes the results of a survey in manufacturing, distribution and service organizations concerning total quality management (TQM). These results proved that an effective TQM programme should contain consistent training of all employees; significant improvement in communication between...

Reliability of a product is highly dependent on the process capability index of the manufacturing process. Discusses a mathematical modelling technique for deriving the relationship between the product reliability strength and the process capability requirement to meet the product reliability...

The conventional Economic Order Quantity (EOQ) lot‐size model ignores the effects of damage costs. While producing an EOQ lot, the inventory may go “out of control”. An extension of the EOQ production model based on damage costs is presented and the relevant costs of damage and their...

Today′s changing global business environment requires firms to develop a better approach to global manufacturing operations. Of particular importance is the interaction between logistics and manufacturing activities. A survey of 101 senior manufacturing and materials managers revealed both...

The concept of zero inventory (ZI) is a powerful tool to improve production economics. The major factor in ZI is set‐up cost reduction. Examines what will happen when set‐up costs are stationarily and non‐stationarily reduced by mathematical presentations and simulation. The results are...

Reports that cellular manufacturing is a production techniques where parts processed on similar machines are grouped into manufacturing cells. These clusterings have been found to reduce production costs, improve quality and generate other benefits for businesses. Mathematically, the formulation...

Purpose – This paper seeks to investigate the impact of citrus tristeza virus (CTV) on the commercial value of fruit produced by navel orange trees. Design/methodology/approach – Data are counts of fruit of various sizes and quality harvested from a tree in a year. The counted fruit are...

Firms uncertain about whether to invest large sums on data management consultants as an alternative to their spreadsheet software might first consider prototyping the system. A prototyping firm can assess the extent to which existing resources and data collection procedures will need to be...