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Project-based industries seem ignored in the quality management literature. These industries have some peculiarities that warrant attention, and the purpose of this paper is to discuss some of the critical aspects of project-based industries concerning quality management and particularly Quality 4.0.

The approach is based on reviewing the literature and then developing the paper using basic definitions, literature, logic and experience. It should be noted that the type of literature review is so-called “integrative” due to the fact that the topic of this paper is new. Furthermore, for this paper, as for integrative literature reviews in general, the purpose is to create initial and preliminary conceptualizations and theoretical models, rather than review old models. Creative collection of data is therefore key to combine perspectives and insights from different sources. This paper is therefore more a discussion piece rather than a paper presenting results per se. The relevant literature is only a starting point from which the argument is developed.

The paper demonstrates that quality management in project-based industries is outdated, driven by adversarial and legalistic interpretations of contracts, which results in manual work and reactive quality management. Initially, this can be a stumbling block for Quality 4.0. However, the greater credibility and transparency of Quality 4.0 technologies can enable relational contracting such as partnering. This will subsequently result in major improvements in total quality.

The research was initially triggered by industry experience over years. The empirical aspect of the paper is therefore related to the construction, shipbuilding and the oil and gas industry. Because contracting regimes are similar across these industries, the findings are arguably applicable to other project-based industries. However, this is not demonstrated. Furthermore, as the topic is new to both literature and practice it is likely that the paper has not covered all relevant aspects that will emerge as the ideas are implemented.

The paper supports the argument for developing the contracting into a relational approach away from the adversarial and legalistic approach of today. It is illustrated how Quality 4.0 technologies can help in this transition. Therefore, the practical implications can become substantial in how industry works and the research about it.

If the ideas were implemented, they could change contract management in project-based industries from the adversarial approach of today to genuine cooperation. It would therefore be relevant for teaching future contract managers. The project outcomes would also result in improved quality and reduce the loss to society.

The combination of Quality 4.0, new contracting regimes and project-based industries is according to the knowledge of this author, an original contribution that can help people improve the management of quality in project-based industries. With these industries constituting a large and growing share of an economy, the value can also become significant once practical issues concerning implementation are sorted out.

Industries lament the current situation of approaches that have resulted in huge losses in the face of complex risks. The purpose of this study is therefore to review complexity theory in the context of risk management so that it is possible to research better approaches for managing complex risks.

The approach is to review complexity theory and highlight those aspects of complexity theory that have relevance for risk management. Then, the paper ends with a discussion on what direction of research that will be most promising for the aforementioned purpose.

The paper finds that the most challenging aspect is to identify the weak signals, and this implies that the current approaches of estimating probabilities are not going to produce the desired results. Big data may hold a solution in the future, but with legislation such as the General Data Protection Regulation, this seems impossible to implement on ethical grounds. Hence, the most prudent approach is to use a margin of safety as advocated by Graham roughly 70 years ago. Indeed, the approach may be to assume that a disaster will take place and use risk management tools to estimate the impact for a given object.

The literature review is a summary of a much larger work, and in so doing, the resulting simplification may run the risk of missing out on important details. However, with this risk in mind, the review holds rich enough discussion on complexity to be relevant for research about complex risk management.

The current implication for practice is that the paper strongly supports the notion of using a margin of safety as advocated by Graham and his most famous disciple Warren Buffet. This comes from the fact that because context is king, risk management approaches must be applied in their right domain. There is no one right way. In the future, the goal is to develop a quantitative approach that can help the industry in pricing complex risks.

The main contribution of the paper is to bring complexity theory more into the domain of risk management with sufficient details that should allow researchers to get conceptual ideas about what might work or not concerning complex risk management. If nothing else, it would be a significant contribution of the paper if it could help increasing the interest in complexity theory.

The idea behind the invisible hand is that when market participants pursue their own self‐interest constrained by sympathy for man and economic rivalry they satisfy the needs of others more effectually than if they intentionally tried to satisfy those needs. This pursuit of self‐interest drives the marketplace towards generation of wealth, and it has undoubtedly led to many technical and societal marvels, but limitations are evident because the material wealth has partly been developed at the expense of the natural and social wealth. To improve this unfortunate situation we need to fundamentally reengineer commerce. Some ideas are discussed here – an important one is the concept of money because an environmental equivalent of money is needed to make the invisible hand “green”.

The purpose of this paper is to present a new method for life‐cycle costing (LCC) called activity‐based LCC by employing the comprehensive activity‐based life‐cycle assessment method. A real‐life case study of a platform supply vessel operating in the North Sea is utilized to present the method, illustrate an implementation, including results, and discuss the benefits. Furthermore, due to the inherent uncertainty in LCC, handling of uncertainty is emphasized. A crucial side‐effect of handling uncertainty by employing Monte Carlo simulations – as activity‐based LCA prescribes – is the greatly enhanced tracing of critical success factors. Such tracing enables the shipowners to increase long‐term profitability by focusing on what is critical to their success. Also, a design option of using heavy fuel oil versus marine gas oil is investigated.

This paper aims to present an augmented subjective risk management process that can partially solve the problem of inconsistent results in qualitative risk management. Note that “subjective” in this context is to separate this risk management process from the purely statistical risk management processes often associated with finance.

The approach has been developed by logically approaching the problem of inconsistency and, based on experience and literature review, conceptually designing a solution.

The presented approach seems workable and indeed an improvement over standard qualitative approaches given reasonable skillful implementation.

The approach has not yet been tested in real life, which must be undertaken in the future.

The presented approach will expand the subjective risk management process to include information management and to some extent knowledge management and thus add some more activities to the practice of risk management.

The paper presents an approach that so far seems useful in improving the consistency of subjective risk management. Also, it may be a valuable point of departure for further research.

The aim of this paper is to introduce uncertainty analysis within an environmentally extended input‐output technological model of life cycle costing. The application of this approach will be illustrated with reference to the ceramic floor tiles manufacturing process.

Input‐output analysis (IOA) provides a computational structure which is interesting for many applications within value chain analysis and business processes analysis. A technological model, which is built bottom‐upwards from the operations, warrants that production planning and corporate environmental accounting be closely related to cost accounting. Monte Carlo methods have been employed to assess how the uncertainty may affect the expected outcomes of the model.

It has been shown, when referring to a vertically‐integrated, multiproduct manufacturing process, how production and cost planning can be effectively and transparently integrated, also taking the product usage stage into account. The uncertainty of parameters has been explicitly addressed to reflect business reality, thus reducing risk while aiding management to take informed actions.

The model is subject to all the assumptions characterizing IOA. Advanced issues such as non linearity and dynamics have not been addressed. These limitations can be seen as reasonable as long as the model is mostly tailored to situations where specialized information systems and competences about complex methods may be lacking, such as in many small and medium enterprises.

Developing a formal structure which is common to environmental, or other physically‐driven, assessments and cost accounting helps to identify and to understand those drivers that are relevant to both of them, especially the effects different design solutions may have on both material flows and the associated life cycle costs.

This approach integrates physical and monetary measures, making the computational mechanisms transparent. Unlike other microeconomic IOA models, the environmental extensions have been introduced. Uncertainty has been addressed with a focus on the easiness of implementing the model.

The purpose of this article is to present an approach and a case that shows how activity‐based costing (ABC) and economic profit (EP) can be used to improve the profitability of a company.

The objectives of the article are achieved primarily through the discussion of a case combined with a few literature references. The subjects are forecasting, ABC, EP and the approach to the topic is mainly a case study.

On the theoretical side it seems evident that combining ABC and EP is a good idea for a variety of purposes. In the case study. numerous practical findings for the specific company are also presented.

From a research perspective it is clear that we cannot judge from this article whether combing ABC and EP is smart in all cases or not.

The article clearly shows that ABC and EP can be combined with great results (at least) in some cases. The article also addresses some insight that might be useful for many practitioners.

The value of this article lies in providing a clear and real case for why and how to combine ABC and EP. As far as I know the value offered by this article is quite unique. The article's audience is practitioners as well as academics.

The purpose of this paper is to show how the common practice of applying the frequency interpretation of probability in risk analysis of so‐called low‐probability and high‐consequence disasters can prove to be flawed, and to present a possible remedy.

The common practice is reviewed by using the Åknes case from Norway where an up to 100 million m³ rock slide is threatening one of Norway's most visited tourist sites, Geiranger. The same case is also reworked using the alternative approach and then a comparison is made. The study is therefore a comparative study.

The paper clearly shows the fallacy of using the frequency interpretation of probability in cases where the data are limited because the natural disasters under study appear very rarely. By exploiting the fact that responsible decision‐makers in public offices cannot claim that human losses today are worse than human losses tomorrow (human lives cannot be discounted, as it were), the alternative approach provides much more realistic decision‐support.

The paper presents a new approach to analyzing the risk of low probability, high impact natural disasters that can be readily applied in other low probability, high consequence cases.

As far as is known, the paper presents an original contribution to the analysis of risk of low probability, high consequence natural disasters in that it is shown that the commonly used frequency interpretation of probability can prove to be flawed in such cases. An alternative approach is provided.

The aim of the paper is to present and illustrate a new approach for long‐range planning.

Building on well‐tested frameworks such as activity‐based costing (ABC), life‐cycle costing (LCC) and Monte Carlo methods as well as earlier case studies, an approach is developed further and tested using a real‐life case.

The effectiveness of the approach is confirmed using a process‐oriented framework (ABC) and introducing an LCC perspective. Monte Carlo methods are used to handle uncertainty and identify risks and critical success factors.

The presented research is a starting‐point for developing a simple approach for budgeting that overcomes many of the problems with traditional budgeting.

The paper shows how long‐range planning can be performed in a realistic fashion without ending up in many of the traps of traditional budgeting.

The paper presents an approach that can help corporations anticipate the future much more realistically than before.