Search results

Discusses why, when the nation′s mental health and substance abuse problems are well documented, quantitative data are lacking about who is most in need of care and where those persons reside. Underscores the importance of gathering this strategic information and using it as a planning tool.

Advances in information and communications technology have allowed for a wide range of electronic business models and applications. These applications are providing a competitive advantage for organizations by creating efficiencies and cost reductions. Electronic business should be part of the overall corporate strategy and be integrated into core business processes. This study provides interesting insights into electronic business applications in large corporations and discusses similarities and differences that exist between Swedish and American corporations.

Many factors in today's competitive and global business environment contribute to an organization's financial success. A business enterprise's management must adopt a strategy that fully exploits information technology's power as a key element in order to optimize the organization's competitiveness. Recent spectacular technological advances and breakthroughs have made the effective use of modern information technology a critical, competitive business weapon.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the relationship between integrative technologies and the corporation's ability to remain or gain a competitive advantage in today's fast‐paced global economy.

The authors' professional experience, extensive literature review, and personal communications on the subject provided the foundation for this research.

The global business environment requires corporations to use a variety of information and communications technologies in order to coordinate and control all activities in its global operations. In order to be competitive, firms are implementing new technologies such as enterprise resource planning (ERP), ERP II, and radio frequency identification to reduce the cost of doing business by improving operational efficiencies, establish better relationship with their business partners, as well as effectiveness by quickly responding to changes in the marketplace. Challenges and benefits of implementing these technologies by both manufacturing and service organizations are explored and examined in this paper.

Low‐cost and differentiation strategies require corporations to integrate information and communications technologies to streamline processes both within the firm and between business associates. A considerable amount of time and capital is required for acquisition and implementation of the new technology but the return on the investment is significant in the long run. Top management participation, change in management, and employee training are critical success factors in successful utilization of technology.

The paper provides useful information with regards to the importance of technology in sustaining or gaining a competitive advantage in the marketplace.

This article seeks to present a decision support model for improving supply chain performance. The model aims to provide a holistic view of the supply chain as an integrated system by analyzing inventory options to facilitate the decision‐making process by business partners in the system.

In recent years, organizations have focused on incorporating both internal and external business activities of their supply chain into an integrated system. The goal of integration of all supply chain activities is to maximize total systems performance while minimizing costs. Literature review and professional experience in the field provided the foundation for the model development in this research.

The article demonstrates the usefulness of a decision support model in analyzing and developing a cooperative environment among supply chain members in order to reduce the cost of inventory as well as the cost of goods sold. The effects of utilizing such tools as just‐in‐time and electronic business systems are illustrated and discussed.

The proposed model demonstrates disadvantages of individual optimization in an integrated supply chain system as well as the advantages of collaboration of supply chain members in finding the minimum cost. The model uses one manufacturer with multiple retailers and distributors. Future research in this area could expand the model to allow multiple manufacturers.

The decision support model allows decision makers along the supply chain to employ a series of what‐if analyses to evaluate different scenarios with regard to lowering the cost of products reaching the consumer.

The model developed in this paper provides the foundation for future research as well as support for decision making when various decision makers are involved.

Recent spectacular technological advances and breakthroughs have generated dramatic increases in information availability and have made the effective use of modern information technology a critical, competitive business tool. For this study a survey instrument was developed to evaluate the impact of information technology on small and medium enterprises in the USA. The results provide useful insight into the use of information technology by both manufacturing and service SMEs.

This paper aims to examine the impact of enterprise resource planning (ERP) on organizations and discusses critical issues that should be considered by managers and decision makers who are considering implementing an ERP/ERP II system.

Extensive literature review and the author's professional experience on the topic provide the foundation for this article.

ERP/ERP II are designed to improve competitiveness by upgrading an organization's ability to generate timely and accurate information throughout the enterprise and its supply chain. The goal of an ERP/ERP II is to integrate all business units of an organization and to create a system that is capable of providing up‐to‐date and relevant information for the corporation's decision makers and employees as well as business partners. The investment that is required is significant, sometimes running into the hundreds of millions of dollars and the decision to purchase and implement an ERP system is one of the most important decisions a manager will have to make.

Implementing ERP systems often requires organizational change and commitment by top managers. Participation by decision makers and executives from the acquisition phase to the end is essential to the success of ERP/ERP II. Factors that managers should consider are outlined in the study.

This paper provides useful information to both academicians and practitioners who are interested in ERP.

This article aims to explore the impact of supply chain integration on the financial performance of Swedish manufacturing firms.

The literature review provided the foundation for the development of the survey instrument and hypotheses for the study. In addition, the survey instrument was tested by the experts in the field and modified before it was sent to the managers in the survey group.

The findings show that supply chain integration at any level is beneficial to the financial well being of the firm. Companies with total supply chain integration reported the highest level of financial performance.

Data were collected from Swedish manufacturing firms without regard to the size of the firm. The results show that supply chain integration is beneficial at any level.

The findings will assist managers with decisions regarding supply chain integration and its role as a critical factor in improving the financial performance of manufacturing companies.

Limited empirical studies have been conducted in this area, especially in Sweden. This study provides insight for manufacturing managers with regard to the importance of supply chain management and the competitive nature of business in the global market.

The computer is probably the single greatest innovation of the twentieth century. However, with all their awe‐inspiring capabilities, computers create a new set of problems. Seeks to explore the problems of the automation and computer age. Begins by highlighting numerous corporate woes and failures. Analyses the reasons for the problems and failures and finally suggests possible solutions.

This paper seeks to describe the development of the fuzzy logic model approach to decision making and its value for managers by illustrating its application to employee performance appraisals.

An extensive literature review provided the framework for the model development in this research. Performance evaluations represent a critically important decision that often involves subjective information. Models and heuristic techniques that focus on the use of different types of information are available; however, with few exceptions, the models are not robust enough to be applied in a practical, managerially useful manner. Fuzzy logic models provide a reasonable solution to these common decision situations.

Fuzzy logic can be a powerful tool for managers to use instead of a traditional mathematical model when evaluating the performance of personnel or teams. The flexibility of the model allows the decision maker to introduce vagueness, uncertainty, and subjectivity into the evaluation system.

This research calls attention to an alternative method of the performance evaluation system as opposed to the traditional quantitative methods. Future research in this area is needed to develop a method for relating membership values to linguistic variables in performance evaluation, as well as testing the sensitivity of membership values and their impact on the outcome.

This paper provides a simple‐to‐use fuzzy logic model for establishing a more meaningful evaluation system.