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This modeling facilitates the determination of control responses (or possibly reconfiguration) upon such events and the identification of which segments of the pipeline can continue to function uninterrupted. Based on this modeling, an algorithm is presented to implement the control responses and to establish this determination. In this work, the authors propose using Message Queuing Telemetry Transport (MQTT), which is an integrated method to perform the system-wide control based on message exchanging among local node controllers (agents) and the global controller (broker).

Complex manufacturing lines in industrial plants are designed to accomplish an overall task in an incremental mode. This typically consists of a sequence of smaller tasks organized as cascaded processing nodes with local controls, which must be coordinated and aided by a system-wide (global) controller. This work presents a logic modeling technique for such pipelines and a method for using its logic to determine the consequent effects of events where a node halts/fails on the overall operation.

The method uses a protocol for establishing communication of node events and the algorithm to determine the consequences of node events in order to produce global control directives, which are communicated back to node controllers over MQTT. The algorithm is simulated using a complex manufacturing line with arbitrary events to illustrate the sequence of events and the agents–broker message exchanging.

This approach (MQTT) is a relatively new concept in Cyber-Physical Systems. The proposed example of feed-forward is not new; however, for illustration purposes, it was suggested that a feed-forward be used. Future works will consider practical examples that are at the core of the manufacturing processes.

In this paper we study a class of complexity measures, induced by a new data structure for representing k-valued functions (operations), called minor decision diagram. When assigning values to some variables in a function the resulting functions are called subfunctions, and when identifying some variables the resulting functions are called minors. The sets of essential variables in subfunctions of f are called separable in f.

We examine the maximal separable subsets of variables and their conjugates, introduced in the paper, proving that each such set has at least one conjugate. The essential arity gap gap(f) of the function f is the minimal number of essential variables in f which become fictive when identifying distinct essential variables in f. We also investigate separable sets of variables in functions with non-trivial arity gap. This allows us to solve several important algebraic, computational and combinatorial problems about the finite-valued functions.

This paper investigates the suitability of fuzzy-logic-based support tools for initial screening of manufacturing reshoring decisions.

Two fuzzy-logic-based support tools are developed together with experts from a Swedish manufacturing firm. The first uses a complete rule base and the second a reduced rule base. Sixteen inference settings are used in both of the support tools.

The findings show that fuzzy-logic-based support tools are suitable for initial screening of manufacturing reshoring decisions. The developed support tools are capable of suggesting whether a reshoring decision should be further evaluated or not, based on six primary competitiveness criteria. In contrast to existing literature this research shows that it does not matter whether a complete or reduced rule base is used when it comes to accuracy. The developed support tools perform similarly with no statistically significant differences. However, since the interpretability is much higher when a reduced rule base is used and it require fewer resources to develop, the second tool is more preferable for initial screening purposes.

The developed support tools are implemented at a primary-criteria level and to make them more applicable, they should also include the sub-criteria level. The support tools should also be expanded to not only consider competitiveness criteria, but also other criteria related to availability of resources and strategic orientation of the firm. This requires further research with regard to multi-stage architecture and automatic generation of fuzzy rules in the manufacturing reshoring domain.

The support tools help managers to invest their scarce time on the most promising reshoring projects and to make timely and resilient decisions by taking a holistic perspective on competitiveness. Practitioners are advised to choose the type of support tool based on the available data.

There is a general lack of decision support tools in the manufacturing reshoring domain. This paper addresses the gap by developing fuzzy-logic-based support tools for initial screening of manufacturing reshoring decisions.

In this study, the authors explore how sensing and seizing of market opportunities, asset reconfiguration and top management team (TMT) consensus on these elements jointly relate to a firm's international expansion. By doing this, the authors contribute to the existing literature by addressing dynamic managerial capabilities at the TMT level instead of considering them as individual executives' traits. The authors use the qualitative comparative analysis (QCA) method to analyze our data from 261 TMT executives in 63 firms. The findings indicate that sensing, seizing and reconfiguration capabilities are highly relevant for internationalization but in different configurations for specific stages and elements of international business. Presence of sensing as a part of configurations is observable, especially in connection to a firm having foreign customers and explicit internationalization strategies, while configurations where seizing and reconfiguration emerge are connected to firms showing continuity in the international markets. The authors’ results also indicate that a lack of TMT consensus in connection to dynamic managerial capabilities is a driving force that allows the firm not to stagnate with regards to internationalization. Yet, lack of TMT consensus combined with low reconfiguration capabilities seems to generate negative results, which suggests that different views are not helpful if the firm is incapable of changing its approaches.

This study uses data gathered with a questionnaire where the executives select either “yes” or “no” in response to statements describing the firm situation with regard different managerial aspects and progress of international growth. The authors analyze these data from 261 TMT executives from 63 firms using the QCA method.

The findings indicate that sensing, seizing and reconfiguration capabilities are highly relevant for internationalization but to different extents for specific elements of international business; generally, while sensing is needed, in particular, for having foreign customers and internationalization strategies in the first place, seizing and reconfiguration became relevant for continuity in the international markets. Consensus or rather lack of it on these elements also plays a role. It seems that some disagreement is a driving force that allows the firm not to stagnate with regards to internationalization. However, TMT disagreement combined with low reconfiguration capabilities seems to generate negative results, which suggests that different views are not helpful if the firm is incapable of changing its approaches.

The findings contribute to existing knowledge by exploring how managerial capabilities influence firm-level dynamic capabilities from the point of view of the TMT. The authors also add to existing research that has often focused on the relationships between TMT executives' demographic traits and TMT consensus and, further, the (subsequent) firm performance by looking at different configuration rather than linear linkages. Together, these notions further mean that the authors change the point of view on diversity. The authors consider the consensus on existing managerial dynamic capabilities rather than evaluate the functional diversity or the TMT executives' agreement on strategic moves.

All capabilities are important. TMT does not need to agree on everything, as long as they acknowledge where their problem areas are, and they can capture at least some of the relevant trends and opportunities. In fact, having some lack of consensus seems to be a driving force that allows capabilities to be questioned and potentially keeps (false) under-appreciation of existing capabilities from becoming a barrier to international expansion.

Unlike previous studies that have focused on the relationship between the TMT executives' demographic characteristics and firm performance or the relationship of the demographics and TMT strategic consensus at a general level – or studies that have explained international performance with TMT consensus (or with dynamic managerial capabilities), this study brings forth how the dynamic managerial capabilities and the TMT executives' strategic consensus with regard to these capabilities influence the firm's international expansion. Here, the authors consider internationalization widely, looking at whether the firm has foreign customers or international expansion strategy in place, and whether there this activity is sustained and continuous (with repeated trading and long-term international contracts, in particular). To our knowledge, there is no research on TMT strategic consensus that explains how the unanimity among executives on dynamic managerial capabilities connects to the firm's international expansion.

Limited facilities operating and modernization budgets require organizations to carefully identify, prioritize and authorize projects to ensure allocated resources align with strategic objectives. Traditional facility prioritization methods using risk matrices can be improved to increase granularity in categorization and avoid mathematical error or human cognitive biases. These limitations restrict the utility of prioritizations and if erroneously used to select projects for funding, they can lead to wasted resources. This paper aims to propose a novel facility prioritization methodology that corrects these assessment design and implementation issues.

A Mamdani fuzzy logic inference system is coupled with a traditional, categorical risk assessment framework to understand a facilities’ consequence of failure and its effect on an organization’s strategic objectives. Model performance is evaluated using the US Air Force’s facility portfolio, which has been previously assessed, treating facility replicability and interruptability as minimization objectives. The fuzzy logic inference system is built to account for these objectives, but as proof of ease-of-adaptation, facility dependency is added as an additional risk assessment criterion.

Results of the fuzzy logic-based approach show a high degree of consistency with the traditional approach, though the value of the information provided by the framework developed here is considerably higher, as it creates a continuous set of facility prioritizations that are unbiased. The fuzzy logic framework is likely suitable for implementation by diverse, spatially distributed organizations in which decision-makers seek to balance risk assessment complexity with an output value.

This paper fills the identified need for portfolio management strategies that focus on prioritizing projects by risk to organizational operations or objectives.

The purpose of this study is to fill the gap and apply a fault tree analysis (FTA) in detention lists of Black Sea Region published port state reports from 2005 to 2016. The study analyzes valid records of 2,653 detained ships with 6,374 deficiencies based on a strategic management approach. This paper sets up FTA technique to assess the detention probability of a random ship which calls the Black Sea Region with the help of detention lists published within subject years.

This paper is not published elsewhere, and it is based on an original work, which figures out detention probability of a regular ship at Black Sea Region port state control from published lists of Black Sea Memorandum of Understanding (MoU). By utilizing these detention lists, a generic fault tree diagram is drawn. Those probabilities could be used strategically with the most seen deficiencies in the region which all could guide the users, rule makers and the controllers of the maritime system.

FTA has conducted based on the data which was collected from website of BS MoU detention lists that published from 2005 to 2016. Those lists have been published on monthly basis from 2011 to 2016 and on quarterly basis from 2005 to 2010. Proper detention records have been included into the research, whereas some missing records were excluded. Subject lists have been harmonized and rearranged according to Black Sea MoU Detention Codes which was published on October 2017 at Black Sea MoU’s website. According to BS MoU Annual Reports, 58,620 ships were inspected from 2005 to 2016 as seen in Table 1. Those ships were inspected by each member country’s PSOs in the light and guidance of predefined selection criteria of the region. Detention frequency of inspected ships detected as 0.103116 which explains any ship that called any port in the Black Sea Region could be 10% detained after inspected by PSO. Also, each intermediate event-calculated frequency enlightens the probabilities of nonconformities of ships. Although those deficiencies show structural safety and security nonconformities, those probabilities also prove us that management side of the ships are not enough to manage and apply a safety culture. By the light of that, ship owners/managers could see the general nonconformities according to regional records and could manage their fleet and each ship as per those necessities.

In the light of the above analysis, the future research on this subject could be studied on other regions which might enable a benchmark opportunity to users. Also, insurance underwriters have their own reports and publications that could clarify different points of view for merchant mariners and regulators. In this research, FTA is used as a main method to figure out the root causes of the detentions. For future researches, different qualitative and quantitative methods could be used under the direction of subjects.

Detention frequency of inspected ships detected as 0.103116 which explains any ship that called any port in the Black Sea Region could be 10% detained after inspected by PSO. Also, each intermediate event-calculated frequency enlightens the probabilities of nonconformities of ships. Although those deficiencies show structural safety and security nonconformities, those probabilities also prove us that management side of the ships are not enough to manage and apply safety culture. By the light of that, ship owners/managers could see the general nonconformities according to regional records and could manage their fleet and each ship as per those necessities.

With the nature of carriage, shipping business carry out its essential economic attendance in world trade system via inclusion in national and international transportation. As a catalyst in international trade, shipping itself enables time, place and economic benefits to users (Bosneagu, Coca and Sorescu, 2015). Social and institutional pressures generate shipping industry as one of the most regulated global industries which creates high complexity. Industry evolved to multi-directional structure ranges from international conventions (IMO and ILO) to “supra-national interferences” (EU directives), to regional guidance (MoUs) to national laws (flag states). Ship operators endeavor to adopt/fit its industry environment where rules are obvious. With adaptation of industrial environment, ship operators are able to create an important core competency.

This study enlightens the most recorded deficiencies and analyzed them with the help of fault three method. These calculated frequencies/probabilities show the most seen nonconformities and the root causes of detentions in the Black Sea Region in which those results will be benefited strategically that enables a holistic point of view that guide the owners/managers, charterers/sellers/shippers, classification societies, marine insurance underwriters, ship investors, third parties, rule makers and the controllers of the system to apply safety culture.