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This paper seeks to address issues related to the development of a knowledge‐based engineering system for estimating manufacturing cost and weight of a composite structure at the conceptual stage of a design.

The system has been developed in the CATIA V5 knowledge environment and is applied to structures made of composite materials. At the conceptual stage of the design process, a structure is often represented by simple surfaces. The system adds the details necessary to accurately estimate weight and manufacturing cost using geometry and process‐based techniques. Knowledge captured from an expert was used to construct the knowledge base in the system.

It has been found that the system can provide continuous tracking of the weight and cost as the design evolves. Structural FEA and optimisation using MSC.NASTRAN have been integrated into the design process to enables the designer to conduct “what‐if” analyses to explore different design options involving geometry parameters such as the internal configuration of the structure.

The paper demonstrates that tools embedded in CAD systems can be expected to be able to facilitate the task of estimation of weight and manufacturing cost at the conceptual stage of the design process.

This paper aims to investigate the addition of airdrop capability to a commuter aircraft and its consequences on the reversible flight control system.

Airdrop was modeled to include its effect on aerodynamics and flight control system. A mathematical model was also developed for the reversible longitudinal flight control system of a regional commuter aircraft using the available geometry, mass property and kinematics. The model was incorporated into a general multi‐body dynamics code and validated using existing manufacturer's data which included recorded data from flight. The airdrop simulation results showed that the flight control system is affected in two steps. In the first step, the movement of the load required a forward force by the pilot. In this step, the elevator power was a key factor and had to be increased to allow the pilot to keep the aircraft in trim position during the airdrop. In the second step, a sudden forward shift of centre of gravity required an abrupt change in the direction of applied force. The maximum allowable force and control column movement had to be checked. In the case under study, they did not impose any difficulty.

The result showed that a special consideration had to be taken into account when an aircraft with reversible flight control system was to be used for airdrop mission.

This paper investigates the behaviour of a reversible flight control system during airdrop operation through analysis and simulation.

Reviews the distinctive cultural patterns found in Taiwan, and then discusses the management practices of three “excellent” Taiwanese companies and explores their success in terms of the eight major characteristics discussed by Peters and Waterman in In Search of Excellence.

Although there is substantial and accumulating evidence on the link between market entry modes and performance, evidence regarding their impact on employee’s perceptions and thereby their commitment is scarce. This is more so in mergers and acquisitions (M&As) where employee’s commitment has a significant impact on post-entry performance. The purpose of this paper is to examine the association between perceptions of justice and organisational commitment in cross-border M&As.

The authors draw on market entry and M&As’ literature and studies on the link between perception of justice and commitment to develop the hypotheses. The authors test the hypotheses with survey data from a merger of two culturally different partners – British and Japanese. A total of 128 responses were received, out of a sample of 151 non-managerial employees within the firm.

The results show a strong association between employees’ perceptions of justice during the merger and commitment to the new organisation. Surprisingly, the results do not support the widely reported interaction effects between different organisational justices and employees’ commitment.

Obtaining data from a single M&A is a potential limitation of this study.

The study underscores the importance of post-market entry. The results suggest that particular attention needs to be paid to the way employees of the acquired firm are treated during their interactions with their counterparts.

The link between market entry and performance is well documented. However, little progress has been made in understanding the antecedents/factors that influence commitment in foreign market entry and in particular cross-border M&As. This study helps close this gap.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the efficiency of Malaysian public‐listed software companies in transforming intellectual capital (IC) into corporate values by using the data envelopment analysis (DEA) methodology.

The authors use three individual components of value added intellectual coefficient (VAIC™) as the input variables, and Tobin's Q and return on equity (ROE) as the output variables.

Examining a sample of 25 companies, findings of this study show that companies listed on the main market of Bursa Malaysia are less efficient than those listed on the ACE market. Among the sample companies, Eduspec Holdings Berhad, which falls in the “stars” zone, is the most efficient company with the highest frequency of reference. The results remain robust despite the criticism about the validity of VAIC™ as an IC indicator.

The benchmarking analysis of this study may shed light for the managers in software companies to benchmark and improve their efficiency in IC management.

This is the first paper to examine the IC efficiency of Malaysian software companies through DEA.

Over the past eighteen months plans have been laid in Britain which will revolutionise the business of education, training, recruitment and employment. The planning stage is coming to an end and the implementation stage is taking over. REVIEW is an attempt to co‐ordinate all this information in a form that will help those with the decisions to make and the action to take: company managers, staff in education establishments, trade unionists, careers officers and so on. It is a situation paper setting the scene for a massive two year period of implementation and appraisal. It describes the new provisions and sets out the issues to follow through and the judgments to be made. REVIEW starts with THE YTS STORY: how what was originally a rescue operation for Britain's unemployed juveniles was, along the way, turned into something else and eventually became a blue‐print for an entirely new pattern of training and employment. REVIEW explains why this potential revolution can be made into a reality only by imaginative and bold action on the part of employers. But there are other factors at work which will influence the final form of the new pattern and so REVIEW describes and analyses a series of recent announcements which will have their own formative influence on this new pattern.

A new finite element analysis (FEA) package has been added by Matra Datavision to its ‘EUCLID‐IS’ suite of computer‐aided engineering software.

This article reviews some of the more unconventional text retrieval systems, emphasising those which have been commercialised. These sophisticated systems improve on conventional retrieval by using either innovative software or hardware to increase retrieval speed or functionality, precision or recall. The software systems reviewed are: AIDA, CLARIT, Metamorph, SIMPR, STATUS/IQ, TCS, TINA and TOPIC. The hardware systems reviewed are: CAFS‐ISP, the Connection Machine, GESCAN,HSTS,MPP, TEXTRACT, TRW‐FDF and URSA.