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In the automotive industry, the high process complexity becomes an important issue because of the increased number of product and process variants demanded by the customers. To avoid quality defects in assembly and losses in such a complex manufacturing environment, new predictive support systems are required. This study aims to develop a multiple attribute decision support system (DSS) for the prediction and quantification of the risk of failures on the workstations of a leading Turkish automotive manufacturing company.

Initially, the factors affecting the failures in workstations and the attributes to evaluate the factors are identified. Subsequently, the relations among the attributes are specified and priorities of them are calculated. Finally, the risk of failures is calculated and tested in a pilot study and validated with real production data.

To the best of authors’ knowledge, this is a unique study that computes the risk scores on the workstations via DSS. The DSS has various advantages for improvements of the manufacturing quality: the risk of failures can be detectable and comparable, the effect of changes in the design of new workstations can be observed. Stations that have medium or high complexity scores demonstrated strong correlation with failure rates. A sensitivity analysis is conducted to predict the effect of improvement actions on the riskiness of the workstations.

High level of production complexity becomes a crucial issue for companies that use various production processes. Considering this fact, it is a requirement for companies to observe and monitor the risk factors, especially in the assembly lines to be able to eliminate failures derived from complexity. Accordingly, to measure risk scores of the workstations in the assembly lines, a decision support for companies aids executives to manage the complexity level in a reliable and effective way. In this study, the authors develop such a DSS for TOFAS, a leading Turkish automotive company. The proposed DSS is verified and applied through a pilot study on a specific basic production unit. A sensitivity analysis is also conducted to see the effects of potential improvements on the risk scores. Additionally, the trend of risk scores for the stations can also give valuable information for tracing the changes in the time horizon. The proposed DSS also enables an opportunity for the executives in their decision of design processes of new production lines by allocating limited resources in an appropriate way based on the risk scores of possible workstations. The proposed DSS is the first and unique proactive failure prevention model developed in a Fiat Chrysler Automobiles (FCA) plant across the world. TOFAS executives also plan to introduce and enlarge the usage of the model to other FCA plants. It may also be possible to apply the model to other assembly lines in any sector. Another plan of the executives of TOFAS is developing a software, which manages each parameter, to constitute data to the DSS to run this system more instantly and effectively. Moreover, they can take integration actions of the software with world-class manufacturing problem management system that is currently in use in TOFAS.

Research and writing can be challenging tasks for undergraduate students, and evaluating online sources for use in papers can be especially difficult to do well. This chapter discusses a partnership between a library and a writing center to teach writing consultants the basics of the Information Literacy Framework and online source evaluation. This included providing additional education for peer writing consultants. Consultants became more fluent in the aspects of evaluation and provided perspective on how and why undergraduate students struggle with this in the research and writing process, establishing the value of assembling networked pedagogical models for teaching information literacy.

Since 1969, the Moroccan government has worked to convert irrigated collective land in the Gharb region into individual freehold tenure through cadastral, registration, and titling processes. The first titles were issued in 2017, the same year that a new compact between the Government of Morocco and the Millennium Challenge Corporation, a US foreign aid agency, entered into force to develop a streamlined privatization process for collective lands. In this chapter, I adopt the analytic of assemblage to investigate the historical construction of administrative frameworks, material landscapes, and systems of practice governing access to collective land. I assert that the shifting arrangements of sociomaterial relations related to collective land access in the Gharb have continuously assembled new practices of land access legible to state and market actors at a wider scale. This legibility was produced by administrative reforms and the deployment of new forms of knowledge production in the form of cadastral maps and titles deeds, which have worked to formalize and individualize access to collective land in the Gharb. The logic of legibility smooths the contradictions between the diverse objectives of state actors, including rural development to improve economic livelihoods, pursuit of a neoliberal development strategy focused on commodification and marketization of land, and the evolution of a patronage system that exchanges economic gain for political support.

The “Inside UK Enterprise” activity of the Department of Trade and Industry (DTI) is part of the Department's “Managing in the '90s” programme. That programme is designed to help firms to adopt a strategic, integrated management approach to the key factors which influence commercial success in today's markets: manufacturing, purchasing, quality, design.

Testing has become one of the dominant costs in the process of bringing a product from initial conception to the market place. Because of this, it is now imperative that the impact of any technology change on the test process is considered at an early stage. In this light, the increasing trend towards the use of surface‐mounting techniques in the fabrication of electronic systems is examined, with particular emphasis on the consequences on product testing during design validation, manufacture and repair. The aim is to highlight areas in which new attitudes and replacements for traditional solutions will be needed if surface‐mounting techniques are to be as cost‐effective as possible.

We are living in an electronic age, where everything that we want to know or are curious about is increasingly facilitated by the internet and search engines. Now, much of the world’s knowledge is at our fingertips. Students have unlimited access to information in the form of e-books, journals and other open sources. The value of a physical repository of knowledge is diminishing and the printing of material is becoming less compelling. It has been noted that college students spend as much time on the internet as they do while studying (Jones, 2002). The most pertinent question is whether the library is still considered an important source of information to students? Can we imagine a university without a library with just computers and a server room? The information highway is posing new challenges that the librarians have to deal with (Dunn, 2002; Rockman & Smith, 2002). In the past, gatekeepers like the librarian decided what a student should read, depending on their level of study and their comprehension power. The picture has altered and now students decide what exactly they should read with the click of their computers. Leaders in higher education institutions are skeptical as to how much they should actually invest in buying books, how many shelves to create to stack them and whether the collection of books is going to be an indicator of the academic quality of that institution. This book talks about a vital subject as to how much and in what ways a library can engage a student to create information literacy. Various interventions have been discussed as case studies in colleges and universities from Canada to India. Student-centered workshops have been designed along with university partnerships with a writing center as well as the role of a library as a source of socio-economic transformation in Africa. The experiences shared by the authors in this book will be a valuable resource for librarians across the world as they increase their collaborative efforts to promote the value of information literacy for students.

The aim of this paper is to investigate how social media use (SMU) affects the entrepreneurial orientation (EO) and entrepreneurial opportunities (EOP) of start-ups.

The hypothesis testing and analysis were conducted using the partial least squares approach to structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM).

The research shows that SMU has a strong positive impact on EOP, while it has no impact on start-ups' EO. Interestingly, the impact of SMU on EOP is stronger than the impact of EO on EOP.

The findings add new knowledge to the emerging research stream that focuses on SMU in the context of entrepreneurship and provides useful insights for both scholars and practitioners. In particular, the evidence suggests implications for stakeholders with regard to their firms' entrepreneurial activities. This research offers several possible avenues for future research.

Biobanks are collections of biological samples (e.g. tissue samples and body fluids) and their associated data intended for various approaches in medical research. The field of biobanking evolves rapidly as an interdisciplinary branch of research and requires educational efforts to provide skilled experts in Europe and beyond. New ways in research and research education play a pivotal role in the future of biobanking.

The increasing of requests and potential uses of biospecimens from biobanks necessitates an international and national intensified transfer of forward looking knowledge and know-how. In Austria, this could be realized by special trainings as well as a postgraduate education. Furthermore, the forward looking research and further development of infrastructure will play a pivotal role in biobanks in the future.

Few opportunities are available for specific education on biobanking in Europe. This could be remedied by the creation networks of ISO-certified biobanks and co-operation with interested parties.

The current research focuses on the situation of information transfer in the field of biobanking in Europe. A wider investigation in better harmonization and standardization of methods in other parts of the world would be beneficial.

The value of biomolecular resources such as biobanks has previously been discussed in detail, e.g. by the Time magazine. The paper focuses on demonstrating the importance for education in the future of biobanking in general.