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A JOINERY APPRENTICE, eighteen years old, relieved the struggling teacher of the power tool, and moved it with easy skill over the face of the work. The teacher stood back and watched in silence, no doubt thinking to himself that such assurance could only have come with experience and practice.

Building maintenance has until recently been a neglected field of quantitative modelling and of academic study. It has not attracted very much attention despite being regarded as under‐funded, unproductive and poorly managed, or the recognition that many of its managerial problems are demanding more research and skills than those of new works. Discusses the priorities, categories of maintenance work, and factors affecting demand for maintenance. Based on general statistics obtained, identifies and quantifies both major problems areas (in terms of cost and frequency of maintenance activities) and the nature and cause of the demand for maintenance in a major hospital complex. They have revealed no coherent picture, in that demand from wards and building seems independent of patient throughput and age of buildings. The demand for maintenance, for the main trades involved, namely plumbing, joinery, electrical and mechanical have been forecast and arrival rate of jobs per trade has been estimated. This would enhance the management process and work planning which would result in a more economic use of resources and a corresponding reduction in the total cost of maintaining property to a standard.

A continuation of the article “Young Enterprise” in Vol. 32 No. 2. The Young Enterprise scheme offers young people the opportunity to form and run their own companies. At the end of their business year, the company is formally liquidated and the participants prepare a report and accounts. Extracts from the liquidation report of “Eclipse” a Young Enterprise Company in Weston‐Super‐Mare are presented. The extracts include reports from the Managing Directors, as well as from the major functional directors.

Presents a customer‐focused approach to effective planning of make‐to‐order production, in which production activities are driven by customer orders and all products are made to customers’ specifications. The approach plans, schedules, and co‐ordinates production activities, based on the needs of individual customer orders. In particular, an integrated bill of material and routeing data structure is used to effectively organise production data in response to product specifications of customer orders. It facilitates the creation of production jobs with varying routeings and material requirements. A job‐oriented finite capacity scheduling system is used to effectively accommodate specific needs of individual customer orders. It allows for realistic setting of delivery dates and negotiation of order changes. Key features of the approach presented show its effectiveness in planning multi‐item customer orders and multi‐level products.

The primary purpose of this paper is to highlight the utility of operationalising the concept of skill ecosystems, or more accurately “intermediate occupational skill ecosystems”.

This paper draws on the process and findings of an empirical study of intermediate occupations in Scotland which set out to explore changing systems of initial skill creation and related problems of skill by embedding these systems within the broader canvas of skill ecosystems.

Operationalising skill ecosystems not only provided a framework from which to explore and provide an explanation of changing initial systems of skill creation but also supported broader conjectures on the nature of developments and problems within intermediate occupations.

The operationalisation presented has relevance to policy makers and academics beyond the scope of this particular examination of intermediate occupations. For policy makers, it emphasises that better skills utilisation cannot be reduced to the level of the individual; that the supply, demand, development and deployment of skills are interrelated and not discrete; and that the roles and relative influences of actors in a position to help build and sustain better skill ecosystems are changing. For academics concerned with exploring changing systems of skill creation, this, or some similar, operationalisation, has potential practical application in terms of supporting key stages in the research process.

This paper's value centres around the proposition, and illustration, that it is possible to effectively utilise a simple operationalisation of the inherently “messy” concept of skill ecosystems without losing the essence and complexity of the relations and dynamics embodied in the concept.

Based on profound information lacking in compiled information materials, the risks of losing knowledge related to the values of traditional woodworking processes are increasing. The purpose of this article is to collect and structure diverse marking tool data into a comprehensive, understandable and clear design schematic view, which serves as a basis for the accumulation and preservation of diverse marking objects and shows woodworking marking tool relation in the group and subgroup levels.

A method for marking tools structuring and analysis are described, including breaking down a set of objects into groups of marking objects, and assigning one or more attributes to the parcelled objects by arranging them into hierarchic levels. Research is based on marking tools used by carpenters, joiners and woodcarvers mainly in the Baltic region.

Collected data, object analyses and comparison within-group and subgroup levels are based on written and visual sources, museum and museum funds visits, and participation in the local craftsmen events. The created structure is expandable in group and subgroup levels. The most comprehensive way for object structuring is chosen as a base to reveal a diversity of the objects.

Structure schemes of woodworking marking tools are important in scientific, educative and cultural levels based on their wide range and use. Aggregated information of the woodworking tools serves as a base for existing tool studies and improvement, new tool and wood product creation as well as complements the structure of the upcoming woodworking hand tool database and book.

The purpose of this paper is to describe and analyze Sabre Yachts, a firm that manufactures specialty sail and power boats.

A case research method including field interviews and secondary research was carried out. The case describes the dilemma that the Marketing Manager, Bentley Collins of Sabre Yachts faced in developing a profitable marketing mix given the firm's competitors, product line, industry and national economic trends and provides an analysis of the situation through structured case questions and answers.

Sabre decided to “stick to the knitting” (Peters and Waterman) and not expand geographically, as the authors suggested, into the largest state market segments. Instead, they took a more conservative approach and expanded their product line which expanded the breadth of their market into other boat market (size) segments.

The case analysis applies strategic management and marketing concepts to a specific real‐life business situation and demonstrates the value of using theory in practice.

This paper aims to develop a set of affordable space and dimensional standards for market-driven low-income housing in Indian context for the purpose of mass production using industrialised building system.

For this, the paper first explains the significance of standardisation from the literature and revisits the codes and contemporary practices in industrialised building system (IBS) in India. Next, it undertakes a market survey of ongoing/completed housing projects to study the space/dimensions reflected in the market demand by the people. After considering conditions like modular grid suitability and provisions of code, it identifies a set of dimensional standards of activity spaces, emerging from the market study. It also suggests a framework of modular units showing the incremental attachment possibility for component-based construction using IBS. These standards and design frameworks will make the path for developing various products and components towards an open system in India.

The paper gives an insight of the market trends of low-income housing, focusing on unit designs and spatial elements.

Local contextualisation during the unit designs will be required and that is not addressed in this paper.

This will benefit developers, manufacturers, designers as well as policymakers towards a market-driven housing delivery using IBS.

As a result of this standardisation, housing delivery will be faster and there will be more numbers of market-driven affordable housing in masses for low-income people, thus solving housing shortage.

A developing country like India is a diversified country having many geographical and social variations. Such standardisation for a space and design framework has never been attempted before and will make a contribution for the public housing sector.