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Lean and Six Sigma are the two most powerful methodologies for process improvement. They have been widely employed in manufacturing and healthcare industries to achieve substantial cost savings and quality improvement. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the implementation of Lean and Six Sigma for improving logistics operations.

A survey was conducted among 410 companies registered under the Singapore Logistics Association and returned 32 usable responses. χ²-tests were used to identify factors affecting the implementation of Lean and Six Sigma.

It was found that 37.5 per cent of respondents had implemented Lean and the majority of them had implemented Six Sigma together. All implementing companies reported varying degrees of cost savings and productivity improvements. Large logistics companies are more likely to implement Lean and Six Sigma. Companies with a higher service standard are more likely to implement Six Sigma.

The survey was limited to Singapore. Future studies should explore a broader geographical coverage and improve the response rate.

Lean and Six Sigma are applicable for improving logistics operations. Senior management must be committed to support an implementation. Effective training and communications are required for overcoming resistance to change and helping employees to understand improvement methodologies and initiatives.

This research is the very first survey study of Lean and Six Sigma in the logistics industry. It reveals similarities and differences in comparison with the implementation of these methodologies in the manufacturing industry. The findings offer valuable insights for improving logistics operations.

Entrepreneurial mentoring is widely regarded as an effective way to train novice entrepreneurs all over the world. However, the effectiveness of this approach and the determinants are not well understood under country-specific conditions. The purpose of this paper is to build a conceptual framework and use empirical analysis to explore the mentoring effect and its determinants, especially in the Chinese context.

The paper uses data from 172 young entrepreneurs which had been supported by Youth Business China, Mianyang Office since 2008. The factor analysis and structural equation model have been applied to analyze the data to investigate the quantitative relationship and path of the mentoring effect of entrepreneurship with mentor’s factors, young entrepreneurs (mentees’s factors) and their interrelationship.

The assessment scores of the entrepreneurship mentoring effect both in experience level and effectiveness level are relatively high, in the satisfactory range. The entrepreneurship mentoring effect, measured by the experience and the performance level, is determined by the coupling interaction of the mentor, the mentee and their interactive relationship. Among them, the mentor’s characteristic, the most important being his/her intention, has the biggest effect on the mentoring effect, significantly bigger than the mentor’s quality and skill. However, the mentor’s intention is not strong as expected. The interactive relationship between the mentor and the mentee also has a significant positive effect on entrepreneurial mentoring effect. The study also discovered the mentee factors have comparatively smaller effect on both the interactive relationship and the mentoring effect. Furthermore, it is found that the absorptive capability and learning intention of the young entrepreneur are relatively weak.

The construction of the index system of this research reflects the overall characteristics of the research objects and their static relationships. Therefore, the dynamic change of the mentoring relationship in different phases of the mentorship has not been taken into account. Also, self-serving bias may exist as this research measures the mentoring effect by the feedback on the mentor’s perception, using surveys completed by the mentees to measure both the mentee’s traits and the mentor’s qualities.

This study provides guidance on how entrepreneurship could be promoted and on how educational institutions in China can make the mentoring process a positive and effective system in order to enhance the mentoring effect.

The empirical conclusions of the present study can be applied to other business incubator, entrepreneurship education institutions and for the improvement and promotion of entrepreneurial mentoring system in China.

This paper probes into the mentoring system in the context of China from a new perspective and proposes an original conceptual model to study the entrepreneurship mentoring effect and its determinant.

The purpose of this paper is to propose a pre-defined performance robust control method for pre-assembly configuration establishment of in-space assembly missions, and collision avoidance is considered during the configuration establishment process.

First, six-degrees-of-freedom error kinematic and dynamic models of relative translational and rotational motion between transportation systems are developed. Second, the prescribed transient-state performance bounds of tracking errors are designed. In addition, based on the backstepping, combining the pre-defined performance control method with a robust control method, a pre-defined performance robust controller is designed.

By designing prescribed transient-state performance bounds of tracking errors to guarantee that there is no overshoot, collision-avoidance can be achieved. Combining the pre-defined performance control method with a robust control method, robustness to disturbance is guaranteed.

This paper proposed a pre-defined performance robust control method. Simulation results demonstrate that the proposed controller can achieve a pre-assembly configuration establishment with collision avoidance in the existence of external disturbances.

The purpose of this paper is to propose an adaptive robust controller for coupled attitude and orbit control of rigid spacecraft based on dual quaternion in the presence of external disturbances and model uncertainties.

First, based on dual quaternion, a theoretical model of the relative motion for rigid spacecraft is introduced. Then, an adaptive robust controller which can realize coordinated control of attitude and orbit is designed in the existence of external disturbances and model uncertainties.

This paper takes advantage of the Lyapunov function which can guarantee the asymptotic stabilization of the whole system in the existence of parameters uncertainties. Simulation results show that the proposed controller is feasible and effective.

This paper proposes a coupled attitude and orbit adaptive robust controller based on dual quaternion. Simulation results demonstrate that the proposed controller can achieve higher control performance in the presence of parameters uncertainties.

This account demonstrates the key challenges faced in producing engaging educational content for information and communication technologies (ICT) deployed in rural India. The ‘Stills in Sync’ (SIS) project aims to enhance literacy through the revival and proliferation of popular regional folksongs with social awareness themes in rural India. This product entails the use of the Same Language Subtitling (SLS) karaoke feature that won the Worldbank Development Marketplace award in 2002 and the ‘Tech Laureate’ honor from the Technology Museum of Innovation in 2003. This case study highlights the struggles faced in the production process as we sought to negotiate localism with scalability. The paper is meant to stimulate discussion and further research on the process of digitalizing cultural and educational content in muliple languages for literacy gains and empowerment. I attempt to give three‐dimensionality to current buzzwords in education content creation using ICT: localism, relevance and engagement.

Gives an in depth view of the strategies pursued by the world’s leading chief executive officers in an attempt to provide guidance to new chief executives of today. Considers the marketing strategies employed, together with the organizational structures used and looks at the universal concepts that can be applied to any product. Uses anecdotal evidence to formulate a number of theories which can be used to compare your company with the best in the world. Presents initial survival strategies and then looks at ways companies can broaden their boundaries through manipulation and choice. Covers a huge variety of case studies and examples together with a substantial question and answer section.

Man has been seeking an ideal existence for a very long time. In this existence, justice, love, and peace are no longer words, but actual experiences. How ever, with the American preemptive invasion and occupation of Afghanistan and Iraq and the subsequent prisoner abuse, such an existence seems to be farther and farther away from reality. The purpose of this work is to stop this dangerous trend by promoting justice, love, and peace through a change of the paradigm that is inconsistent with justice, love, and peace. The strong paradigm that created the strong nation like the U.S. and the strong man like George W. Bush have been the culprit, rather than the contributor, of the above three universal ideals. Thus, rather than justice, love, and peace, the strong paradigm resulted in in justice, hatred, and violence. In order to remove these three and related evils, what the world needs in the beginning of the third millenium is the weak paradigm. Through the acceptance of the latter paradigm, the golden mean or middle paradigm can be formulated, which is a synergy of the weak and the strong paradigm. In order to understand properly the meaning of these paradigms, however, some digression appears necessary.

The purpose of this study was to examine the relationship between leisure involvement (LI), conspicuous sport consumption and subjective well-being (SW) for two luxury leisure activities: golf and skiing.

The authors collected data from Guangdong Province (golf, n = 342) and Jilin Province (skiing, n = 310) and examined the proposed model using structural equation modeling (SEM) and tested the mediating effect of conspicuous sport consumption using bootstrapping method.

The findings show that the proposed model explained the relationships among LI, conspicuous sport consumption and SW. Furthermore, the findings suggest that LI and conspicuous consumption (CC) can elevate sport participants' perception of SW, enriching leisure-class theory.

The authors’ findings contribute to the domain of CC in sport participant and leisure research and provide significant implications for the sport tourism marketers.

This research aims to exhibit the impacts of vocal music vs instrumental music on ad-recall from the perspectives of attention and elaboration.

A 2 music-product congruence (congruence vs incongruence) × 2 music lyrics (lyrics vs no lyrics) between-subject measures design is used. 180 management students participated in the study. A 2 × 2 between-subjects ANOVA is used to test the hypotheses.

Results showed that the instrumental rendition of an ad-song prompted higher ad-recall over the vocal variant. The instrumental rendition provoked the subjects to create the verses or lyrics in their minds, prompting superior recall. Further, it was found that a music-product congruent ad resulted into higher ad-recall than an incongruent ad. Moreover, for a congruent ad condition, the instrumental version of ad-song resulted into higher ad-recall than the vocal version of ad-song. On the other hand, for an incongruent ad condition, the instrumental version as well as the vocal version of ad-song resulted into same level of ad-recall.

The study offers important implications for marketers and advertisers in terms of effective ad-designing and execution considering lyrics and music-product congruence as important factors in the context of radio advertising.

Since very little research has been done focusing on the combined effect of music lyrics and music-product congruence relationship on ad-recall from attention and elaboration perspectives, this paper scores as a pioneering study of its kind in India.

There is significant amount of literature tackling different issues related to the port industry. The present chapter focuses on a single business unit of seaports aiming at the documentation of works related to container terminals.

An effort to review, collect and present the majority of the works present in the last 30 years, between 1980 and 2010, has been made in order to picture the problems dealt and methods used by the authors in the specific research field. To facilitate the reader, studies have been grouped under five categories of addressed problems (productivity and competitiveness, yard and equipment utilization, equipment scheduling, berth planning, loading/unloading) and four modelling methodologies (mathematics and operations research, management and economics, simulation, stochastic modelling).

The analysis shows that most works focus on productivity and competitiveness issues followed by yard and equipment utilisation and equipment scheduling. In reference to the methodologies used managerial and economic approaches lead, followed by mathematics and operations research.

In reference to future research, two fields have been identified where there is scope of significant contribution by the academic community: container terminal security and container terminal supply chain integration.

The present chapter provides the framework for researchers in the field of port container terminals to picture the so far works in this research area and enables the identification of gaps at both research question and methodology level for further research.