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The emergence of Internet of Things (IoT) platforms in product companies opens up new data-driven business opportunities. This paper looks at the emergence of these IoT platforms from a business-model perspective.

The study applies a mixed method with two research studies: Study I–a cluster analysis based on a quantitative survey, and Study II–case studies based on qualitative interviews.

The findings reveal that there is no gradual shift in a company's business model, but in fact three distinct and sequential patterns of business model innovations: (1) platform skimming, (2) platform revenue generation and (3) platform orchestration.

The results are subject to the typical limitations of both quantitative and qualitative studies.

The results provide guidance to managers on how to modify the components of the business model (value proposition, value creation and/or delivery and profit equation) in order to enable platforms to advance.

As IoT platforms continue to advance, product companies achieve better performance in terms of productivity and profitability, and more easily secure competitive advantages and jobs.

The paper makes three original contributions: (1) it is the first quantitative study on IoT platforms in product companies, (2) identifies three patterns of business model innovations and (3) offers a first process perspective for understanding the sequence of these patterns as IoT platforms advance.

The aim of this paper is to demonstrate how a grounded theory method applied to a case study within a particular industrial context can be used to derive a substantive model of the practice of capital budgeting and contribute to an understanding of contextual elements that affect investment decisions. This study aims to examine how the investment decision to acquire aircraft, strategic core assets, is made by small players within an industry that is small by world standards, Australian regional aviation.

This research adopts a grounded theory approach to the case study. Primary data were collected using questionnaires, semi‐structured and open‐ended interviews. Secondary data comprised pro‐forma aircraft lease contracts and information from a law firm. Consistent with grounded theory, qualitative research mining software (Leximancer) was used to facilitate initial analyses of data and understanding of decision factors and their relationships. The model was derived, refined and confirmed using data from follow‐up unstructured interviews.

This research within a specific industrial context finds that a substantive model derived through a grounded theory approach provides an understanding of the richness of the investment scenario and the decision factors considered in the capital budgeting decision. Reflection on such narrow industrial findings in terms of existing theories provides insight into the reasons for the gap between practice and theory.

This research is original in that it employs a grounded theory approach, which has received little attention within prior literature, to derive a substantive model based on industrial practice of managers who are instrumental in and responsible for a capital budgeting decision. Such an alternative approach to modelling is of value in bridging the gap between practice and theory. Substantive models produced for different industries or contexts can be compared and similarities refined into a theory that is grounded in practice. Dissimilarities may provide valuable insights into variables and processes that are unique to particular contexts.

The purpose of this paper is to report on the Association for Strategic Planning Conference.

The paper provides a conference report for the 2012 Association for Strategic Planning Conference, held in Lincolnshire, Illinois, USA from May 30‐June 2, 2012.

The paper reveals presentations of practitioners and veteran consultants who share what is working in their practice of strategic management.

The paper provides reviews of papers presented at the 2012 Association for Strategic Planning Conference provided by practitioners and veteran consultants who share what is working in their practice of strategic management.

To analyze the impact of the adoption of just‐in‐time (JIT) production systems by different equipment manufacturers (OEMs) on the inventory profiles of their suppliers.

The research is designed to examine five financial measures of inventory management performance over the years 1994‐2004. Three specific industry sectors where OEMs have adopted and implemented JIT principles are studied. These sectors include the automotive, electronics, and aircraft industries. A one factor analysis of variance is employed to the five hypotheses and Tukey's post‐hoc test is used to interpret statistical pairwise differences between level means.

Overall, the research finds that OEM suppliers in the automotive, electronics, and aircraft sectors have shown mixed results in the impact JIT implementation has had on inventory performance measures.

The research focuses on three industrial sectors over approximately a ten year time frame that may limit its generalizability.

The processes that influence the reduction in inventory levels may be in fact more complex and strategic in nature than an OEM adopting a JIT inventory policy. In general, strategic changes within the supplier organization would have to drive process improvements that lead to inventory reductions.

The paper provides focused research in an area that has received little attention in the current literature and is very topical to all academics and business professionals interested or involved in the area of JIT systems.

The purpose of this paper is to eliminate the wastes and inefficient procedures in the maintenance organization of aircraft so as to reduce its downtime and increase mission availability.

Customized lean Six Sigma (LSS) was applied at the task level and servicing cycle level to reduce the task content, cycle length and resources in servicing. The loading of the servicing facility was simulated through a simulation program developed from a statistical analysis of historical data for validating/simulating/determining optimum loading of servicing facility with refined tasks, reduced cycle length and resources. In simulation, the optimum combination of manpower, resources and infrastructure at the facility level was determined through sensitive analysis and design of experiments (DoE).

Optimization at the task level and its re-organization at the servicing cycle level reduced the cycle length by 55-68 per cent and manpower resources by 26 per cent. This further reduced facility-level manpower by 25 to 40 per cent, capacity requirements by more than 33 per cent and annual aircraft downtime by 78 per cent. The approach reduced the average number of aircraft undergoing servicing at each airbase at any time from 2.35 to just 0.76 and increased the mission availability to 20 per cent.

The hallmark of the paper has been the design of LSS approach from structured historical data and its validation through innovative simulation. The multi-pronged bottom-up approach practically bundles all wastes resident in the maintenance organization. The paper provides cursory approach to lean practitioners in the elimination of wastes in the maintenance of capital assets like aircraft.

Asset owners and maintainers need to make timely and well-informed maintenance decisions based on the actual or predicted condition of their physical assets. However, only few companies have succeeded to implement predictive maintenance (PdM) effectively. Therefore, this paper aims to identify why only few companies were able to successfully implement PdM.

A multiple-case study including 13 cases in various industries in The Netherlands was conducted. This paper examined the choices made in practice to achieve PdM and possible dependencies between and motivations for these choices.

An implementation process for PdM appeared to comprise four elements: a trigger, data collection, maintenance technique (MT) selection and decision-making. For each of these elements, several options were available. By identifying the choices made by companies in practice and mapping them on the proposed elements, logical combinations appeared. These combinations can provide insight into the PdM implementation process and may also lead to guidance on this topic. Further, while successful companies typically combined various techniques, the mostly applied techniques were still those based on previous experiences.

This research calls for better methods or procedures to guide the selection and use of suitable types of PdM, directed by the firm's ambition level and the available data.

While it is important for firms to make suitable choices during implementation, the literature often focusses only on developing additional techniques for PdM. This paper provides new insights into the application and selection of techniques for PdM in practice and helps practitioners reduce the often applied trial-and-error process.

The Korean airline industry continues to change in 20-year cycles structurally. The major changes are in their market through deregulation and liberalization resulting in adding more carriers, especially low-cost carriers (LCCs) from 2006. The authors categorize three types of LCCs in Korea: (1) independent LCCs, (2) LCCs subsidized by existing airlines as airlines-within-airlines (AwAs), and (3) LCCs supported by conglomerates and local governments. Independent LCCs have suffered financially during the research period from 2009 to 2013, especially from the impaired capital, even though these LCCs are growing rapidly and expanding their markets in domestic and international routes. AwAs’ efficiency is higher than that of independent LCCs, the roles in the market are limited because of cannibalization by their mother company.

The global energy industry transports supplies and personnel via helicopter to offshore locations and is increasingly focusing on optimizing upstream logistics. This paper aims to and achieves a mutually beneficial balance between research and practice by providing generalizable methods to a problem routinely encountered in practice. Overall, the development and execution of the heterogeneous capacitated helicopter routing problem with split deliveries and multiple depots is validated by the networks’ results.

Using a unique sample of deepwater and ultra-deepwater permanent offshore locations in the Gulf of Mexico, transportation networks consisting of 57 locations operated by 19 firms are optimized via a randomized greedy algorithm. The study’s randomized greedy algorithm yields depot assignment, vehicle assignment, passenger assignment and routing. All data processing techniques and iterative algorithm processes are defined and explained.

Results show that the model effectively solves the complex transportation networks consisting of subject firms’ offshore nodes and eligible depots. Specifically, average load factors related to seat capacity and effective vehicle capacity of 87.7 and 95.7% are realized, respectively. The study’s model is a unique contribution to the extant literature and provides researchers and practitioners a practical approach to model development and solution deliverance.

The extant literature encompasses works that inadequately observe the complexity associated with the transportation of personnel. Specifically, this research, unlike many works in the extant literature, uses a heterogeneous versus homogeneous fleet, includes multiple depots versus a single depot and allows split deliveries. Also, the current research ensures all relevant aircraft capabilities and limitations are observed. In particular, the paper takes into account vehicles’ seat capacities, effective capacities via maximum gross takeoff weights and reserve fuel requirements. The current model, which is built upon a heterogeneous capacitated helicopter routing problem with split deliveries and multiple depots (HCHRPSDMD), sufficiently provides a practical approach to model development and solution deliverance while promoting future research endeavors. Future research may use these findings for other geographical regions and similar transportation networks and could adopt firm-specific actual cost parameters instead of the estimated average hourly costs of operating different helicopters. Furthermore, future endeavors may employ other techniques for the derivation of solutions. Future works may be enhanced with actual cost data in lieu of estimations. In the current study, cost data were not available; however, estimations do not inherently proscribe sound interpretations of the models’ outputs. Also, future research endeavors including manual method results may enable comparative results to establish cost variance analysis. Although the current study is, to some extent, limited, the practicality for practitioners and contribution to researchers is comprehensible. Due to the idiosyncrasies and complexity prevalent in modern transportation networks, optimization is and will continue to be a rich opportunity for implementation and research.

As described by previous researchers, energy firms may more efficiently use their contracted aircraft via implementation of a decision-making mechanism for passenger assignment, aircraft selection, depot selection and aircraft routing. Most energy firms possess numerous and spatially segregated offshore facilities and, therefore, are unable to efficiently and effectively make such decisions. Ultimately, the efficient use of firms’ contracted helicopters can enhance profitability via reduced costs without compromising operational performance. Reduced costs are likely to be realized by a potential workforce or workload reduction, reduced flight hours and enhanced bargaining power with commercial helicopter operators. Specifically, enhanced bargaining power may be realized as a result of minimized depots from which the aircraft are operated and an overall reduction of aircraft via increased asset utilization. In essence, the efficient use of commercial helicopters may yield systemic efficiencies that can be shared among all stakeholders, contracting energy firms and commercial helicopter operators. The achievement of operational efficiencies, ultimately, may determine the realization of target performance or solvency of a plethora of firms in the future (Krishnan et al., 2019).

For economies, communities and industries depending on crude oil and natural gas production, people’s livelihoods are significantly impacted due to price fluctuations (Rostan and Rostan, 2020; Solaymani, 2019). Based on a unique set of inputs and outputs, the International Energy Agency region (IEA), which includes the current study’s sample set, was found to achieve greater overall production efficiency relative to the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) and the Organization of Arab Petroleum Exporting Countries (OAPEC) (Ohene-Asare et al., 2018). Therefore, enhanced logistics efficiency within the energy industry’s transportation sector across the globe is reasonably likely. For countries relying on these commodities’ exportation, production efficiency is and will continue to be a priority. With limited resources available in industry and society, efficiency is prone to yield advantageous results for all stakeholders. Furthermore, in the context of this study, a reduction of carbon dioxide and noise pollution in air, above water and on land will contribute to society’s drive to protect the environment and preserve our natural resources for future generations.

The current study represents the lone or one of few research endeavors to evaluate the heterogeneous capacitated helicopter routing problem with split deliveries and multiple depots. Furthermore, research pertaining to transportation via helicopter in the Gulf of Mexico’s offshore basin is unprecedented. Lastly, this work yields actionable knowledge for practitioners while enhancing current and promoting future research endeavors.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the strategies and competitive advantages of Emirate Airlines that have led to exceptional performance while the overall airline industry globally has faced multibillion‐dollar losses in 2009.

The authors' professional experience, extensive literature review, and personal communications with selected personnel of Emirate Airlines on the subject provided the foundation for this research.

As the global business environment becomes increasingly competitive, the airline industry has also had to respond to the current business scenario, while facing devastating falling demands, shattered consumer confidence, and collapsing yields. However, in 2009, Emirate Airlines reported phenomenal growth and astounding profits while their rivals faced agonizing losses. This paper explores and examines the competitive advantage of Emirate Airlines. The major finding is that the formulation and implementation of appropriate strategies has led to the exceptional performance, profitability, and success of Emirate Airlines.

The competitive strategies – such as operational strategies, generic strategies, intensive strategies, and diversification strategies – can be helpful for firms to gain a competitive advantage over their rivals. Also, the ability to leverage, innovate, and pioneer new ideas, as well as a visionary management team, are essential for exceptional performance of an organization.

The paper provides a model for strategically managing the performance of an aspiring firm, even though the entire industry is facing distressing circumstances.

This paper aims to explore the theory of technology adoption using a system‐application approach to facilitate PMA innovation span across multiple organisations to enhance overall production network effectiveness.

The survey on technology available and forecast future trends, design a workable prototype for test in real‐world airline operation under a three‐layer analysis model. Data is taken to validate the concept and correlate performance factors in PMA adoption.

The findings highlight greater operational efficiency and higher process value maintenance to be achieved through communication paths. The value process‐to‐shop concept is validated, next to value network.

This research supports maintenance business, especially with high contents of information and knowledge driven tasks for outsource service providers, can make use of the wireless system adoption rules for assets and maintenance performance management.

The paper presents organisations with a tool such that portable maintenance device can be identified as contribution in different levels, focus and functional effects. Within a critical process, airlines can better manage their dynamic operation process for higher revenue generation.