Servitization within manufacturing:exploring the provision of advanced services and their impact on vertical integration

Purpose ��� The debate about services-led competitive strategies continues to grow, with much interest emerging around the differing practices between production and servitized operations. The purpose of this paper is to contribute to this discussion by investigating the vertical integration practice (in particular the micro-vertical integration, otherwise known as the supply chain position) of manufacturers who are successful in their adoption of servitization. Design/methodology/approach ��� To achieve this the authors have investigated a cross-section of four companies which are successfully delivering advanced services coupled to their products. Findings ��� Manufacturers who have embraced the servitization trend tend to retain capabilities in design and production, and do so because this benefits their speed, effectiveness and costs of supporting assets on advanced services contracts. Research limitations/implications ��� These are preliminary findings from a longer term research programme. Practical implications ��� Through this research note the authors seek to simultaneously contribute to the debate in the research community and offer guidance to practitioners exploring the consequences of servitization. Originality/value ��� Successful servitization demands that manufacturers adopt new and alternative practices and technologies to those traditionally associated with production operations. A prevailing challenge is to understand these differences and their underpinning rationale. Therefore, in this research note, the authors report on the practices of four case companies, explore the rationale underpinning these, and propose an hypothesis for the impact on vertical integration of successful servitization.

Market-driven strategies and the design of flexible production systems: evidence from the electronics industry

Links the concept of market-driven business strategies with the design of production systems. It draws upon the case of a firm which, during the last decade, changed its strategy from being ���technology led��� to ���market driven���. The research, based on interdisciplinary fieldwork involving long-term participant observation, investigated the factors which contribute to the successful design and implementation of flexible production systems in electronics assembly. These investigations were conducted in collaboration with a major computer manufacturer, with other electronics firms being studied for comparison. The research identified a number of strategies and actions seen as crucial to the development of efficient flexible production systems, namely: effective integration of subsystems, development of appropriate controls and performance measures, compatibility between production system design and organization structure, and the development of a climate conducive to organizational change. Overall, the analysis suggests that in the electronics industry there exists an extremely high degree of environmental complexity and turbulence. This serves to shape the strategic, technical and social structures that are developed to match this complexity, examples of which are niche marketing, flexible manufacturing and employee harmonization.

Leadership in high-value services for manufacturers:advanced services and their impact on vertical integration

The debate about services-led competitive strategies continues to grow with much interest emerging around the differing practices between production and servitised operations. This paper contributes to this discussion byinvestigating the vertical integration practice (in particular the micro-vertical integration otherwise known as the supply chain position)of manufacturers who are successful in their adoption of servitization.Although these are preliminary findings from a longer-term research programme, through this technical note we seek to simultaneously contribute to the debate in the research community and offer guidance to practitioners exploring the consequences of servitization. Keyword: Servitization, Product-Service Systems, Through-life Services.

European Union development:challenges and strategies

The publication represents a multi-dimensional and multi-faced, in depth assessment of the most significant determinants of the EU development as a political, economic and legal entity, in its format emerging from the Lisbon Treaty. The book represents an important contribution to our understanding of the most profound issues in the recent process of EU integration, including the issue of maintaining its cohesion and coherence under the stress of global challanges faced also by the European Union. Autohors formulated worthwhile conclusions of high value not only for academics but also for political decision-makers, which gives the book same competitive edge over its more theoretical and, hence, less practice-oriented, knack. The arumentation presented in the book would not be left without a reaction of the academic and/or professional circles. I take it almost for granted that the overall setting of the argumentation presented in it, as well as specific points made in its various chapters would find their adequate resonance in a high profile discussion likely to emerge after the book would have been published.

The Greater London Authority:problems of strategy integration

The Act that established the Greater London Authority (GLA) incorporated many of New Labour's aspirations for modern governance. Among those aspirations was the notion of policy integration, or 'joining up'. The Mayor of Greater London was required to develop a number of strategies, broadly in the planning and environmental policy domains, and to ensure that those strategies meshed into a coherent overall strategy for promoting London's economic, social and environmental well-being. How would this work in practice, given the need for coordination between the GLA and a number of related functional bodies, and given the political imperative for the GLA to make an impact quickly? Through our analysis of the strategy development and integration efforts of the GLA in its first nine months, we have gleaned new insights into the highly complex and difficult process of policy integration. We argue that the high aspirations of the Act for policy integration have not been met, policy integration instead being narrowly interpreted as the coordination of strategies to the Mayor's political agenda. Finally,we reflect on the likelihood of the GLA, as currently constituted, evolving to meet the functional requirement of policy integration.

Effects of academic integration on the persistence and achievement of under-prepared college students

The purpose of this dissertation was to examine the effect of academic integration, defined in terms of instructor/student contact, on the persistence of under-prepared college students and the achievement of those who persist. The overall design of this study compared instructor-initiated contact with conventional contact. The dependent variables were persistence, achievement, motivation and anxiety. Information was collected by administering the College-Level Mathematics Test (CLM), the Perceived Affective Contact Questionnaire (PAC), the expectancy and anxiety components of the Motivated Strategies for Learning Questionnaire (MSLQ), a departmental final examination, and by accessing university records. The sample consisted of 130 college algebra students at a large, public university with a Hispanic majority. The main analyses consisted of a 2 x 2 x 2 ANOVA (treatment by ethnicity by gender) to test for differences in achievement, t-tests to compare motivation, anxiety and perceived affective contact scores for the two groups, Chi-square tests to assess differences in persistence, and Pearson Product-Moment Correlation to determine the relationship between pretest scores and achievement variables. Results indicated that neither instructor-initiated contact, gender nor ethnicity is related to persistence, motivation or anxiety. A significant disordinal interaction of treatment and ethnicity was observed, with Hispanic experimental students scoring significantly higher on a test of algebra achievement than Hispanic control students. ^ Academic integration, defined in terms of instructor/student contact, has a positive influence on the achievement of Hispanic students. This may imply their positive responsiveness to the relational aspect of contact due to traditional cultural values of interdependence, acquiescence to authority and physical closeness. Such interactive feedback is a means by which students with these values are recognized as members of the university academic community, prompting increased academic effort. Training in contact initiation to promote academic integration is implied, by the results of this study, for instructors dealing with first year students, especially instructors at institutions accommodating instructional methods to the needs of diverse groups. ^

The relationship between scaffolding metacognitive strategies identified through dialogue journals and second graders' reading comprehension, science achievement, and metacognition using expository text

Poor informational reading and writing skills in early grades and the need to provide students more experience with informational text have been identified by research as areas of concern. Wilkinson and Son (2011) support future research in dialogic approaches to investigate the impact dialogic teaching has on comprehension. This study (N = 39) examined the gains in reading comprehension, science achievement, and metacognitive functioning of individual second grade students interacting with instructors using dialogue journals alongside their textbook. The 38 week study consisted of two instructional phases, and three assessment points. After a period of oral metacognitive strategies, one class formed the treatment group (n=17), consisting of two teachers following the co-teaching method, and two classes formed the comparison group ( n=22). The dialogue journal intervention for the treatment group embraced the transactional theory of instruction through the use of dialogic interaction between teachers and students. Students took notes on the assigned lesson after an oral discussion. Teachers responded to students' entries with scaffolding using reading strategies (prior knowledge, skim, slow down, mental integration, and diagrams) modeled after Schraw's (1998) strategy evaluation matrix, to enhance students' comprehension. The comparison group utilized text-based, teacher-led whole group discussion. Data were collected using different measures: (a) Florida Assessments for Instruction in Reading (FAIR) Broad Diagnostic Inventory; (b) Scott Foresman end of chapter tests; (c) Metacomprehension Strategy Index (Schmitt, 1990); and (d) researcher-made metacognitive scaffolding rubric. Statistical analyses were performed using paired sample t-tests, regression analysis of covariance, and two way analysis of covariance. Findings from the study revealed that experimental participants performed significantly better on the linear combination of reading comprehension, science achievement, and metacognitive function, than their comparison group counterparts while controlling for pretest scores. Overall, results from the study established that teacher scaffolding using metacognitive strategies can potentially develop students' reading comprehension, science achievement, and metacognitive awareness. This suggests that early childhood students gain from the integration of reading and writing when using authentic materials (science textbooks) in science classrooms. A replication of this study with more students across more schools, and different grade levels would improve the generalizability of these results.

The effects of trained teachers' integration of dialogic reading discourse on Hispanic English Language Learners' literacy skills in kindergarten

This quasi-experimental Analysis of Covariance (ANCOVA) study explored whether the vocabulary and reading comprehension mean scores of Hispanic Kindergarten ELs whose teachers were trained to utilize Dialogic Reading (DR) discourse were higher than the mean scores of Hispanic ELs in kindergarten whose teachers were not trained to utilize DR discourse strategies. Sixty-three self-identified Hispanic, English Language Kindergarten students and four teachers participated in the study. The teachers were randomly assigned to either the experimental group (DR trained) or control group by drawing names from a hat. Student assignment to experimental versus comparison group was based on the teacher's assignment to either the experimental or comparison group. Thirty-one were assigned to the control group and 32 to the experimental group. The teachers were instructed to read the story to a group of six students (maximum) at a time, utilizing the DR discourse strategies they had been trained to implement. Subjects were read a story each week during the 8-week duration of the study. Teachers in the experimental group collaboratively selected 10 words each week from the Read Together Talk Together (RTTT) instructional stories that were utilized for vocabulary instruction. A test of homogeneity was conducted to evaluate whether the variance among the dependent variables was the same across the groups. An Analyses of Covariance (ANCOVA) was applied to analyze students' vocabulary and comprehension mean scores in the experimental group and the comparison group. The results of the study demonstrated a significant increase in the vocabulary and reading comprehension mean scores for the students whose teachers had been trained in DR discourse strategies. When comparing the two groups, the results revealed a statistically significant difference (p < 0.05). In conclusion, this study was conducted to explore how DR discourse may be an effective technique to teach literacy skills. The findings of this study showed that vocabulary knowledge and reading comprehension of Hispanic ELs were positively affected by the teachers' inclusion of dialogue during storybook reading. Its outcomes accentuated the need for teachers to provide assistance to ELs as they develop vocabulary knowledge and reading comprehension skills.

Effects of academic integration on the persistence and achievement of under-prepared college students

The purpose of this dissertation was to examine the effect of academic integration, defined in terms of instructor/student contact, on the persistence of under-prepared college students and the achievement of those who persist. The overall design of this study compared instructor-initiated contact with conventional contact. The dependent variables were persistence, achievement, motivation and anxiety. Information was collected by administering the College-Level Mathematics Test (CLM), the Perceived Affective Contact Questionnaire (PAC), the expectancy and anxiety components of the Motivated Strategies for Learning Questionnaire (MSLQ), a departmental final examination, and by accessing university records. The sample consisted of 130 college algebra students at a large, public university with a Hispanic majority. The main analyses consisted of a 2x2x2 ANOVA (treatment by ethnicity by gender) to test for differences in achievement, t-tests to compare motivation, anxiety and perceived affective contact scores for the two groups, Chi-square tests to assess differences in persistence, and Pearson Product-Moment Correlation to determine the relationship between pretest scores and achievement variables. Results indicated that neither instructor-initiated contact, gender nor ethnicity is related to persistence, motivation or anxiety. A significant disordinal interaction of treatment and ethnicity was observed, with Hispanic experimental students scoring significantly higher on a test of algebra achievement than Hispanic control students. Academic integration, defined in terms of instructor/student contact, has a positive influence on the achievement of Hispanic students. This may imply their positive responsiveness to the relational aspect of contact due to traditional cultural values of interdependence, acquiescence to authority and physical closeness. Such interactive feedback is a means by which students with these values are recognized as members of the university academic community, prompting increased academic effort. Training in contact initiation to promote academic integration is implied, by the results of this study, for instructors dealing with first year students, especially instructors at institutions accommodating instructional methods to the needs of diverse groups.

State Political Parties in American Politics: Innovation and Integration in the Party System

<p>What role do state party organizations play in twenty-first century American politics? What is the nature of the relationship between the state and national party organizations in contemporary elections? These questions frame the three studies presented in this dissertation. More specifically, I examine the organizational development of the state party organizations and the strategic interactions and connections between the state and national party organizations in contemporary elections. </p><p>In the first empirical chapter, I argue that the Internet Age represents a significant transitional period for state party organizations. Using data collected from surveys of state party leaders, this chapter reevaluates and updates existing theories of party organizational strength and demonstrates the importance of new indicators of party technological capacity to our understanding of party organizational development in the early twenty-first century. In the second chapter, I ask whether the national parties utilize different strategies in deciding how to allocate resources to state parties through fund transfers and through the 50-state-strategy party-building programs that both the Democratic and Republican National Committees advertised during the 2010 elections. Analyzing data collected from my 2011 state party survey and party-fund-transfer data collected from the Federal Election Commission, I find that the national parties considered a combination of state and national electoral concerns in directing assistance to the state parties through their 50-state strategies, as opposed to the strict battleground-state strategy that explains party fund transfers. In my last chapter, I examine the relationships between platforms issued by Democratic and Republican state and national parties and the strategic considerations that explain why state platforms vary in their degree of similarity to the national platform. I analyze an extensive platform dataset, using cluster analysis and document similarity measures to compare platform content across the 1952 to 2014 period. The analysis shows that, as a group, Democratic and Republican state platforms exhibit greater intra-party homogeneity and inter-party heterogeneity starting in the early 1990s, and state-national platform similarity is higher in states that are key players in presidential elections, among other factors. Together, these three studies demonstrate the significance of the state party organizations and the state-national party partnership in contemporary politics.</p>

Perspectives of Teachers Regarding the Integration of Mathematics and Science at the Secondary School Level

The integration of mathematics and science in secondary schools in the 21st century continues to be an important topic of practice and research. The purpose of my research study, which builds on studies by Frykholm and Glasson (2005) and Berlin and White (2010), is to explore the potential constraints and benefits of integrating mathematics and science in Ontario secondary schools based on the perspectives of in-service and pre-service teachers with various math and/or science backgrounds. A qualitative and quantitative research design with an exploratory approach was used. The qualitative data was collected from a sample of 12 in-service teachers with various math and/or science backgrounds recruited from two school boards in Eastern Ontario. The quantitative and some qualitative data was collected from a sample of 81 pre-service teachers from the Queen���s University Bachelor of Education (B.Ed) program. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with the in-service teachers while a survey and a focus group was conducted with the pre-service teachers. Once the data was collected, the qualitative data were abductively analyzed. For the quantitative data, descriptive and inferential statistics (one-way ANOVAs and Pearson Chi Square analyses) were calculated to examine perspectives of teachers regardless of teaching background and to compare groups of teachers based on teaching background. The findings of this study suggest that in-service and pre-service teachers have a positive attitude towards the integration of math and science and view it as valuable to student learning and success. The pre-service teachers viewed the integration as easy and did not express concerns to this integration. On the other hand, the in-service teachers highlighted concerns and challenges such as resources, scheduling, and time constraints. My results illustrate when teachers perceive it is valuable to integrate math and science and which aspects of the classroom benefit best from the integration. Furthermore, the results highlight barriers and possible solutions to better the integration of math and science. In addition to the benefits and constraints of integration, my results illustrate why some teachers may opt out of integrating math and science and the different strategies teachers have incorporated to integrate math and science in their classroom.

Biofuels and high value added products from the yeast Rhodosporidium toruloides NCYC 921: Strategies towards a true cost-effective and environmentally sustainable integrated multiproduct driven biorefinery [Poster]

Single-cell oils (SCO) have been considered a promising source of 3rd generation biofuels mainly in the final form of biodiesel. However, its high production costs have been a barrier towards the commercialization of this commodity. The fast growing yeast Rhodosporidium toruloides NCYC 921 has been widely reported as a potential SCO producing yeast. In addition to its well-known high lipid content (that can be converted into biodiesel), is rich in high value added products such as carotenoids with commercial interest. The process design and integration may contribute to reduce the overall cost of biofuels and carotenoid production and is a mandatory step towards their commercialization. The present work addresses the biomass disruption, extraction, fractionation and recovery of products with special emphasis on high added valued carotenoids (beta-carotene, torulene, torularhodin) and fatty acids directed to biodiesel. The chemical structure of torularhodin with a terminal carboxylic group imposes an additional extra challenge in what concern its separation from fatty acids. The proposed feedstock is fresh biomass pellet obtained directly by centrifugation from a 5L fed-batch fermentation culture broth. The use of a wet instead of lyophilised biomass feedstock is a way to decrease processing energy costs and reduce downstream processing time. These results will contribute for a detailed process design. Gathered data will be of crucial importance for a further study on Life-Cycle Assessment (LCA).

Geothermal district heating networks: modelling novel operational strategies incorporating heat storage

The value of integrating a heat storage into a geothermal district heating system has been investigated. The behaviour of the system under a novel operational strategy has been simulated focusing on the energetic, economic and environmental effects of the new strategy of incorporation of the heat storage within the system. A typical geothermal district heating system consists of several production wells, a system of pipelines for the transportation of the hot water to end-users, one or more re-injection wells and peak-up devices (usually fossil-fuel boilers). Traditionally in these systems, the production wells change their production rate throughout the day according to heat demand, and if their maximum capacity is exceeded the peak-up devices are used to meet the balance of the heat demand. In this study, it is proposed to maintain a constant geothermal production and add heat storage into the network. Subsequently, hot water will be stored when heat demand is lower than the production and the stored hot water will be released into the system to cover the peak demands (or part of these). It is not intended to totally phase-out the peak-up devices, but to decrease their use, as these will often be installed anyway for back-up purposes. Both the integration of a heat storage in such a system as well as the novel operational strategy are the main novelties of this thesis. A robust algorithm for the sizing of these systems has been developed. The main inputs are the geothermal production data, the heat demand data throughout one year or more and the topology of the installation. The outputs are the sizing of the whole system, including the necessary number of production wells, the size of the heat storage and the dimensions of the pipelines amongst others. The results provide several useful insights into the initial design considerations for these systems, emphasizing particularly the importance of heat losses. Simulations are carried out for three different cases of sizing of the installation (small, medium and large) to examine the influence of system scale. In the second phase of work, two algorithms are developed which study in detail the operation of the installation throughout a random day and a whole year, respectively. The first algorithm can be a potentially powerful tool for the operators of the installation, who can know a priori how to operate the installation on a random day given the heat demand. The second algorithm is used to obtain the amount of electricity used by the pumps as well as the amount of fuel used by the peak-up boilers over a whole year. These comprise the main operational costs of the installation and are among the main inputs of the third part of the study. In the third part of the study, an integrated energetic, economic and environmental analysis of the studied installation is carried out together with a comparison with the traditional case. The results show that by implementing heat storage under the novel operational strategy, heat is generated more cheaply as all the financial indices improve, more geothermal energy is utilised and less fuel is used in the peak-up boilers, with subsequent environmental benefits, when compared to the traditional case. Furthermore, it is shown that the most attractive case of sizing is the large one, although the addition of the heat storage most greatly impacts the medium case of sizing. In other words, the geothermal component of the installation should be sized as large as possible. This analysis indicates that the proposed solution is beneficial from energetic, economic, and environmental perspectives. Therefore, it can be stated that the aim of this study is achieved in its full potential. Furthermore, the new models for the sizing, operation and economic/energetic/environmental analyses of these kind of systems can be used with few adaptations for real cases, making the practical applicability of this study evident. Having this study as a starting point, further work could include the integration of these systems with end-user demands, further analysis of component parts of the installation (such as the heat exchangers) and the integration of a heat pump to maximise utilisation of geothermal energy.

Landscape strategies in Bronze Age Southwestern Cyprus (2500-1100 B.C.)

This thesis concerns the analysis of the socio-economic transformation of communities in Bronze Age southwestern Cyprus. Through the adoption of a dialectical perspective of analysis, individuals and environment are considered part of the same unity: they are cooperating agents in shaping society and culture. The Bronze Age is a period of intense transformation in the organization of local communities, made of a continuous renegotiation of the socio-economic roles and interactions. The archaeological record from this portion of the island allows one to go beyond the investigation of the complex and articulated transition from the EBA-MBA agro-pastoral and self-sufficient communities to the LBA centralized and trade-oriented urban-centres. Through a shifting of analytical scales, the emerging picture suggests major transformations in the individual-community-territory dialectical relations. A profound change in the materials conditions of social life, as well as in the superstructural realm, was particularly entailed by the dissolution of the relation to the earth, due to the emergence of new forms of land exploitation/ownership and to the shift of the settlement pattern in previously unknown areas. One of the key points of this thesis is the methodological challenge of working with legacy survey data as I re-analysed a diverse archaeological legacy, which is the result of more than fifty years of survey projects, rescue and research-oriented excavations, as well as casual discoveries. Source critique and data evaluation are essential requirements in an integrative and cross-disciplinary regional perspective, in the comprehensive processing of heterogeneous archaeological and environmental datasets. Through the estimation of data precision and certainty, I developed an effective - but simple - method to critically evaluate existing datasets and to inter-correlate them without losing their original complexity. This powerful method for data integration can be applied to similar datasets belonging to other regions and other periods as it originates from the evaluation of larger methodological and theoretical issues that are not limited to my spatial and temporal focus. As I argue in this thesis, diverse archaeological legacies can be efficiently re-analysed through an integrative and regional methodology. The adoption of a regional scale of analysis can provide an excellent perspective on the complexity of transformations in ancient societies, thus creating a fundamental bridge between the local stories and grand landscape narratives.

Bidding and Optimization Strategies for Wind-PV Systems in Electricity Markets

The variability in non-dispatchable power generation raises important challenges to the integration of renewable energy sources into the electricity power grid. This paper provides the coordinated trading of wind and photovoltaic energy to mitigate risks due to the wind and solar power variability, electricity prices, and financial penalties arising out the generation shortfall and surplus. The problem of wind-photovoltaic coordinated trading is formulated as a linear programming problem. The goal is to obtain the optimal bidding strategy that maximizes the total profit. The wind-photovoltaic coordinated operation is modeled and compared with the uncoordinated operation. A comparison of the models and relevant conclusions are drawn from an illustrative case study of the Iberian day-ahead electricity market.