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This paper argues that solely depending on short‐term financial performance indicators to justify the benefits of JIT implementation is very misleading and could harm a company’s future long‐term survival. The empirical study presented in this paper investigated the effect of (JIT) implementation on the use of operation performance measures. Furthermore, the effect of the JIT implementation and the use of the operating performance measures on firms’ financial/growth performance, as perceived by the managers, was examined. These effects were measured using path analysis to show direct and indirect effects of JIT practices on the other two variables. Analyses indicate that, although correlations do exist between JIT practices and managerial perceptions of a firm’s financial performance, the relationships are mostly the result of spurious effects. Direct and indirect effects realized from the JIT practices on financial/growth performance are almost non‐existent.

An empirical examination of the product elimination decision‐making processes in American and British manufacturing firms was presented. Specifically, two areas of the product elimination decision‐making process are presented: (1) the precipitating circumstances which “triggered” the product elimination decision‐making process to begin; and (2) the variables used to make the elimination/retention are reviewed. It was concluded that the decision making processes were similiar in the two countries.

Despite the importance of the ability of service firms to rationalise their service ranges in today's competitive environment, the area of service elimination decision‐making is one of the least researched in the literature on services marketing. Responding to this knowledge gap, this paper reports part of the findings of a broader exploratory investigation into the service elimination process in the British financial services sector. In detail, the paper presents qualitative and quantitative empirical evidence on the way in which British financial institutions audit their service range in order to identify financial services as candidates for elimination. The evidence showed that the British financial institutions studied follow a periodically conducted service range auditing process, which is often documented and computer‐aided. The audit is operationalised by a set of financial and non‐financial audit criteria (performance dimensions). The evidence also showed that the service range auditing process is not static but dynamic. As such, the relative importance of the audit criteria used varies in relation to service‐specific, organisational and environmental variables, such as type of financial service, business strategy pursued overall, degree of market orientation, intensity of competition, intensity of legislation and rhythm of technological change.

Organizations intent on driving profitable growth recognize they need innovation, but most measures of innovation are incomplete, focusing only on R&D or new product development. This paper suggests an alternative, enterprise‐level measure that reflects the broadest definition of innovation and focuses on impact or value.

It uses publicly‐available financial data for companies in a variety of industries to create a profitable growth scale, ranking companies relative to their peers. It independently rates companies based on a survey of executives about company innovativeness.

The ranking based on financial data corresponds well to executives' self‐report information about how innovative their organizations are.

Since these two independent rankings of innovativeness align, I argue that executives can use the publicly available profitable growth scale to assess their own innovation performance relative to others in their industry.

Paddy farmers form the backbone of food security. However, poverty plagues them despite having linked them to the rice value chain. To overcome this, the concept of involving smallholders in post-farm value chain stages is promoted. The purpose of this paper is to explore the potential of upgrading smallholder involvement in rice value chains through the adoption of a sustainability standard.

The authors built a system dynamic model to capture both conventional and certified sub-value chains. The latter deviates from the conventional one and capitalizes on compliance to a sustainability standard.

When compared to conventional farm gate sales methods, the simulations revealed obvious profitability of direct marketing with respect to certified sustainable rice. Although coupled with productivity growth, the simulations indicated the shift to standard adoption would likely to be both limited and slow.

The findings suggest that the profitability of a certified rice value chain will remain fettered. In order to enhance both farmer livelihood and food security, given the limited prospect of moving smallholders up that chain, the authors conclude that national policy should be rationalized and concentrated on the possibility of diversifying the end-use of rice through research, development and subsequent commercialization.

In part I uses an iterative point successive over‐relaxation (PSOR) finite difference scheme to solve the coupled unsteady Navier‐Stokes and energy equations for incompressible, viscous and laminar flows in their primitive variable form. Presents the details concerning the derivation of the solution scheme, as well as details on its computer implementation. For validation purposes, includes the results of the two‐dimensional and three‐dimensional benchmark problem of natural convection in a cavity with differentially heated vertical walls. Benchmark computations have been performed for a Prandtl number of 0.71, and different values of the Rayleigh number ranging between 10³ and 10⁶ depending on the problem. By comparison with other approaches in the literature, the scheme has been found to be accurate even for large Rayleigh numbers.

The effects of temperature gradients across the belt width on fired resistor values are well known and become increasingly important in wide belt production conveyor furnaces. This paper discusses the experimental and theoretical study of this problem. Physical data were collected from experiments and the results were analysed statistically. Particular attention was paid to the exit end firing zone because heat losses from this zone differ from that of the other zones. High resistor values at the centre of the belt, gradually decreasing towards both sides, have been observed. This phenomenon seems to be caused by loss of heat radiation to the exit opening at the belt centre. Mathematical models using the basic laws of heat transfer as they apply to the particular structure of the furnace have been developed. The study shows that it is possible to reduce the range of fired thick film resistor values by modifying the temperature conditions near the end zone.

The two‐dimensional steady boundary layer equations, for simultaneous heat and fluid flow within ducts, are handled through the generalized integral transform technique. The momentum and energy equations are integral transformed by eliminating the transversal coordinate and reducing the PDE’s into an infinite system of coupled non‐linear ordinary differential equations for the transformed potentials. An adaptively truncated version of this ODE system is numerically handled through well known initial value problem solvers, with automatic precision control procedures. The explicit inversion formulae are then recalled to provide analytic expressions for velocity and temperature fields and related quantities of practical interest. Typical examples are presented in order to illustrate the hybrid numerical analytical approach and its convergence behaviour.

A calculation procedure for turbulent natural convection in enclosures is described. A two‐equation model based on the eddy diffusivity concept for the temperature field possessing a form similar to the k—ε model of flow is incorporated, thus, extending the applicability of the eddy diffusivity models by removing constraints of the Reynolds analogy between momentum and thermal transport processes. As a test problem, natural convection in a square cavity subjected to differential side‐wall heating is analysed. The vertical walls are divided into isothermal and constant heat‐flux surfaces and heated non‐uniformly. AtRa = 10¹⁰ and for an air—filled cavity (Pr = 0.71), variations of heating patterns are found to significantly alter the field characteristics. Numerical predictions demonstrate dissimilar features of the velocity and temperature fluctuations.

The purpose of this paper is to determine both analytically and numerically the existence of smooth, cusped and sharp shock wave solutions to a one-dimensional model of microfluidic droplet ensembles, water flow in unsaturated flows, infiltration, etc., as functions of the powers of the convection and diffusion fluxes and upstream boundary condition; to study numerically the evolution of the wave for two different initial conditions; and to assess the accuracy of several finite difference methods for the solution of the degenerate, nonlinear, advection--diffusion equation that governs the model.

The theory of ordinary differential equations and several explicit, finite difference methods that use first- and second-order, accurate upwind, central and compact discretizations for the convection terms are used to determine the analytical solution for steadily propagating waves and the evolution of the wave fronts from hyperbolic tangent and piecewise linear initial conditions to steadily propagating waves, respectively. The amplitude and phase errors of the semi-discrete schemes are determined analytically and the accuracy of the discrete methods is assessed.

For non-zero upstream boundary conditions, it has been found both analytically and numerically that the shock wave is smooth and its steepness increases as the power of the diffusion term is increased and as the upstream boundary value is decreased. For zero upstream boundary conditions, smooth, cusped and sharp shock waves may be encountered depending on the powers of the convection and diffusion terms. For a linear diffusion flux, the shock wave is smooth, whereas, for a quadratic diffusion flux, the wave exhibits a cusped front whose left spatial derivative decreases as the power of the convection term is increased. For higher nonlinear diffusion fluxes, a sharp shock wave is observed. The wave speed decreases as the powers of both the convection and the diffusion terms are increased. The evolution of the solution from hyperbolic tangent and piecewise linear initial conditions shows that the wave back adapts rapidly to its final steady value, whereas the wave front takes much longer, especially for piecewise linear initial conditions, but the steady wave profile and speed are independent of the initial conditions. It is also shown that discretization of the nonlinear diffusion flux plays a more important role in the accuracy of first- and second-order upwind discretizations of the convection term than either a conservative or a non-conservative discretization of the latter. Second-order upwind and compact discretizations of the convection terms are shown to exhibit oscillations at the foot of the wave’s front where the solution is nil but its left spatial derivative is largest. The results obtained with a conservative, centered second--order accurate finite difference method are found to be in good agreement with those of the second-order accurate, central-upwind Kurganov--Tadmor method which is a non-oscillatory high-resolution shock-capturing procedure, but differ greatly from those obtained with a non-conservative, centered, second-order accurate scheme, where the gradients are largest.

A new, one-dimensional model for microfluidic droplet transport, water flow in unsaturated flows, infiltration, etc., that includes high-order convection fluxes and degenerate diffusion, is proposed and studied both analytically and numerically. Its smooth, cusped and sharp shock wave solutions have been determined analytically as functions of the powers of the nonlinear convection and diffusion fluxes and the boundary conditions. These solutions are used to assess the accuracy of several finite difference methods that use different orders of accuracy in space, and different discretizations of the convection and diffusion fluxes, and can be used to assess the accuracy of other numerical procedures for one-dimensional, degenerate, convection--diffusion equations.