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Rapid innovation and globalization have generated tremendous opportunities and choices in the marketplace for firms and customers. Competitive pressures have led to sourcing and manufacturing on a global scale resulting in a significant increase in products. The paper tries to identify the need for real time business intelligence (BI) in supply chain analytics.

The paper provides argument and analysis of the advantages and hurdles in BI.

The paper focuses on the necessity to revisit the traditional BI concept that integrates and consolidates information in an organization in order to support firms that are service oriented and seeking customer loyalty and retention. Enhancing effectiveness and efficiency of supply chain analytics using a BI approach is a critical component in a company's ability to achieve its competitive advantage.

This paper furthers understanding of the issues surrounding the use of BI systems in supply chains.

The purpose of this paper is to model how real estate strategies can add value to the core business, providing corporate real estate mangers with a tool to illustrate to corporate officers how real estate adds value to the firms.

The authors review previous research and interview 26 corporate real estate executives to examine what are common approaches to developing real estate strategies and measuring performance. They then model how real estate adds value to the firm and how that value can be measured.

Many firms do not recognize how real estate adds value to the business. While they may have a corporate real estate strategy, that strategy is often not developed in coordination with the overall business strategy. In addition, the performance measures being used by many companies focus solely on cost, not value added.

Corporate real estate's contribution to the core goal of wealth maximization can be modeled to illustrate the tangible and intangible effects real estate has financial performance. A structured approach to developing a real estate strategy in conjunction with the core business strategy, supported by a performance measurement system will allow corporate real estate executives to better communicate how corporate real estate is adding value to the firm.

Corporate real estate managers need better ways to illustrate, to corporate leaders, how they add value. This paper illustrates such a model with supporting operating decisions and performance measures.

Within the context of ESG (Environment, Social and Governance), environmental sustainability has taken on increased global importance in recent years. Similarly, real estate investment managers in developing their global real estate investment portfolios need a fuller understanding of the ESG and environmental sustainability dimensions of these global real estate markets for more informed real estate investment decisions. Using the JLL GRETI sustainability sub-index, this paper examines the environmental sustainability transparency status of 99 global real estate markets over 2016–2020 and explores various strategic issues regarding ESG and environmental sustainability; particularly the critical issues relating to climate risk mitigation, climate resilience and zero-carbon. The current status of environmental sustainability in these 99 real estate markets is assessed, with areas for “best practice” improvement identified to the benefit of real estate investment managers; particularly the improvements needed in ESG to support real estate investment in the emerging real estate markets.

The JLL GRETI sustainability sub-index is analysed to examine strategic issues relating to environmental sustainability transparency. 99 real estate markets are assessed globally for a range of critical ESG issues over 2016–2020. Differences between the developed and emerging real estate markets are highlighted.

Considerable variation was seen in the ESG and environmental sustainability practices, procedures and frameworks across these 99 real estate markets. This was particularly evident amongst the emerging real estate markets. Compared to the other five dimensions for real estate market transparency, environmental sustainability was seen to be well behind these other dimensions in most markets. Progress has been made in recent years, but it has been slow and steady rather than at a dynamic level. Clearly, more is needed globally to enhance the stature of environmental sustainability in the context of an increasing focus on ESG and specifically on climate risk mitigation, climate resilience and zero-carbon in real estate investment.

With ESG and environmental sustainability taking on increased importance across the international real estate markets, it is important that real estate fund managers have a full understanding of the ESG and environmental sustainability status of these real estate markets where they may be considering real estate investment opportunities; this includes both the developed and emerging real estate markets. This is essential to ensure future capital raising for new funds, as well as supporting the global ESG agenda by the real estate investment community. Specific strategies are also identified for emerging real estate markets to improve their environmental sustainability practices and ESG status.

This is the first paper to use the JLL GRETI sustainability sub-index to assess the environmental sustainability status of 99 real estate markets globally; providing strategic insights for real estate investment managers as they develop their global real estate portfolios and more fully embrace the challenges of ESG and environmental sustainability in the real estate space going forward. Specific strategies are clearly identified for all markets to improve their environmental sustainability ratings to the benefit of both global real estate investment and the broader communities.

Internet has changed radically in the way people interact in the virtual world, in their careers or social relationships. IoT technology has added a new vision to this process by enabling connections between smart objects and humans, and also between smart objects themselves, which leads to anything, anytime, anywhere, and any media communications. IoT allows objects to physically see, hear, think, and perform tasks by making them talk to each other, share information and coordinate decisions. To enable the vision of IoT, it utilizes technologies such as ubiquitous computing, context awareness, RFID, WSN, embedded devices, CPS, communication technologies, and internet protocols. IoT is considered to be the future internet, which is significantly different from the Internet we use today. The purpose of this paper is to provide up-to-date literature on trends of IoT research which is driven by the need for convergence of several interdisciplinary technologies and new applications.

A comprehensive IoT literature review has been performed in this paper as a survey. The survey starts by providing an overview of IoT concepts, visions and evolutions. IoT architectures are also explored. Then, the most important components of IoT are discussed including a thorough discussion of IoT operating systems such as Tiny OS, Contiki OS, FreeRTOS, and RIOT. A review of IoT applications is also presented in this paper and finally, IoT challenges that can be recently encountered by researchers are introduced.

Studies of IoT literature and projects show the disproportionate importance of technology in IoT projects, which are often driven by technological interventions rather than innovation in the business model. There are a number of serious concerns about the dangers of IoT growth, particularly in the areas of privacy and security; hence, industry and government began addressing these concerns. At the end, what makes IoT exciting is that we do not yet know the exact use cases which would have the ability to significantly influence our lives.

This survey provides a comprehensive literature review on IoT techniques, operating systems and trends.

In their recent client engagement experience and benchmarking research, the authors have found that successful management models for corporate real estate (CRE) organisations begin with integrated, robust processes, and not well designed organisational charts. As corporate missions can quickly change focus from high growth to cost reduction, the key to successful integration of all CRE elements is engaging in a strategic planning process that not only aligns the facilities infrastructure with the core business, but also drives CRE organisational initiatives relative to processes, people and enabling systems. This paper attempts to capture a practical framework for CRE managers to evaluate changes to the core business and determine what implications these changes will have on both the CRE portfolio and organisation.

CRE value is created by efficiently aligning business and real estate strategies. The primary responsibility in today’s environment for corporate real estate executives is to understand the business that they are in, and to leverage that knowledge to make real estate strategies and decisions that support and enhance the profitability of the company. The first step in this process is gaining business knowledge through aligning real estate and business strategies and goals. This paper looks at one way of establishing an organisation that efficiently captures and utilises business information to develop value‐added real estate strategies.

The purpose of this paper is to explore how tenant end demand dependence and investment market segmentation, as estimated through sector type, impacts real estate portfolio strategy in the context of the multi-asset portfolio.

The analysis is performed for six investor domeciles, for domestic and international investments over several cycles. The analysis is performed in a mean variance framework.

The findings are consistent with the hypothesis that an investor benefits from investing in real estate assets where end demand is dependent on local factors rather than global factors.

The efficiency of the overall multi-asset portfolio benefits from a deeper understanding of how the real estate portfolio is constructed. Locally dependent real estate, i.e. real estate that is dependent on local economic factors, tends to better support the overall portfolio than do real estate that is dependent upon global factors.

The paper contributes to the broader knowledge through extending earlier studies using similar methodology by extending the data series to cover the impact of the latest global financial crises, as well through extending the knowledge how the real estate portfolio should be constructed to better support the overall objectives of the multi-asset portfolio.

Vehicle routing (VR) is critical in successful logistics execution. The emergence of technologies and information systems allowing for seamless mobile and wireless connectivity between delivery vehicles and distribution facilities is paving the way for innovative approaches to real‐time VR and distribution management. This paper investigates avenues for building upon recent trends in VR‐related research towards an integrated approach to real‐time distribution management. A review of the advances to‐date in both fields, i.e. the relevant research in the VR problem and the advances in mobile technologies, forms the basis of this investigation. Further to setting requirements, we propose a system architecture for urban distribution and real‐time event‐driven vehicle management.

The complexity of manufacturing systems, on-going production and existing constraints on the shop floor remain among the main challenges for the analysis, design and development of the models in product, process and factory domains. The potential of different virtual factory (VF) tools and approaches to support simultaneous engineering for the design, and development of these domains has been addressed in the literature. To fulfil this potential, there is a need for an approach which integrates the product, process and production systems for designing and developing VF and its validation in real-life cases. This paper aims to present an integrated design approach for VF design and development, as well as a demonstration implemented in a wind turbine manufacturing plant.

As the research calls for instrumental knowledge to discover the effects of intervention on the operations of an enterprise, design science research methodology is considered to be a well-suited methodology for exploring practical usefulness of a generic design to close the theory–practice gap. The study was planned as an exploratory research activity which encompassed the simultaneous design and development of artefacts and retrospective analysis of the design and implementation processes. The extended VF concept, architecture, a demonstration and procedures followed during the research work are presented and evaluated.

The artefacts (models and methods) and the VF demonstrator, which was evaluated by industry experts and scholars based on the role of the VF in improving the performance in the evaluation and reconfiguration of new or existing factories, reduce the ramp-up and design times, supporting management decisions. Preliminary results are presented and discussed.

The concept VF model, its architecture and general methodology as an integrated design and development approach, can be adopted and used for VF design and development both for discrete and continuous manufacturing plants. The development and demonstration were limited, however, because real-time synchronisation, 3D laser scanning data and a commonly shared data model, to enable the integration of different VF tools, were not achievable.

The paper presents a novel VF concept and architecture, which integrates product, process and production systems. Moreover, design and development methods of the concept and its demonstration for a wind turbine manufacturing plant are presented. The paper, therefore, contributes to the information systems and manufacturing engineering field by identifying a novel concept and approach to the effective design and development of a VF and its function in the analysis, design and development of manufacturing systems.

To identify and prioritise real estate management requirements, Accruent recently surveyed 100 real estate executives, more than half at companies with revenues exceeding US$1bn. The results indicate that the vast majority are looking for better ways to manage their real estate portfolios. Pressured by fast growth and stringent new regulatory reporting requirements, real estate professionals are turning in increasing numbers to centralised systems of record that can track and manage all financial transactions. Until recently, these systems were difficult to justify. Manual processes and spreadsheets were considered sufficient and a ‘just pay it’ mentality prevailed, largely because real estate was considered a fixed cost. While the concept of a centralised enterprise‐wide data repository has long been a topic of discussion among visionaries, new technologies are making the vision a practical reality. It is now possible to implement viable systems of record in cost‐effective stages, beginning with lease administration and extending into other business management systems. Though the effort of implementing systems of record can be considerable, many consider it well worth while because it provides companies with the opportunity to improve existing operational processes significantly.