SpringerBriefs in Operations Management – serie

The book discusses the various ways that blockchain technology is changing the future of money, transactions, government, and business. The first two chapters walk through the foundation of blockchain. Chapters 3–12 look at applications of blockchain in different industries and highlight its exciting new business applications. It show why so many companies are implementing blockchain, and present examples of companies who have successfully employed the technology to improve efficiencies and reduce costs. Chapter 13 highlights blockchain’s powerful potential to foster emerging markets and economies including smart cities, value-based healthcare, decentralized sharing economy, machine to machine transactions, data-sharing marketplace, etc. Chapter 14 offers a conceptual model, provides information and insights, and covers a step-by-step approach to plan and develop blockchain-based technology.

This book focuses on top-down and bottom-up antecedents for employee engagement. It combines Operations Management (OM) with elements from Human Resource Management (HRM) and Organizational Behavior (OB) to answer the overarching question: “How is operations strategy formation influenced by the individual employee?” Dedicated chapters investigate key research questions, closing the integration gap between OM and HRM/OB. The book develops and statistically analyzes an operations strategy opportunity-motivation-ability framework. In addition, it examines how basic need fulfillment and organizational fairness relate to job satisfaction and performance. By doing so, the book helps readers to better understand employees’ preferences and enables operations managers to foster strategy-supportive behavior and job satisfaction more effectively in their workforces.

This book analyzes the transport situation in so-called low-demand areas, i.e., rural areas where traditional public transport is often poor and inefficient. Though rural transport has largely been neglected in the literature in favor of more urbanized contexts, it is often the only mobility option for the many citizens who still live in these areas. This book aims to fill the gap in the literature by providing further insights into rural transport research, in particular by presenting a valid solution: Demand Responsive Transport (DRT). This widespread technology allows public transport authorities to make their journeys more efficient by maximizing the load factor of vehicles, while helping citizens meet their mobility needs.The book addresses key research questions concerning the strengths and weaknesses of deploying Demand-Responsive Transport (DRT) in rural areas; mayors’ perceptions regarding the transport characteristics of their regions; and the evaluation of a DRT pilot project. These aspects are explored through a case study of DRT implementation in two rural areas near the Ligurian cities of Chiavari and Genoa.

This book provides a comprehensive overview of optimization issues and models in web and mobile advertising. It begins by discussing the evolution of web advertising over time. This is followed by the discussion of prominent pricing models. The reader is provided with a basic overview of different optimization issues involved in web advertising. The earlier models mainly considered the problem of scheduling ads competing to be placed on a web page. Here, the ads were specified by geometry and display frequency, and both of these factors were considered in developing a solution to the advertisement scheduling problem. These models were similar in nature to the problem of scheduling ads on newspaper or television, but the pricing structure in these models were different from those in newspaper or television ads. As the web advertising evolved, the initial models were augmented by considering how the schedule of ads is changed based on individual user click behavior. Thus, these models considered personalization in web advertising. The book also presents methods to help solve these models. More recently, there has been tremendous growth in mobile advertising. This book also provides the details of business model in mobile advertising, and presents solutions for the optimization problem involved in mobile advertising. Additionally this book looks to key future trends in web and mobile advertising (such as Fading Ads) and the associated challenges that come with it.For instance, the future trends in pricing models are more towards action-based pricing rather than impression-based pricing.

This book examines contractual options for a performance based contract between an owner of a revenue generating unit and a repair agent for such unit. The framework of the analysis is that of economists' principal-agent problem. The contractual options of a principal and an agent are modeled as a Markov process with an undetermined time horizon. For a risk neutral principal, the authors identify the conditions under which a principal contracts with a risk-neutral, risk-averse, or risk-seeking agent and derive the principal's optimal offer together with the agent's optimal service capacity response. In essence, the book provides an extensive formulating analysis of principal-agent contracts given any exogenous parameter values. Ultimately a small number of formulas cover a large spectrum of principal-agent conditions.

This book introduces new inventory models to support decision-making when cost of externalities are jointly considered along with costs of logistics. Internalization of cost of externalities gives rise to new logistics costs estimates and functions which managers, researchers, lecturers and students should refer in facing with logistics issues. This book focuses on freight transports of industrial production systems. Logistics play a key role for industries since it reveals a critical function designed and managed to pursue economic goals. A large amount of literature is available providing models, which can be used to minimize logistic costs. However, these models usually neglect externalities.New Models for Sustainable Logistics: Internalization of External Costs in Inventory Management is comprised of three chapters. Chapter 1 provides a taxonomy of external costs figures as well as data set enabling the reader to perform reliable estimates of freight transport external costs. To this purpose, a full scale case study is developed. Chapter 2 describes a new sustainable inventory management model whose cost functions include externalities. The classical ‘Economic Order Quantity’ model is re-formulated and the new concept of Sustainable Order Quantity (SOQ) is defined. Finally, in Chapter 3 the SOQ model is formulated for different inventory management applications referred to both deterministic and stochastic production environments. Numerical examples are also provided.

This book is dedicated to the issues and complexities of industrial services supply chain management. It analyzes how the transition from products to services can be managed, and how supply chains can be adjusted to reflect this new status quo. The book begins with chapters examining product-service systems structures and servitization – the services infusion process. Next, it presents industrial services as marketing and operations strategy. The focus shifts to service delivery, and this chapter discusses how the actual operations take place. This is followed by an examination of the role of technology and how connected assets are utilized by product vendors in value-creation. The book analyzes the transition from ownership to subscriptions in the pricing decisions chapter. Then the value chain effects chapter offers an overview of the mechanisms through which industrial companies are shortening the distance to end-users and aim for a better position in the value chain. Finally the conclusion addresses theoretical and empirical implications in the industrial services supply chain management.

This book develops a modeling framework to analyze the problem of inventory management with alternative delivery times. The general context considered here is that a seller replenishes its inventory in fixed intervals and, between replenishments, allocates the limited inventory to satisfy customers who are both price and delivery-time sensitive. On the demand side, customers have heterogeneous delivery-time requirements and choose either spot or late delivery. This theoretical modeling captures the essence of real-world business practices such as the delivery time market segmentation strategy adopted by automobile dealerships in China and many other similar examples. The book focuses on the seller’s optimal inventory replenishment and demand fulfillment policies, and our results provide managerial insights into the merits of flexible delivery-time options. Similar applications such as the group-buying mechanism are also examined. The main mathematical tool used in theoretical analysis is dynamic programming. This book is written for students, researchers, and practitioners in the areas of operations management and industrial engineering who are interested in understanding the rationale of flexible delivery times and designing successful applications.

This book covers the strategic use of continuous improvement (CI) techniques for manufacturing performance improvement. It focuses primarily on strategies that can be adopted by small and middle-sized enterprises in manufacturing in order to meet the global challenges and competition. The book begins with an introduction to CI (or Kaizen), explaining different CI approaches and strategies. Chapter 2 offers a literature review of CI, examining conceptual frameworks, case studies, and surveys. Next, the book deals with the design of the study, detailing the work done in each phase along with the tools, techniques and models. Chapter 4 presents a detailed survey to determine the present status of continuous improvement strategies in the Indian manufacturing industry, to assess the important barriers that effect the implementation of CI strategies, and to also assess the role of key enablers leading to improve the performance of manufacturing operations. Chapter 5 is comprised of detailedcase studies to further analyze the application of the discussed CI strategies. The purpose of Chapter 6 is to develop the relationship among the different identified most important barriers in implementing CI approach using interpretive structural modeling (ISM) and classify these barriers depending upon their driving and dependence power. Finally Chapter 7 provides conclusions, addresses potential limitations, and also looks to the future.

This book outlines a practical framework for implementing a resilient circular economy principle across ten major industries in a developed country. It focuses on integrating circular thinking into supply chain management and applying digital transformation, blockchain technologies, and Industry 4.0 and 5.0 tools to improve sustainability and productivity.The book introduces a three-platform model that categorizes supply chain elements, aligns technologies with organizational goals, and supports lean and agile manufacturing practices. It also incorporates quantum economics to address uncertainty in economic modeling—an emerging approach that enhances the reliability of circular economy strategies.Expert evaluations are used to score performance matrices across industries, helping prioritize technologies and assess their impact. The book also applies quality engineering methods such as quality function deployment and value engineering to guide decision-making.Readers will gain a clear understanding of how circular supply chain components contribute to a resilient circular economy goal, how emerging technologies support these efforts, and how uncertainty modeling can improve real-world applications. This book would be a useful read for researchers, policymakers, and industry professionals seeking structured methods to support a large-scale resilient circular economy initiative.