It is generally recognized that there is a lack of equality of opportunity for minority-led contractors and consultants (i.e. where at least 50 per cent of the workforce or ownership is from a minority group, such as women, disabled people or a black and minority ethnic community) to compete for...

Housing associations are the main providers of social housing within the UK and a major force in area regeneration initiatives. They also have a pivotal role to play in promoting equality of opportunity since a large proportion of their clients are from black and minority ethnic (BME)...

The contributors analyse the implications of social exclusion, offering suggestions for good practice in the allocation of housing for black and other ethnic minority groups. This book shows how racism and the shortage of housing workers from black and other ethnic minorities constrain the...

The aerospace and defence industries are moving towards new types of agreement such as availabilitycontracts based on Product-Service System (PSS) business models. Obsolescence has become one of themain problems that will impact on many areas of the system during its life cycle. This paper...

Manufacturers aim to design product-service systems (PSS) which integrate services with products to attain sustained competitive advantage from a life cycle perspective. PSS design should be customised solutions which are aligned to integrated stakeholders' capabilities, a subject which the...

The main aim of the research work presented in this thesis, is the development of anovel framework with the capability of assessing the impact of implementing leanmanufacturing within small-to-medium sized manufacturing firms (SMEs). By assessingthe impact of lean implementation, SMEs can make...

Most of the current attempts for business process optimisation are manual without involving any formal automated methodology. This paper proposes a framework for multi-objective optimisation of business process designs. The framework uses a generic business process model that is formally defined...

Currently, manufacturing organisations worldwide are shifting their businessmodels towards Product-Service Systems (PSS), which implies thedevelopment of new support agreements such as availability-based contracts.This transition is shifting the responsibilities for managing and...