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The applicability of manufacturing planning and control methods differs between environments. This paper explains the fit between the planning environment and material and capacity planning on the detailed material planning and shop‐floor planning levels. The study is based on a conceptual discussion and a survey of 84 Swedish manufacturing companies. Results show the use of planning methods and their levels of user satisfaction in complex customer order production, configure to order production, batch production of standardized products and repetitive mass production, respectively.

The literature on strategic planning has examined the process of planning in some detail, but most of it has ignored the external environment in its discussion. In the studies that have looked at the linkage between the environment and the strategic planning process, the strategic planning process has been treated like a black box. The literature does not delve into the box and examine the linkage between the environment and the characteristics (components and context) of the strategic planning process, but rather it has only looked at a simple relationship between the environment and this entity called the strategic planning process. It is this omission that is addressed in this study. This paper suggests that there is a need to open the black box and examine the relationship between the characteristics of the strategic planning process and the external environment of the organisation.

Background: The prevalence of obesity in English adults and children has reached critical levels. Obesity is determined by a wide range of factors including the environment and actions to reduce obesity prevalence requires a whole systems approach. The spatial planning system empowers local authorities to manage land use and development decisions to tackle obesogenic environments.

Methods: This research aimed to better understand what and how planning powers are being utilised by local authorities to help tackle population obesity. It reviewed literature on the six planning healthy weight environments themes. It identified what powers exist within the planning system to address these themes. It collated professionals’ perspectives on the barriers and opportunities through focus groups within local authorities and semi-structured interviews with national stakeholders.

Results: The research complements current research on the association between the environment and obesity outcomes, though methods employed by researchers in the literature were inconsistent. It identified three categories of planning powers available to both require and encourage those with responsibilities for and involvement in planning healthy weight environments. Through direct engagement with practitioners, it highlighted challenges in promoting healthy weight environments, including wider systems barriers such as conflicting policy priorities, lack of policy prescription and alignment at local levels, and impact from reduced professional and institutional capacity in local government.

Conclusions: The conclusions support a small but increasing body of research which suggests that policy makers need to ensure barriers are removed before planning powers can be effectively used to promote healthy weight environments as part of a whole systems approach. The research is timely with continuing policy and guidance focus on tackling obesity prevalence from national government departments and their agencies. This research was conducted as part of a Master of Research at Leeds Beckett University associated with a national whole-systems to obesity programme.

Examines the environment hostility‐planning‐performance relationship of Hong Kong retailers. A positive relationship is found between environment hostility and the threats encompassed by the existing labour shortage, rising rents, foreign‐based competition, the 1997 return to Chinese governance and Hong Kong′s relationship with mainland China. Retailers who perceive less hostility in their environment are more planning‐oriented. Short‐term planners significantly outperformed non‐planners. Formal long‐range planning was unrelated to retailer performance.

An area that so far has been neglected within organizational theory research is the examination of the relationship of characteristics of the environment, formalized planning, and organizational structure, along with their resultant effects on firm performance. This paper examines these relationships based on three environmental dimensions, four design dimensions, and two dimensions of formalized planning used by decision makers within an organization. The results of an empirical investigation suggest that environmental characteristics and organizational design do have an impact on both performance efficiency and performance effectiveness. In addition, interactions of environmental characteristics and organizational design on performance effectiveness were significant.

To achieve a full understanding of the role of marketing from plan to profit requires a knowledge of the basic building blocks. This textbook introduces the key concepts in the art or science of marketing to practising managers. Understanding your customers and consumers, the 4 Ps (Product, Place, Price and Promotion) provides the basic tools for effective marketing. Deploying your resources and informing your managerial decision making is dealt with in Unit VII introducing marketing intelligence, competition, budgeting and organisational issues. The logical conclusion of this effort is achieving sales and the particular techniques involved are explored in the final section.

It is possible with classical path planning algorithms to plan a path in a static environment if the instant position of the vehicle is known and the target and obstacle positions are constant. In a dynamic case, these methods used for the static environment are insufficient. The purpose of this study is to find a new method that can provide a solution to the four-rotor unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) path planning problem in static and dynamic environments.

As a solution to the problem within the scope of this study, there is a new hybrid method in which the global A* algorithm and local the VFH+ algorithm are combined.

The performance of the designed algorithm was tested in different environments using the Gazebo model of a real quadrotor and the robot operating system (ROS), which is the widely used platform for robotic applications. Navigation stacks developed for mobile robots on the ROS platform were also used for the UAV, and performance benchmarks were carried out. From the proposed hybrid algorithm, remarkable results were obtained in terms of both planning and implementation time compared to ROS navigation stacks.

This study proposes a new hybrid approach to the path planning problem for UAVs operating in both static and dynamic environments.

This paper aims to assess the link between strategic‐planning, aspects of the external environment and overall corporate performance in manufacturing SMEs.

A self‐reported postal survey was used to collect data from an initial sample of 1,000 randomly selected small and medium sized UK electronics and engineering firms. Prior to its deployment a number a staged approach was used to validate the questionnaire with a number of adjustments made following the pilot stage. A T‐test was used to examine the difference between early and late informants' response to key questions. Based on this test and telephone contact with non‐respondents, the authors conclude that non‐response is not a significant issue and should not affect their conclusions. Data reliability was confirmed using Cronbach's α – a commonly used statistical tool to consider data reliability when perceptual measures are used.

The findings indicate that the degree of awareness of external environment threats is associated with the degree of overall emphasis on the strategic‐planning process. Strategic‐planning in manufacturing SMEs is positively linked to overall corporate performance. The findings suggest the need to align the degree of emphasis on strategic‐planning and environmental awareness.

External operating environment threats are often ignored or at best marginalized by SMEs. The findings of this study emphasize the need to focus on strategic‐planning and to ensure alignment with the external operating environment.

Two and one half‐dimensional (2.5D) grid maps are useful for navigation in outdoor environment or on non‐flat surface. However, little attention has been given to how to find an optimal path in a 2.5D grid map. The purpose of this paper is to develop a path‐planning method in a 2.5D grid map, which aims to provide an efficient solution to robot path planning no matter whether the robot is equipped with the prior knowledge of the environment.

A 2.5D grid representation is proposed to model non‐flat surface for mobile robots. According to the graph extracted from the 2.5D grid map, an improved searching approach derived from A* algorithm is presented for the shortest path planning. With reasonable assumption, the approach is improved for the path planning in unknown environment.

It is confirmed by experiments that the proposed planning approach provide a solution to the problem of optimal path planning in 2.5 grid maps. Furthermore, the experiment results demonstrate that our 2.5D D* method leads to more efficient dynamic path planning for navigation in unknown environment.

This paper proposes a path‐planning approach in a 2.5D grid map which is used to represent a non‐flat surface. The approach is capable of efficient navigation no matter whether the global environmental information is available at the beginning of exploration.

The purpose of this paper is to explore how the context affects successful use of advanced planning and scheduling (APS) systems in sales and operations planning (S&OP) processes, and how individual, technological, and organizational (ITO) dimensions affect this procedure.

This is a qualitative case study of two APS system-supported S&OP processes. The work aims to generate propositions concerning the relationships among the use of APS system, the context, ITO dimensions, and fulfillment of S&OP aims.

Use of APS systems was especially appropriate in support of S&OP processes in complex planning environments and when S&OP aims were ambitious. ITO dimensions were important influences on successful APS system use in most contexts. APS systems were not considered appropriate when having S&OP processes with ambitious aims and low individual and organizational maturities. Use of APS systems was also inappropriate when the extent of technological maturity was minimal. S&OP processes with ambitious aims, operating within a complex planning environment, are difficult if not impossible to implement without the support of APS systems.

The suggestions on when APS systems should be used in different S&OP environments will be useful to companies implementing or about to implement APS systems.

APS systems offer great potential if they are effectively used to support S&OP, still the use of APS system in S&OP is unexplored. The paper shows how the context and the ITO dimensions affect the successful use of APS systems in S&OP processes.