One of the main features of human resource management (HRM) is the emphasis on aligning the organization’s employee management practice with its strategy. It is argued that the strategy pursued by an organization needs to be supported by a compatible form of HRM practices. Each strategy has to...

Purpose – The involvement of lead‐users in product development has been emphasised as a rewarding method for companies in various industries to strengthen their development efforts. The argument is that these leading edge customers can generate innovative and appealing new product concepts....

Purpose – This paper's aim is to develop an understanding of how responsiveness in a supply network may be approached from a combined relationship marketing (RM) and supply chain management (SCM) view in a complete seafood supply network context. Design/methodology/approach – The paper takes...

Examines the pattern of relationships between foreign manufacturing firms and local third‐party distributors and the effective management and co‐ordination of supplier‐distributor relationships in China. Case studies of four foreign‐funded food manufacturers in China have been conducted....

Purpose – This paper aims to contribute by providing a more comprehensive understanding of the inter-relatedness of business goals among firms in strategic networks by exploring the following research question: How do different business goals coexist in networks? When joining a strategic...

Purpose ISO 9001 can offer users substantial management benefits. For developing country firms, this standard could offer both important management improvements and serve as a quality signal to foreign suppliers and potential buyers. The purpose of this paper is to explore the impact of ISO 9001...

This case study describes the application of robots to an agricultural depalletizing operation. Discusses the reasons for adopting robotics, the requirements of the application and the resulting system performance.

Robotic solutions for the handling of food products have been notably absent from suppliers’ catalogues and indeed from research laboratories. This is primarily due to the peculiarities that handling food adds to the general pick‐and‐place task. These are the complexity of handling...

For many years, ABB has been setting the standard for flexible automation in a wide range of industries. Combining pace with precision, the IRB 340 FlexPicker, for example, is opening up new markets as it drastically reduces the cost of pick and place operations. A range of refinements,...

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to provide a “Q&A interview” conducted by Joanne Pransky of Industrial Robot Journal as a method to impart the combined technological, business and personal experience of a prominent, robotic industry engineer-turned entrepreneur regarding his pioneering...