Design of the optimal feeding policy in an assembly system

This paper describes an innovative and integrated approach to component management optimization within a production/assembly system. In a mixed-models assembly process the handling of parts and components for each work station represents a substantial variable that can greatly affect job duration and efficiency. This paper is strictly related to Assembly to Order/Manufacturing to Order (ATO and MTO) systems, where lead time has to be very short and flexibility is at its maximum level. In Assembly to Order (ATO) or Make to Order (MTO) systems, the production is increasingly getting more customized in response to the demand, thanks to the progresses reached in both manufacturing and information technologies. It is becoming increasingly possible to assemble or make products specifically in response to the requests of either end customers or retailers. As a consequence of such customization, the design of the whole system must take into direct account several elements: parts warehouses location, feeding policies and feeding systems. In some cases the collection of parts and components required picking activities, in other the movement of entire units load.In several instances experts have analyzed the problems about material centralization/decentralization, storage policies and assembly feeding problem in different and independent ways, while the problem needs an integrated approach. While many researches regarding components allocation problems in ATO and MTO systems, did not consider feeding policies, material picking, packing activities and vehicles optimization, this paper cover focuses on filling such gap using an integrated framework that considers both aspects of the problem: the centralization/decentralization of components in order to minimize the total storage costs and the right feeding policies.Feeding problems in assembly lines are some of the most important aspects to consider during the analysis and design of an assembly system, to allow the maximization of efficiency and flexibility. To reach such goals, a multi-factorial analysis has been carried out during this experiment and will validate the introduced framework. An industrial application of the introduced framework is illustrated to explain its real significant production implication.     

Wealth effects, the Taylor rule and the liquidity trap

This paper analyzes the dynamic properties of the Taylor rule with the zero lower bound on the nominal interest rate in an optimizing monetary model with overlapping generations à la Yaari–Blanchard–Weil. The main result is that the presence of wealth effects is not sufficient to rule out the possibility of infinite equilibrium paths with decelerating inflation. In particular, in the presence of wealth effects, the occurrence of liquidity traps is not avoided when the central bank implements a Taylor-type interest-rate feedback rule.     

Global Standards and Ethical Stock Indexes: The Case of the Dow Jones Sustainability Stoxx Index

The increased scrutiny of investors regarding the non-financial aspects of corporate performance has placed portfolio managers in the position of having to weigh the benefits of ‘holding the market’ against the cost of having positions in companies that are subsequently found to have questionable business practices. The availability of stock indexes based on sustainability screening makes increasingly viable for institutional investors the transition to a portfolio based on a Socially Responsible Investment (SRI) benchmark at relatively low cost. The increasing share of socially responsible investments may play a role in providing incentives towards a continuous upgrading of sustainability standards to the extent that their performance is not systematically inferior to that of the other funds. This article examines whether these incentives have been so far detectable with particular reference to the Dow Jones Sustainability Stoxx Index (DJSSI) that focuses on the European corporations with the highest CSR scores among those included in the Dow Jones Stoxx 600 Index. The aim of the article is twofold. First, we analyse the performance of the DJSSI over the period 2001–2006 compared to that of the Surrogate Complementary Index (SCI), a new benchmark that includes only the components of the DJ Stoxx 600 that do not belong to the ethical index to evaluate more correctly the size of possible divergent performances. Second, we perform an event study on the same data set to analyse whether the stock market evaluation reacts to the inclusion (deletion) in the DJSSI. In both cases, the results suggest that the evaluation of the CSR performance of a firm is a significant criterion for asset allocation activities.     

Productivity and profitability analysis of large Italian companies: 1998–2002

The determinants of profitability and productivity for large Italian companies operating in industrial sectors are investigated in this paper. Data were taken from one of the most important Italian business surveys, and furthermore two cross-section surveys for the years 1998 and 2002 are compared. The results highlight the importance of financial management and organisational complexity in order to explain the development of profitability and productivity ranking during 1998–2002. This paper identifies the important enterprise behaviour in terms of the variables considered. Large Italian companies remain competitive in the more traditional sectors (e.g. mechanics, textiles, etc.). In general, the Italian enterprises are not dynamic enough to compete in the most technological and innovative sectors. Moreover, there is the necessity for greater investments in order to foster the national economy.

Assessing the maturity of crowdventuring for corporate entrepreneurship

Corporate entrepreneurship is a process of strategic renewal and development of an existing business through the creation of new products, services, and activities, as well as new competitive postures and independent ventures. The performance of this process, which leverages the creativity and the initiative spirit of employees and managers, thus relies on the capacity of the organization to create favorable conditions for the emergence of such latent entrepreneurial potential. The development of participatory innovation models and collective intelligence offers new insights for conducting research on factors enabling corporate entrepreneurship. In particular, the internal company ‘crowd’ can be investigated with the purpose of studying the conditions under which the corporate entrepreneurship process can be successfully nurtured and conducted. In such view, this article moves from an extended review of corporate entrepreneurship and organizational innovation literature to define the concept of crowdventuring and to present an assessment tool aimed at evaluating the maturity of the crowdventuring process within an organization. The tool, which captures both individual and organization-related factors, is also used for an illustrative application into a multinational IT company. Some implications are drawn at the theory and practitioner levels.     

The cyclically adjusted budget balance in EU fiscal policymaking

The cyclically adjusted budget balance (CAB) plays a key role in the EU fiscal surveillance framework. It started off in a supporting role in the shadow of the headline deficit and, before long, turned into the linchpin of the rules of the Stability and Growth Pact. The steep ascent was driven by high expectations which, with the passing of time, were only partly met. The everyday practice of the EU fiscal surveillance rapidly revealed a number of caveats of the CAB which, at times, hampered the effectiveness of fiscal surveillance. This paper provides a comprehensive review of the changing fortunes of the CAB in the EU fiscal surveillance framework. It portrays its main shortcomings and the way they are dealt with in practice.     

The Evaluation of University Departments. A Case Study for Firenze

Over the last two decades, the interest to assess the quality of university teaching and research has considerably grown. This paper presents a study concerning the evaluation of the departments of the University of Firenze using Data Envelopment Analysis. It shows several applications with different variables choices to assess the performance both in teaching and in research activities. The reliability of the preferred specification was verified with a heuristic experiment, using different variables and a different number of variables. Particular attention is given to the problem of data availability and quality (e.g. for research output assessment).     

Comparative Advantage, Observability, and the Optimal Tax Treatment of Families with Children

Children are special, not only to their own parents, but also for society at large. Even if society is not directly interested in children, intervention may still be justified for re-distributive reasons. The fact that children are not transferable, while income is, does in fact bias the first best in favour of households with a comparative advantage in raising children. Furthermore, visibility makes children a natural target of second-best policies (but it does not necessarily follow that family size should be subsidized, at least directly). If society is directly interested in children, maybe only because of an externality, that is an additional reason for interfering with parental decisions.     

Financial constraints on sport organizations’ cost efficiency: the impact of financial fair play on Italian soccer clubs

We analyze the effect of the introduction of stricter financial constraints on the trade-off between sporting and economic results. We apply a stochastic Cobb-Douglas production frontier model to a sample of Italian Serie A teams, i.e. first division, over the period 2005–2015 to evaluate the variation in soccer clubs’ cost efficiency following the application of the UEFA Financial Fair Play (FFP) principles in 2010. FFP imposes stricter financial regulation as a requirement for a club to be admitted to Union of European Football Associations (UEFA) tournaments. Firstly, we find that FFP does not improve the average efficiency of the Italian first division teams. Secondly, we show that FFP has contributed to leveling the playing field, reducing the gap in terms of efficiency between top teams and lower-tier teams.

Abbreviations: FFP: Financial Fair Play; UEFA: Union of European Football Associations; DEA: Data Envelopment Analysis; SFA: Stochastic Frontier Analysis