Business models for material efficiency services: Conceptualization and application

Despite the abundant research on material flows and the growing recognition of the need to dematerialize the economy, business enterprises are still not making the best possible use of the many opportunities for material efficiency improvements. This article proposes one possible solution: material efficiency services provided by outside suppliers. It also introduces a conceptual framework for the analysis of different business models for eco-efficient services and applies the framework to material efficiency services. Four business models are outlined and their feasibility is studied from an empirical vantage point. In contrast to much of the previous research, special emphasis is laid on the financial aspects. It appears that the most promising business models are ‘material efficiency as additional service’ and ‘material flow management service’. Depending on the business model, prominent material efficiency service providers differ from large companies that offer multiple products and/or services to smaller, specialized providers. Potential clients (users) typically lack the resources (expertise, management's time or initial funds) to conduct material efficiency improvements themselves. Customers are more likely to use material efficiency services that relate to support materials or side-streams rather than those that are at the core of production. Potential client organizations with a strategy of outsourcing support activities and with experience of outsourcing are more keen to use material efficiency services.     

A Markov–switching vector equilibrium correction model of the UK labour market

There is a wide literature on the dynamic adjustment of employment and its relationship with the business cycle. In this paper we present a statistical model that offers a congruent representation of part of the UK labour market since the mid 1960s. We use a cointegrated vector autoregressive Markov-switching model in which some parameters change according to the phase of the business cycle. Output, employment, labour supply and real earnings are found to have a common cyclical component. The long run dynamics are characterized by one cointegrating vector relating unemployment to trend-adjusted real wages and output. Despite there having been many changes affecting this sector of the UK economy, the Markov-switching vector-equilibrium-correction model with three regimes (representing recession, normal growth, and high growth) provides a good characterization of the sample data, and performs well relative to alternative linear and non-linear models. The results of an impulse-response analysis highlight the dangers of using VARs when the constancy of the estimated coefficients has not been established, and demonstrate the advantages of generating regime dependent responses. First Version Received: December 2000/Final Version Received: August 2001     

汽车市场订单管理流程实施

论文探讨了汽车厂商订单管理流程的具体实施,分析了订单管理对区域市场经营模式和经销商能力提升的促进。随后,论文详细研究了订单管理流程中最为重要的年采购目标管理流程、月采购计划流程和周采购计划流程。     

Linking performance drivers in production planning and inventory control to process choice

This study investigates how process choice relates to production planning and inventory control decisions. We empirically examine the validity of deductively derived patterns about these types of decisions. More importantly, we look for normative insights by exploring how production planning and inventory control decisions affect operations performance. Our findings show that production line and continuous flow plants use more of a level production strategy, and carry less raw material and work-in-process inventory. The performance drivers for these plants, through which the operations function excels, are effective utilization of equipment, reduced finished goods inventory, and reduced setup down time. To gain forward demand visibility and batching economies, job and batch shops rely much more on backlogs in their planning process. These plants use more of a production chase strategy and position inventory lower in the bills of materials. Four performance drivers for top-performing job and batch shops are to find ways that better anticipate customers' orders, have a more responsive chase strategy, carry less raw material or purchased inventory, and shorten production planning horizon, partly through less reliance on backlogs. It is intriguing that top-performing plants not only do the expected things, given their choice of process, but also excel in selected dimensions—some of which fit the profile normally associated with a different process choice. To monitor and continuously improve operations, evaluation ‘scorecards’ should pay particular attention to performance drivers, which change depending on the plant's process choice.     

The new logic of Japan's young generations

Through daily use of computer games and advanced cartoonized learning, the lower teen generation in Japan has developed an unprecedented ability for instantaneous contextual gestalt-based decision making and high-speed multidimensional simultaneous thinking. This is a radical departure from the sequential logic of older generations. This is a conclusion we can reach after examining the voluminous data available from a new research institute in Japan. The data also indicate that the young adult generation has developed unique strategies of life, which are fascinating but difficult to understand in the framework of our traditional logic but make sense as a transition to the logic of the lower teen generation.     

Business cycles in Italy: A statistical investigation

This paper conducts a statistical analysis of post-war economic fluctuations in Italy. It is argued that business cycles in this country qualitatively conform to the general character of the phenomenon, a result which confirms existing evidence. A temporal stability analysis of stylized facts shows that some statistically significant changes in the empirical regularities occurred after 1973, but they did not alter the main qualitative features of the business cycle. The evidence thus supports interpretative models of the Italian business cycle which incorporate a stable propagation mechanism.     

准确定位科学决策创新工厂物流

介绍了东风汽车有限公司商用车重型车厂引进新理念,导入新方法,学以致用,改善作业效率,提高制造能力,构建和谐节约型工厂物流的实践,并指出了其创新工厂物流取得的效果与存在的问题和今后的发展方向.     

The shading and distancing of commerce: When internalization is not enough

A political economy of degradation and of sustainability should account not only for the full range of production costs but the sources of those costs. It should consider how the pursuit of wealth can, deliberately or not, lead to uncounted costs and unaccountable actors. This article explores the conditions of cost generation and externalization, especially those that are largely unintended and inadvertent. It shows how the pursuit of wealth, the expansion of markets, the mobility of capital, and the entanglements of production processes can lead to the unwitting generation and displacement of costs. It analyzes competitive business strategy and patterns of production and consumption for their contribution to such costs. Business strategy and state policy tend to create a never-ending search for frontiers, however simulated and however unecological they may be. The costs generated in those frontiers are a function of shading, that is, obscuring of costs, and distancing, the separation of production and consumption decisions, both of which impede ecological and social feedback and create cognitive, institutional, and ethical lags between initial benefits and eventual full costs. As distance increases along dimensions of geography, culture, bargaining power, or agency, negative feedback loops are severed, stakeholders expand while decision making contracts, environmental problems are displaced, and shading and cost externalization increase. The likelihood of sustainable resource use increases as distance is lowered, as institutions locate decision authority in those who receive negative ecological feedback and who have the capacity and incentives to act on that feedback, and as the burden of proof for economic interventions shifts to the interveners.     

企业集团的价值创造与协同效应的实现机制

企业集团这种组织形式的存在和演进是备受学术界关注的问题.本文从价值创造角度,对企业集团的成员企业异质性、协同效应的特殊性进行了深入分析,进一步明确了企业集团的存在本质.本文认为,基于企业异质性基础上的协同效应的实现是企业集团的形成和演进的根本,企业集团的协同效应有着自身特殊的生成机理,它既要在附属企业层面得到体现,更要在集团总部实现进一步的价值创造.本文还从实践层面分析了国内外企业集团的差距,并就我国企业集团的发展战略提出了几点建议.     

非均衡的经济动态模型

本文旨在按现实世界的本来面目建立一个非均衡的内生经济动态模型。在这个模型中 ,源于部门内和部门间关系的内生变量导致资本市场、消费品市场上产量和价格的波动。市场的非均衡过程、存货调节机制以及经济人的最优行为和适应性行为是基于对现实世界的观察进行模拟的。静态性质及其稳定性是作为一般市场动态过程的特例加以讨论的。