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In response to the station design and flexible resources allocation of the aircraft moving assembly line, a new problem named flexible resource investment problem based on project splitting (FRIP_PS), which minimizes total cost of resources with a given deadline are proposed in this paper.

First, a corresponding mathematical model considering project splitting is constructed, which needs to be simultaneously determined together with job scheduling to acquire the optimized project scheduling scheme and resource configurations. Then, an integrated nested optimization algorithm including project splitting policy and job scheduling policy is designed in this paper. In the first stage of the algorithm, a heuristic algorithm designed to get the project splitting scheme and then in the second stage a genetic algorithm with local prospective scheduling strategy is adopted to solve the flexible resource investment problem.

The heuristic algorithm of project splitting gets better project splitting results through the job shift selection strategy and meanwhile guides the algorithm of the second stage. Furthermore, the genetic algorithm solves resources allocation and job schedule through evaluation rules which can effectively solve the delayed execution of jobs because of improper allocation of flexible resources.

This paper represents a new extension of the resource investment problem based on aircraft moving assembly line. An effective integrated nested optimization algorithm is proposed to specify station splitting scheme, job scheduling scheme and resources allocation in the assembly lines, which is significant for practical engineering applications.

Tooling is a common component of an industrial product’s manufacture. Specific tooling is devised to serve the fabrication of a particular product, while generic tooling can be used in the manufacture of multiple products. In the latter case, companies are confronted with the problem of fairly allocating the indirect costs of the tooling. This article studies how to allocate costs of generic tooling to single production orders.

Ten allocation methods (AMs) are described that are in principle suited to the distribution of generic tooling costs to production orders. Since the presented methods have for the most part been discussed in differing contexts, we apply them to a specified generic tooling problem for comparison. Evaluation of the various methods is based on 16 criteria. Reasoning is supported by a computational Monte Carlo simulation. Furthermore, we suggest using the Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP) to elaborate one final proposition concerning the most preferable allocation scheme.

The article reports the single allocation rules’ performances for different allocation scenarios. The described characteristics refer to fairness, efficiency, and simplicity as well as to empty-core performance. Using AHP analysis allows for the aggregation of the rules’ criteria ratings. Thus, especially suitable allocation schemes for the problem at hand are identified.

An allocation is required for budgeting reasons and also for the definition of projects’ bottom-up sales prices. Selecting the “right” AM is important, as a suboptimal AM can result in unfair allocation vectors, which will act as incentives to stop using the common resource, potentially leading to higher total costs.

Research on the comparison of AMs is typically performed for certain purposes, such as enterprise networks, horizontal cooperative purchasing scenarios, or municipal service units. This article will augment the research evaluating AMs by introducing a novel set of evaluation criteria and by providing an in-depth comparison of AMs suited for the allocation of generic tooling costs.

With the surge in public procurement, especially in developing countries, ensuring fair competition in procurement has assumed paramount importance. Academic endeavors in the domain of competition issues have often lacked the views of field-level functionaries. This study aims to involve a large number of expert practitioners in India to identify the significant contemporary competition risks in public procurement from the procurer and supplier sides and develop a model depicting the hierarchy of competition-restrictive actions (CRAs) in procurement based on their mutual interactions.

The significant CRAs along the procurement cycle are identified through literature survey, interactive workshops and expert interviews. A questionnaire survey covering 143 respondents from 12 public organizations is used to evaluate their impact. Considering the complex causal interactions involved, interpretive structural modeling followed by MICMAC (Iimpact matrix cross-reference multiplication applied to a classification analysis is used to develop a hierarchical model of competition risks in procurement.

Tailor-made contracts, splitting of a project below competition thresholds, restrictive selection criteria and awarding the contract on nomination emerge as CRAs with the highest driving power. Horizontal collusion among vendors strongly depends on practices followed in the procuring organization.

The survey data and the experts’ opinions emanate from practitioners in India, which is a limitation. However, with necessary contextual calibrations, the study is of high functional utility to policymakers and practitioners.

The research facilitates a comprehensive understanding to procurement managers/policymakers of the CRAs along the procurement cycle and their interdependencies. It offers valuable insights for improving competition, which is foundational for optimal procurement outcomes.

The study enriches the public procurement domain knowledge by identifying and assessing the significant contemporary CRAs, examining their mutual interactions and developing an interpretive structural model. Although contributing to the body of knowledge, the study is unique in being grounded in field realities.

It is proposed to examine how these two different models of human relations – that of Winnicott and Serres – illuminate features of contemporary organizational life. With these models, one can view recent scandals in the USA, specifically the implosion of the energy firm, Enron. Previous accounts of Enron emphasize the manipulations of income and accounting irregularities; however, it is suggested that the accounting manipulations illuminate features of human relations within and outside the economic firm. As a case study, Enron provides a good example of how the object theories of Winnicott and Serres illuminate aspects of behavior in our contemporary organizations and address problems of postmodernity. Andrew Fastow, former CFO of Enron, is the postmodern subject with pathological splitting behavior. Enron is the playground where Fastow played with quasi‐objects among other postmodern subjects. Enron is also the site where the circulation of quasi‐objects in the form of SPEs suddenly ceased.

Agile methodologies are widely used to manage the technical complexity of software development, and project governance can provide feasible means of organizational support for complex project success. The purpose of this paper is to: analyze the project governance practices of public sector organizations, illustrate what kind of impact these practices have on agile software projects and describe the tensions of agile project governance.

The research is based on qualitative research strategy and applies elaborative logic with analyses of three case projects in the Finnish public sector.

The findings of the research describe how project governance practices can be categorized into six dimensions: business case, contracting, controlling, steering, decision-making and capability building. The results illustrate how these practices either support or detract the performance of agile projects. The results also show that there are two interfaces to agile project that create most tensions to governance – the public sector and technology.

The study contributes to both project management and information and communication technology theories by combining technical aspects of agile methodologies with micro-level project governance practices. The study also adds original value to academics by introducing the new concept of “agile project governance.” The results of this study will allow public sector project organizations to design appropriate governance mechanisms for agile projects, and to identify the challenges and tensions that need to be considered and managed in the process.

Increasingly, land is a scarce resource which is much sought after in Penang Island, Malaysia. This is because Penang is largely made up of steep topography and much of the lowland areas are already developed. Penang is one of the many rapidly industrialising states in Malaysia with a largely urban populace. In recent decades, efforts at industrialisation and the development of other economic sectors have been intensified, leading to greater urbanisation and greater pressures on land. Although land reclamation has eased the pressures somewhat, it is not enough to satisfy the high demand for land on the island. As such, developers have turned to the remaining hill land on the island. Many hills and their environs are already being developed and many hill projects are in the pipe line. This has led to many environmental problems such as deforestation, decimation of water catchments, destruction of endangered fauna and flora, soil erosion, landslides, water pollution, sedimentation and downstream flooding. Some of these problems have been exacerbated and turned into disasters due to the extremely fragile and sensitive nature of hill ecosystems. Despite such problems, the State Government has decided to lift the freeze on development of hill land since January 1998, and this has effectively opened up all hill land for development on the island. Therefore, hill land needs to be protected and conserved by other means and this study recommends the adoption of a policy of “No development in all ecologically and environmentally sensitive areas”, the setting up of a Hill Land Technical Committee (HLTC) to manage all developments pertaining to hill land and to gazette all hill land in the State, and the use of state‐of‐the‐art remote sensing and Geographic Information System (GIS) technology to monitor and control development activities on hill land in Penang.

Researchers in supply chain (SC) payment management have long sought to understand how project contractors, project owners, specialist contractors, and suppliers behave in the context of negotiating payment terms that improve contractors' SC cash flow.

Using a single case study approach, semi‐structured interviews with contract and project managers identify behavioral patterns. An analysis of categorical experiments and Spearman's correlation tests on 118 surveys from Taiwanese project contracting corporations generalizes the case findings.

The findings suggest that payment terms of project owners, specialists, and suppliers have an important impact on contractors' working capital. The findings also reveal that contractors pass project owners' payment terms down to specialists and suppliers, suggesting that contractors' behavior depends on that of the project owners.

This paper generalizes the case findings via surveys, but does not assume that the reported behavior patterns apply to all business enterprises. Future research could triangulate the findings.

This study combines qualitative and quantitative methods to understand how the project owner‐contractor‐supplier (or owner‐contractor‐specialist) triad behaves. Particularly, it focuses on an economic sector – real estate and construction – that receives less research interest than processing or manufacturing.

With the aim of furthering the understanding of project speed and how to manage the urgent project, the purpose of this paper is to investigate the management challenges involved in delivering a telecommunications infrastructure project in a period of much shorter duration than a similar project. The authors wanted to understand the reasons behind the urgency and how the project management team succeeds in delivering in such a tight time window. Finally, the authors assessed the consequences (negative and positive, during and after the project delivery), knowing that the project was considered a success at its delivery, but not that it was successful at the post-project evaluation.

A case study based on qualitative research interviews with management team including the client, the main contractor and some related stakeholders, combined with case archives and internal documentation from the case project.

The urgency of a project or programme may lead to some negative consequences and impacts. The success seen in a short- and mid-term view is not enough to justify making acceleration decisions: thus holistic thinking and a long-term sustainable approach are needed to ensure continuity and profits.

This research is based on a single case study. There are some limitations regarding how urgent and unexpected the case was managed in comparing to normal case. A second limitation is that there is no clear definition of what are normal practices such that we can say what are a normal case and an urgent case.

There are some lessons learned from this case study about managing the unexpected and the urgent. Practitioners can obtain insight into positive and negative consequences of fast project delivery from this case.

This study is unique in its content and context, since it presents the first-hand insight into a case study that seemed to be successful to some extent (short-term impact); however, negative consequences appeared within a few years of its delivery.

The purpose of this paper is to report research into the social defence of splitting and projection in schools. In splitting and projection, organisational members separate their unbearable feelings from the more acceptable ones and project them, typically towards other individuals and groups.

The research was undertaken in three secondary (11‐18), co‐educational, maintained schools in Wales, UK, using a case study method and a psychoanalytic approach and interpretive perspective. Data were collected during interviews and meetings with key players.

The cross‐case analysis and interpretation showed how features in the whole system such as institutional stress can create a setting in which splitting and projection may flourish. The inadequate definition and management of institutional roles may also contribute. Individuals and groups may act as “lightning rods” receiving and taking in projected feelings and may play a part in establishing themselves in that role. Splitting and projection can develop into blame, demonisation, scapegoating and bullying. The ability of those involved to transform projected feelings, that is, to accept them, contain them, change them into benign and acceptable forms, and then return them in that different form, is crucial to minimising the impact of splitting and projection and to ensuring that it does not grow into more dangerous organisational phenomena. This transformation‐and‐return process is a key educational leadership task.

The paper provides a new perspective on a widespread behaviour in schools and colleges and describes how the behaviour can be managed. It has implications for all educational leaders.

This paper proposes an integrated approach that seeks to jointly optimize project scheduling and material lot sizing decisions for time-constrained project scheduling problems.

A mixed integer linear programming model is devised, which utilizes the splitting of noncritical activities as a mean toward leveling the renewable resources. The developed model minimizes renewable resources leveling costs along with consumable resources related costs, and it is solved using IBM ILOG CPLEX optimization package. A hybrid metaheuristic procedure is also proposed to efficiently solve the model for larger projects with complex networks structure.

The results confirmed the significance of the integrated approach as both the project schedule and the material ordering policy turned out to be different once compared to the sequential approach under same parameter settings. Furthermore, the integrated approach resulted in substantial total costs reduction for low values of the acquiring and releasing costs of the renewable resources. Computational experiments conducted over 240 test instances of various sizes, and complexities illustrate the efficiency of the proposed metaheuristic approach as it yields solutions that are on average 1.14% away from the optimal ones.

This work highlights the necessity of having project managers address project scheduling and materials lot sizing decisions concurrently, rather than sequentially, to better level resources and minimize materials related costs. Significant cost savings were generated through the developed model despite the use of a small-scale example which illustrates the great potential that the integrated approach has in real life projects. For real life projects with complex network topology, practitioners are advised to make use of the developed metaheuristic procedure due to its superior time efficiency as compared to exact solution methods.

The sequential approach, wherein a project schedule is established first followed by allocating the needed resources, is proven to yield a nonoptimized project schedule and materials ordering policy, leading to an increase in the project's total cost. The integrated approach proposed hereafter optimizes both decisions at once ensuring the timely completion of the project at the least possible cost. The proposed metaheuristic approach provides a viable alternative to exact solution methods especially for larger projects.