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The purpose of this paper is to present a decisions support tool that can be applied in initial stages of design, for evaluating the investment feasibility of changeable and reconfigurable manufacturing design concepts, based on future demand predictions and their uncertainties. A quantitative model is proposed, which evaluates the discounted value of capital and operating costs of changeable manufacturing design concepts, based on essential characteristics regarding their type and extent of changeability.

Quantitative empirical modeling is applied, where model conceptualization, validation, and implementation are central elements, using two Danish manufacturing companies as cases.

The applicability of the model is demonstrated in the two case companies, highlighting differences in type, extent, and level of feasible changeability, as a result of differences in product and production characteristics.

Further studies of changeability implementation should be conducted across industrial fields in order to generalize findings.

There is currently limited support for the conceptual design phase of changeable and reconfigurable manufacturing, where critical decisions regarding type, extent, and level of changeability must be made, regardless of high degrees of uncertainty about future demand scenarios.

This paper expands previous research on design for changeability and reconfigurability, by explicitly considering changeability as a capability that can be enabled in various ways for various purposes in different industrial contexts. The proposed model and the case implementations provide important knowledge on the transition toward changeability in industry.

With any new technology such as EDI there is a need to reduce the confusion that might arise, by adopting standard terms and by positioning it within a proper context. Reports on the results of work within the Cranfield EDI research project, one of which was a concept model for EDI which achieved standard definitions and a proper contextual model for EDI. Concept models cannot be developed without rules for their construction and in this case entity modelling was used. The Cranfield EDI concept model identifies 14 fundamental aspects of EDI in business and their interrelationships. Drawing on this basic model it is possible to derive checklists, and to build more explicit models of specific EDI implementation situations.

Ubiquitous web applications (UWA) are a new type of web applications which are accessed in various contexts, i.e. through different devices, by users with various interests, at anytime from anyplace around the globe. For such full‐fledged, complex software systems, a methodologically sound engineering approach in terms of model‐driven engineering (MDE) is crucial. Several modeling approaches have already been proposed that capture the ubiquitous nature of web applications, each of them having different origins, pursuing different goals and providing a pantheon of concepts. This paper aims to give an in‐depth comparison of seven modeling approaches supporting the development of UWAs.

This methodology is conducted by applying a detailed set of evaluation criteria and by demonstrating its applicability on basis of an exemplary tourism web application. In particular, five commonly found ubiquitous scenarios are investigated, thus providing initial insight into the modeling concepts of each approach as well as to facilitate their comparability.

The results gained indicate that many modeling approaches lack a proper MDE foundation in terms of meta‐models and tool support. The proposed modeling mechanisms for ubiquity are often limited, since they neither cover all relevant context factors in an explicit, self‐contained, and extensible way, nor allow for a wide spectrum of extensible adaptation operations. The provided modeling concepts frequently do not allow dealing with all different parts of a web application in terms of its content, hypertext, and presentation levels as well as their structural and behavioral features. Finally, current modeling approaches do not reflect the crosscutting nature of ubiquity but rather intermingle context and adaptation issues with the core parts of a web application, thus hampering maintainability and extensibility.

Different from other surveys in the area of modeling web applications, this paper specifically considers modeling concepts for their ubiquitous nature, together with an investigation of available support for MDD in a comprehensive way, using a well‐defined as well as fine‐grained catalogue of more than 30 evaluation criteria.

The paper explores a management fashion within the Swedish Public Sector called intrapreneurships. Intrapreneurships became popular during a period of public debate on what forms of organizing are most suitable for the production of welfare. However, while the popularity of the model was short-lived, a few municipalities nevertheless constitute examples of where it was supported for a longer period. The aim of this paper is to investigate how the model became continuously legitimate having lost its appeal elsewhere.

The paper comprises a longitudinal analysis of two municipalities. Field-material was collected through qualitative methods including interviews (35 interviews, 42 interviewees) and document analysis.

The results draw attention to how management fashions become enduring. The metaphor of translation highlights how different professional actors in a local setting apply editing rules, and how they constitute work acquired for continuous translation of the model in order to make it legitimate, disseminated and supported. The study draws particular attention to the large number of actors involved in the editing process.

Besides an extended understanding of management concepts, to explain the anomaly of a long-standing management fashion, the paper illustrates the importance of acknowledging editing as processes and not process. A key notion in why intrapreneurships became legitimate is that professional actors edited the model differently in order to satisfy their desires and needs. This contradicts the more common case study design in translation studies, which seeks a unitary translation process, in a single local setting.

This chapter discusses the application of fuzzy cognitive map (FCM) modelling to construction management (CM) challenges and problems. It focuses on the critical issue of managing the complexity and uncertainty inherent in CM by providing a new intelligent layer that enhances classical approaches to construction modelling and management. It investigates how the myriad types of internal and external factors affecting the feasibility and performance of construction projects can be modelled using a fuzzy hybrid method that explores the complex relationships among many contributing factors and assesses and evaluates their impacts on past and future projects. This chapter proposes a hybrid modelling approach in the traditional context of cost, schedule and risk management and describes how augmenting and enhancing existing state-of-the-art tools and processes in CM can assist construction managers. This chapter provides a background on the theory of FCMs, presents foundational and current research, and explains how to apply this approach in the CM domain. This chapter also provides a detailed description of how to develop, modify and employ interactive models to specific CM challenges and problems. It includes a customisable, interactive base model and demonstrates how the model has been applied to specific CM events and issues. Examples are presented that highlight the interplay between project-specific goals and characteristics and the way these impact the interrelated and often opposing triad of cost, schedule and risk. The presented examples and practical applications make this state-of-the-art approach useful to both academic and industry practitioners.

This study aims to seek to advance a system dynamics-discrete event hybrid simulation modelling concept useful for taking improvement decisions where one needs to consider the interactions between human factors and process flow elements in lean manufacturing systems.

A unique approach is taken to hybrid simulation modelling where the whole problem situation is first conceptualized using a causal loop diagram and stock and flow diagram, before transmitting to a hybrid simulation model. The concept is intended to simplify the simulation modelling process and make the concept pliable for use in various types of lean manufacturing problem situations.

The hybrid simulation modelling concept was applied to a lean manufacturing case where quality performance was sporadic mainly because of production pressures. The hybrid modelling concept revealed a solution that advanced full compliance with lean and one that required changes in job scheduling policies to promote both continuous improvement and throughput increases.

Because non-tangible aspects of lean were objectively assessed using the hybrid modelling concept, the study is an advancement towards establishing a credible link between human resource aspects of lean and the performance of an organization.

The applied hybrid model enabled managers in the plant navigate the trade-off decision they often face when choosing to advance production output ahead of continuous improvement practices.

System dynamics-discrete event hybrid simulation modelling is a rarity in lean manufacturing systems.

The purpose of this paper is to extend PriS (privacy safeguard), a privacy requirements engineering method for eliciting and modelling privacy requirements during system design, with the addition of privacy-aware cloud-based concepts to assist analysts to reason and model about privacy in cloud environments.

An analysis of previous findings on the file of cloud privacy based on previous work has been conducted and a set of privacy-related concepts that need to be considered during privacy analysis for cloud-based systems have been revealed. These concepts were used for extending the conceptual model of PriS.

The main finding of the paper is the design of a new, novel conceptual model that assists analysts and designers in reasoning about privacy in cloud environments. A new template using the JSON (Javascript notation object) format has been introduced for better expressing the privacy requirements along with the related concepts presented through the conceptual model, thus letting the developers to better understand the findings during the design stage and better guide them to the implementation of the respective solution.

The design of a cloud-based process that will guide analysts in detail for eliciting and modelling the identified privacy-related requirements is the limitation and in parallel the next step of the specific work presented here.

The conceptual model has been applied on a real case scenario regarding its efficiency on capturing and mapping all necessary concepts for assisting analysts proceed with the design of the privacy-aware system. The results were positive, all concepts were easy to use and totally understandable from the design team and the stakeholders and the use of the JSON template received very positive comments, especially from the developer’s team.

The paper presents a novel conceptual model for reasoning about privacy requirements in the cloud. The applicability of the proposed model has also been tested on a real case study.

This paper aims to propose a mathematical model for describing and clarifying the relationships among the indicators governing the social values of special customers in business-to-consumer (B2C) e-commerce systems. This mathematical model is also able to describe the degree of adaptability of e-commerce systems to the social values of specific clients, and commercial firms are able to use the parameters described in this paper to increase the versatility and has the power to trade with special customers in different areas.

In this paper, while analyzing the issue of trading from the point of view of the customer as an element of trading, the affecting factors the trading space have been extracted. These affecting factors are categorized in three major groups: culture, technology and customers. This classification is based on the e-commerce and developing the traditional commerce. Using the mapping functions, the effects of each element in these three spaces on the concept of social values have been analyzed. The result of this analysis is the mathematical model governing each parameter and its semantic relation with the concept of social value.

The presence of a mathematical model between the indicators influencing the model adaptability and social values space allows e-commerce system designers to be able to make decisions on the adaptability of the model with a quantitative approach. To examine the proposed mathematical models, important frameworks and patterns in the field of e-commerce have been analyzed with an Islamic approach, as one of the adaptations of B2C e-commerce model.

Regarding the innovation of the work, the case has been made, and the concept of social value and the model governing the elements of social values in this paper, in a B2C e-commerce model, has been discussed in general; the problem is parametric solved.

One of the key concepts in commerce is the ability of the commerce model to adapt to the requirements of special customers. This is more important in costumer-based e-commerce models. In these types of systems, if the commerce cannot match the customer’s characteristics, it will not be accepted and used by customers. This is especially more important in the field of social values for customers.

In this paper, a mathematical model is presented to examine the adaptability of e-commerce systems to the social values of special customers. In examining this model, the relationship between each element affecting the social value of specific customers and the factors affecting trade has been studied.

Although concept evaluation has attracted much attention, collaborative concept evaluation has received minimal attention. In this work, we identify problems and propose solutions regarding collaborative concept evaluation. First, we reviewed past projects and interviewed evaluators with international design experiences to conclude that concept evaluation criteria are not established but constructed. Second, we apply the psychology of Brunswik's Lens model to propose that providing multiple concept aspects improve collaborative concept evaluation. Three experimental studies demonstrate that our proposed Concept Aspect Profile (CAP) model (1) is superior to existing concept evaluation models, (2) differentiates between breakthrough new product concepts and incremental new product concepts, and (3) increases the likelihood that a concept receives the Industrial Design Excellence Award (IDEA). This work contributes to marketing research of concept evaluation as well as provides implications for designers.