Examines the use of Product Life Cycle (PLC) in analyzing the rise and fall in product demand. Applies the cycle stages: product development, introduction, growth, maturity, decline to the demand behaviour of industrial materials such as steel, aluminium, titanium. Relates the demand pattern of...

Considers the response of US firms to the recent decline in productivity, growth etc and the subsequent adoption of just in time manufacturing pioneered by Japanese industry. Examines the concentration on the reduction in time and costs of the early stages of the product life cycle and the...

Observes that most research surrounding the international performance of companies has revolved around their export intensity. Takes the view that, although exports are certainly an important component of globalization, this concept ignores a significant proportion of a company′s global...

Maintenance‐related costs contribute significantly to equipment life‐cycle costs. In practice, maintenance works are not perfect in the sense that they cannot restore the equipment to a “good‐as‐new” condition. Utilizing the concept of improvement factors to model the imperfect...

Compares optimum constant‐stress and simple step‐stress ALTs for the Weibull distribution. The purpose is to quantify the advantage of using step‐stress testing in comparison to constant‐stress testing when censoring is likely to occur at the lower levels of stress. Assumes that a...

Considers the estimation problem of the total warranty cost under two types of warranty. The product (e.g. car) is sold under two types of warranty (mileage and age). The failed product will be minimally repaired by the manufacturer during the preassigned warranty, the length of which is...

When a functional layout is converted to a cellular layout, the cell design is generally based on a static picture of production volume and part mix, but manufacturing environments face ongoing changes in these parameters. It is expected that, eventually, changes in production volume and part...

The change in the share of skilled occupations in total employment is broken down into changes in the skill intensities of industries weighted by their shares in employment, changes in the shares of industries in employment weighted by their skill intensities, and an interaction term. Claims...