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Disturbing increase in the use of virgin resources to produce new products has threatened the environment. Many countries have reacted to this situation through regulations which aim to eliminate negative impact of products on the environment shaping the concept of environmentally conscious manufacturing and product recovery (ECMPRO). The first crucial and the most time-consuming step of product recovery is disassembly. The best productivity rate is achieved via a disassembly line in an automated disassembly process. In this chapter, we consider a sequence-dependent disassembly line balancing problem (SDDLBP) with multiple objectives that is concerned with the assignment of disassembly tasks to a set of ordered disassembly workstations while satisfying the disassembly precedence constraints and optimizing the effectiveness of several measures considering sequence-dependent time increments among disassembly tasks. Due to the high complexity of the SDDLBP, there is currently no known way to optimally solve even moderately sized instances of the problem. Therefore, an efficient methodology based on the simulated annealing (SA) is proposed to solve the SDDLBP. Case scenarios are considered and comparisons with ant colony optimization (ACO), particle swarm optimization (PSO), river formation dynamics (RFD), and tabu search (TS) approaches are provided to demonstrate the superior functionality of the proposed algorithm.

This paper deals with the organizing of interactive product development. Developing products in interaction between firms may provide benefits in terms of specialization, increased innovation, and possibilities to perform development activities in parallel. However, the differentiation of product development among a number of firms also implies that various dependencies need to be dealt with across firm boundaries. How dependencies may be dealt with across firms is related to how product development is organized. The purpose of the paper is to explore dependencies and how interactive product development may be organized with regard to these dependencies.

The analytical framework is based on the industrial network approach, and deals with the development of products in terms of adaptation and combination of heterogeneous resources. There are dependencies between resources, that is, they are embedded, implying that no resource can be developed in isolation. The characteristics of and dependencies related to four main categories of resources (products, production facilities, business units and business relationships) provide a basis for analyzing the organizing of interactive product development.

Three in-depth case studies are used to explore the organizing of interactive product development with regard to dependencies. The first two cases are based on the development of the electrical system and the seats for Volvo’s large car platform (P2), performed in interaction with Delphi and Lear respectively. The third case is based on the interaction between Scania and Dayco/DFC Tech for the development of various pipes and hoses for a new truck model.

The analysis is focused on what different dependencies the firms considered and dealt with, and how product development was organized with regard to these dependencies. It is concluded that there is a complex and dynamic pattern of dependencies that reaches far beyond the developed product as well as beyond individual business units. To deal with these dependencies, development may be organized in teams where several business units are represented. This enables interaction between different business units’ resource collections, which is important for resource adaptation as well as for innovation. The delimiting and relating functions of the team boundary are elaborated upon and it is argued that also teams may be regarded as actors. It is also concluded that a modular product structure may entail a modular organization with regard to the teams, though, interaction between business units and teams is needed. A strong connection between the technical structure and the organizational structure is identified and it is concluded that policies regarding the technical structure (e.g. concerning “carry-over”) cannot be separated from the management of the organizational structure (e.g. the supplier structure). The organizing of product development is in itself a complex and dynamic task that needs to be subject to interaction between business units.

Disassembly takes place in remanufacturing, recycling, and disposal, with a line being the best choice for automation. The disassembly line balancing problem seeks a sequence that is feasible, minimizes the number of workstations, and ensures similar idle times, as well as other end-of-life specific concerns. Finding the optimal balance is computationally intensive due to exponential growth. Combinatorial optimization methods hold promise for providing solutions to the problem, which is proven here to be NP-hard. Stochastic (genetic algorithm) and deterministic (greedy/hill-climbing hybrid heuristic) methods are presented and compared. Numerical results are obtained using a recent electronic product case study.

The chapter examines a comprehensive review of cross-disciplinary literature in the domain of supply chain forecasting during research period 1991–2017, with the primary aim of exploring the growth of literature from operational to demand centric forecasting and decision making in service supply chain systems. A noted list of 15,000 articles from journals and search results are used from academic databases (viz. Science Direct, Web of Sciences). Out of various content analysis techniques (Seuring & Gold, 2012), latent sementic analysis (LSA) is used as a content analysis tool (Wei, Yang, & Lin, 2008; Kundu et al., 2015). The reason for adoption of LSA over existing bibliometric techniques is to use the combination of text analysis and mining method to formulate latent factors. LSA creates the scientific grounding to understand the trends. Using LSA, Understanding future research trends will assist researchers in the area of service supply chain forecasting. The study will be beneficial for practitioners of the strategic and operational aspects of service supply chain decision making. The chapter incorporates four sections. The first section describes the introduction to service supply chain management and research development in this domain. The second section describes usage of LSA for current study. The third section describes the finding and results. The fourth and final sections conclude the chapter with a brief discussion on research findings, its limitations, and the implications for future research. The outcomes of analysis presented in this chapter also provide opportunities for researchers/professionals to position their future service supply chain research and/or implementation strategies.

Intrapreneurship (IP) and Strategic Human Resource Management (SHRM) are a paradigm in which the current global scenario of increased homeoffice and professional globalization can have the capacity to stimulate professionals’ autonomy and new business orientations able to re-invent new strategies, services, technologies and even leadership development. This study, of an exploratory nature, aims to analyze the synchronicities between IP and SHRM, raised by relational dynamics translated into leadership, organizational culture and individual practices having as a facilitating factor technology as an agent of change for continuous improvement (based on the Kaizen philosophy). It is supported by a qualitative analysis through a case study of a leading Portuguese group, Grupo Salvador Caetano, which has been in existence for 75 years.

The results demonstrate that dynamic relations are the synchronicities of IP and SHRM as long as stimulated and transmitted to collaborators, and that technology, facilitated these processes. The flexibility of SHRM, the sequence of delegation and implementation of relational dynamics must be the key for the synchronicities of SHRM and IP to be two phenomena that go side by side and contribute to more effective performance and evolution among collaborators, as they support each other in creating firms’ value for customers. Some contributions to theory and practice, raised through a logic of “in-house entrepreneurship,” are also presented at the end of the study.

This chapter analyzes the intersectionality of inequalities based on class, gender, sexual orientation, and gender identity within the Indignados (indignant or outraged people) movement of Spain. By analyzing the interpretative frames and organizational practices of the movement, we looked for influencing factors and the degree to which the movement has incorporated an intersectional perspective into its interpretative frames. Some of the frames did attend to the various inter-related forms of inequality. The factors influencing an intersectional perspective included: the presence of coexisting or inclusive forms of expressing the collective identity of the movement, mechanisms implemented to balance asymmetries among actors, and the confluence of three of the four dominant frames within the movement.

This chapter examines the delicate balance achieved by apex courts in new democracies when dealing with impunity for rights violations during times of transitional justice. While international law has clearly rejected amnesties for past rights violations, domestic politics sometimes incorporate amnesties as part of larger peace settlements. This puts courts in the difficult situation of balancing the competing demands of law and politics. Courts have achieved equipoise in this situation by adopting substantive interpretations and procedural approaches that use international law’s rights-based language but without implementing international law’s restrictions on amnesties. In many cases, courts do this without acknowledging the necessarily pragmatic nature of their decisions. In fact, oftentimes courts find ways of avoiding having to make any substantive decision, effectively removing themselves from a dispute that could call into question their adherence to international legal norms that transcend politics. In doing so, they empower political actors to continue down the road toward negotiated peace settlements, while at the same time protecting the courts’ legitimacy as institutions uniquely situated to protect international human rights norms – including those they have effectively deemphasized in the process.