Harinder Singh Jagdev - Böcker

In recent years the situation of production enterprises has been aggravated by the change from a vendors' market to a buyers' market, the globaHsation of competition, a severe market segmentation and rapid progress in product and process technologies. Beside cost and quality, time has taken on an increasingly important role, forcing enterprises to become ever more dynamic and versatile. Therefore, in all areas of production management, novel, effective concepts, procedures and tools have been developed in order to meet these new requirements. But beyond these more technical, organisational and information technology related aspects there is certainly another one which has to be considered more closely than ever before, namely that of human resources. Is not group technology also related to group work? Do partners in a global network only operate according to predefined process schemes with no personal contact? Are the mental process models of the programmers of ERP-systems the same as those of the users? What is the impact of human behaviour and what consequences are to be expected if organisational and individual objectives are separated? And finally, how do necessary technological changes affect the workforce and the individual needs and wishes of the employees.

The business environment throughout the world is going through rapid and far-reaching change. Business managers are analysing their business processes and scrutinising ways to make their systems more streamlined and competitive in order to meet the challenges posed by the global economy. Forming close alliances and integrating the operational processes with the key suppliers and customers is the mantra every one is embodying. Just as no man is an island, so no business can operate without being part of a network of businesses proactively collaborating and sharing information for mutual success. This book presents some of the most up-to-date thinking on collaborative systems by bringing together the works of experts who share their ideas on the state of the art research and development.

Strategic Decision Making in Modern Manufacturing introduces and explains the AMBIT (Advanced Manufacturing Business ImplemenTation) approach, which has been developed to bridge the gap between strategic management considerations and the operational effects of technology investment decisions on the manufacturing organisation, so that the likely impact of new manufacturing technology and/or programme implementations can be evaluated, anticipated and accurately predicted. The AMBIT approach focuses specifically on the non-financial aspects of such investment decisions and offers an approach that allows a manager, or more frequently a management team, to understand the impacts of a new technology or a new programme on the manufacturing organisation in terms of manufacturing performance.

Together these developments have yielded a tremendous amount of new knowledge and will continue to offer us new challenges and opportunities well into the future.