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Introduction Consider a hi‐fi loudspeaker manufacturing company acquired on the brink of insolvency by an American multinational. The new owners discover with growing concern that the product range is obsolete, that manufacturing facilities are totally inadequate and that there is a complete absence of any real management substance or structure. They decide on the need to relocate urgently so as to provide continuity of supply at the very high — a market about to shrink at a rate unprecedented in its history.

Teaching students basic differences among various production systems, such as the American JIC (Just‐in‐case) system, the Japanese JIT (Just‐in‐time) system and the latest OPT (Optimised‐Production‐Technology) system, is not a simple task. Students can be taught basic principles, but whether they truly understand and appreciate what makes one technique superior to another is questionable. After considerable experience in teaching JIC, JIT and OPT, and because of the above concerns, this author has designed a human simulation, called the Production Walk Games. Through these production walks, students not only learn, but also experience, three production methods. The production techniques are briefly discussed and how they are simulated for the students through their production walk games is explained. Two sets of results of these walks are presented and briefly analysed.

A management system which has been used in Japan's Toyota Motor Company for many years is described. The system is applicable to the assembled goods industry and is widely used in such circumstances in that country. It extends well beyond production and inventory control and incorporates a number of features of a decidedly Japanese nature. Dominant among these is just‐in‐time production which is examined at some length. Also described is Kanban, and several of its elements, which is an essential aspect of just‐in‐time production.

Nobody concerned with political economy can neglect the history of economic doctrines. Structural changes in the economy and society influence economic thinking and, conversely, innovative thought structures and attitudes have almost always forced economic institutions and modes of behaviour to adjust. We learn from the history of economic doctrines how a particular theory emerged and whether, and in which environment, it could take root. We can see how a school evolves out of a common methodological perception and similar techniques of analysis, and how it has to establish itself. The interaction between unresolved problems on the one hand, and the search for better solutions or explanations on the other, leads to a change in paradigma and to the formation of new lines of reasoning. As long as the real world is subject to progress and change scientific search for explanation must out of necessity continue.

The aim of this evaluation was to carry out an evaluation of the Just Checking activity monitoring system, which supports people with dementia in their own homes. The study was carried out with Warwickshire County Council's social services, and a number of their service users. The system was installed in the homes of six people with dementia, and used by their family carers and care professionals, whose experiences were gathered in semi‐structured interviews. In total 15 people took part in interviews, including two of the people with dementia.The system gave family carers and professionals a better insight into the activities of the person with dementia, and how they were managing in their own homes. The majority of users were surprised at the consistency of the daily pattern of activity of the person with dementia and, as a result, their view of the capabilities of the person changed. The data from the system reassured family carers and proved a useful assessment tool for professionals on which to plan care.Contrary to expectations, the monitoring system gave people with dementia more control of their lives by providing a means by which they could communicate their capabilities in their home environment.

The purpose of this paper is to analyze the main differences in the cybernetic structures necessary for elementary anticipation, understood as anticipation of the repetition of one known pattern, and complex anticipation, understood as anticipation of the repetition of known sequences of patterns.

A functional cybernetic approach is used to develop the necessary additions to an elementary anticipatory system, so that it can provide standards for anticipated sequences containing seven single patterns or “chunks”.

A subsystem for the anticipation of sequences is developed that is able to: identify the beginning of known sequences; search for different known sequences containing that beginning; and decide to use later patterns of such a sequence as standards for anticipated patterns. Deciding to actually use such patterns for anticipation requires an additional subsystem to switch between the feedback pattern recognition and the feedforward anticipation mode.

The paper shows how complex anticipation can be developed from elementary forms by adding highly parallel structures that apply the same underlying principles; and it emphasizes epistemological demands for the structure and the data organization that have to be fulfilled, so that anticipation of the repetition of sequences becomes possible.

The paper illustrates the complexity of the anticipation of sequences and it provides the base to analyze more complex forms of specifically human thinking.

Macro models are being developed in Islamic economics literature. These models, in general, follow the program of Islamization of knowledge and combine the genuine characteristics of Islamic economics with the tools of mainstream economics. The founding leader of Millî Görüs movement in Turkey, Necmettin Erbakan, and a group of Islamic intellectuals, had developed an economic program known as the just system. This paper aims to attempt to model the just economic system (the JES) with appropriate econometric techniques.

This paper models the macroeconomics of the JES with linear equations and conducts a series of simulations to identify its outputs. Based on the closed economy assumption, this paper describes the production function with a government share, defines a charitable foundation sector, exclude the speculation motive in money demand. Savings are transferred into investments without interest. This paper also develops an econometric simultaneous-equation model of the JES.

According to the results obtained from the selected simulation scenarios, this paper concludes that the macroeconomic JES works well and produces desirable outputs as it was stated in the original program.

In future studies, the econometric estimations of the JES can be made. By adding more equations to the simple model, a medium or large scale JES macroeconomic model can be developed.

The JES can now be a source of economic policy designs.

The model can be used to address socioeconomic objectives.

It is the only Islamic economic model that has been ever developed in Turkey. The notion of the JES has not been subjected to enough economic analysis and as far as it is known, it has not yet been modeled and simulated.

Just‐in‐time (JIT) production has been a subject of considerable research in the past few years. The Japanese were the first to actually use JIT systems rather than the traditional economic order quantity inventory system or the more recent method of Material Requirements Planning (MRP). Considerable savings in inventory‐holding costs, faster spotting of defective producing stations and improved quality control have been observed using just‐in‐time production.

Preface The functions of business divide into several areas and the general focus of this book is on one of the most important although least understood of these—DISTRIBUTION. The particular focus is on reviewing current practice in distribution costing and on attempting to push the frontiers back a little by suggesting some new approaches to overcome previously defined shortcomings.

Rather than organize as traditional firms, many of today’s companies organize as platforms that sit at the nexus of multiple exchange and production relationships. This chapter considers a most basic question of organization in platform contexts: the choice of boundaries. Herein, I investigate how classical economic theories of firm boundaries apply to platform-based organization and empirically study how executives made boundary choices in response to changing market and technical challenges in the early mobile computing industry (the predecessor to today’s smartphones). Rather than a strict or unavoidable tradeoff between “openness-versus-control,” most successful platform owners chose their boundaries in a way to simultaneously open-up to outside developers while maintaining coordination across the entire system.