“Logistic Core Operations with SAP” not only provides an overview of core logistics processes and functionality—it also shows how SAP’s Business Suite covers logistic core operations, what features are supported, and which systems can be used to implement end-to-end processes in the following logistic core disciplines: Procurement, Distribution, Transportation, Warehouse Logistics and Inventory Management, and Compliance and Reporting. In this context the authors not only explain their integration, the organizational set-up, and master data, but also which solution fits best for a particular business need.

This book addresses the idea that there are two ways to go about achieving a safe working environment. The text challenges the prevailing notion that compliance with a rule system, imposed from the top of an organization and designed to anticipate possible hazards in system operation, is really incompatible with the idea that the professional expertise of front-line workers is what promotes safe outcomes despite inevitable unanticipated perturbations. The contributors, drawn from academic and industrial backgrounds, demonstrate that rather than being at odds with each other, rules-compliance and proactivity are in fact complementary resources the coexistence of which increases safety. Furthermore, the implications of this approach extend beyond safety, being relevant to business performance, strategies for innovation and system resilience as well.

This is the fourth book from the Series "Scientific Fundamentals of Ro­ botics". The first two volumes have established abackqround for studying the dynamics and control of robots. While the first book was exclusive­ ly devoted to the dynamics of active spatial mechanisms, the second treated the problems of the dynamic control of manipulation robots. In contrast to the first two books, where recursive computer-aided me­ thods for setting robot dynamic equations where described, this mono­ graph presents a new approach to the formation of robot dynamics. The goal is to achieve the real-time model computation using up-to-date mi­ crocomputers. The presented concept could be called a numeric-symbolic, or analytic, approach to robot modelling.

In 1981 Robotics Bibliography was published containing over 1,800 references on industrial robot research and development, culled from the scientific literature over the previous 12 years. It was felt that sensors for use with industrial robots merited a section and accordingly just over 200 papers were included. It is a sign of the increased research into sensors in production engineering that this bibliography on both the contact and non-contact forms has appeared less than three years after that first comprehensive collection of references appeared. In a reviell''; in 1975 Professor Warnecke of IPA, Stuttgart drew attention to the lack of sensors for touch and vision. Since then research workers in various companies, universities and national laboratories in the USA, the UK, Italy, Germany and Japan have concentrated on improving sensor capabilities, particularly utilising vision, artificial intelligence and pattern recognition principles. As a result many research projects are on the brink of commercial exploitation and development. This biblio­ graphy brings together the documentation on that research and development, highlighting the advances made in vision systems, but not neglecting the development of tactile sensors of various types. No bibliography can ever be comprehensive, but significant contributions from research workers and production engineers from the major industrialised countries over the last 12 years have been included.

Das Buch richtet sich an Dienstleistungsmanager und -planer und beinhaltet ein Kompendium von Modellen, Methoden und Werkzeugen zur Messung, Bewertung und Steuerung der Produktivität von wissensintensiven Dienstleistungen. Neben einer modellbasierten, ganzheitlichen Betrachtung der Produktivität von Dienstleistungen werden die in empirischen Studien identifizierten Stellgrößen vorgestellt und deren Wechselwirkungen in einem System-Dynamics-Modell veranschaulicht. Des Weiteren wird eine Methode zum partizipativen Projektcontrolling eingeführt. Anhand von
Fallbeispielen von international agierenden Unternehmen werden innovative Konzepte und Softwareprototypen demonstriert, mit denen auch schwach strukturierte Arbeitsprozesse, wie sie für wissensintensive Dienstleistungen typisch sind, effektiv modelliert, simuliert und optimiert werden können.

Digital factory is a comprehensive approach providing methodologies, models and tools that support manufacturing enterprises in the rearrangement of their organizational structures to deal with expected changes in manufacturing processes and markets.

This book describes the implementation of autonomous control with multiagent technology. Therewith, it tackles the challenges of supply network management caused by the complexity, the dynamics, and the distribution of logistics processes. The paradigm of autonomous logistics reduces the computational complexity and copes with the dynamics locally by delegating process control to the participating objects. As an example, shipping containers may themselves plan and schedule their way through logistics networks in accordance with objectives imposed by their owners. The technologies enabling autonomous logistics are thoroughly described and reviewed. The presented solution has been used in a realistic simulation of real-world container logistics processes. The validation shows that autonomous control is feasible and that it outperforms the previous centralised dispatching approach by significantly increasing the resource utilisation efficiency. Moreover, the multiagent system relieves human dispatchers from dealing with standard cases, giving them more time to solve exceptional cases appropriately.

This book investigates in detail production scheduling technology in different kinds of shop environment to achieve sustainability manufacturing. Studies on shop scheduling have attracted engineers and scientists from various disciplines, such as electrical, mechanical, automation, computer, and industrial engineering. Pursuing a holistic approach, the book establishes a fundamental framework for this topic, while emphasizing the importance of intelligent optimization and the significant influence of production scheduling in the manufacturing systems. The book is intended for undergraduate and graduate students who are interested in intelligent optimization technology, shop scheduling, and green manufacturing systems or other scheduling applications.

Parts are commonly used in making, repairing or maintaining consumer or industry products. Parts could be purchased or manufactured by a business enterprise. Advance models were applied to parts operations for manufacturers of transport refrigeration equipment and high-pressure positive displacement plunger pumps. Both companies have an established network of dealers for sales and service of equipment and parts. A number of areas in the parts business operation were researched which show the potential for improved operational efficiency and customer service that increase market share when advanced process models were used to integrate the supply chain.

With the pressure of time-based competition increasing, and customers demanding faster service, availability of service parts becomes a critical component of manufacturing and servicing operations. Service Parts Management first focuses on intermittent demand forecasting and then on the management of service parts inventories. It guides researchers and practitioners in finding better management solutions to their problems and is both an excellent reference for key concepts and a leading resource for further research. Demand forecasting techniques are presented for parametric and nonparametric approaches, and multi echelon cases and inventory pooling are also considered. Inventory control is examined in the continuous and periodic review cases, while the following are all examined in the context of forecasting: • error measures, • distributional assumptions, and • decision trees. Service Parts Management provides the reader with an overview and a detailed treatment of the current state of the research available on the forecasting and inventory management of items with intermittent demand. It is a comprehensive review of service parts management and provides a starting point for researchers, postgraduate students, and anyone interested in forecasting or managing inventory.

Dr. Lester A. Gerhardt Professor and Chairman Electrical, Computer, and Systems Engineering Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute Troy, New York 12180 This book is a collection of papers on the subject of Robotics and Artificial Intelligence. Most of the papers contained herein were presented as part of the program of the NATO Advanced Study Institute held in June 1983 at Castel vecchio Pascoli, Italy on the same subject. Attendance at this two week Institute was by invitation only, drawing people internationally representing industry, government and the academic community worldwide. Many of the people in attendance, as well as those presenting papers, are recognized leaders in the field.

This monograph represents the first book of the series entitled "SCI­ ENTIFIC FUNDAMENTALS OF ROBOTICS". The aim of this monograph is to ap­ proach the dynamics of active mechanisms from the standpoint of its application to the synthesis of complex motion and computer-aided de­ sign of manipulation mechanisms with some optimal performances. The rapid development of a new class of mechanisms, which may be referred to as active mechanisms, contributed to their application in various environments (from underwater to cosmic) . Because of some specific fea­ tures, these mechanisms require very careful description, both in a mechanical sense (kinematic and dynamic) and in the synthesis of algo­ rithms for precise tracking of the above motion under insufficiently defined operating conditions. Having also in mind the need for a very fast (even real-time) calculation of system dynamics and for eliminating, in principle, the errors made when forming mathematical models "by hand" this monograph will primarily present methods for automatic for­ mUlation of dynamic equations of motion of active spatial mechanisms.

This book is about automatic handling of non-rigid or deformable objects like cables, fabric, or foam rubber. The automation by robots in industrial environments, is especially examined. It discusses several important automation aspects, such as material modelling and simulation, planning and control strategies, collaborative systems, and industrial applications. This book collects contributions from various countries and international projects and, therefore, provides a representative overview of the state of the art in this field. It is of particular interest for scientists and practitioners in the area of robotics and automation.

This first-time English publication of one of Germany’s leading manufacturing control handbooks provides a comprehensive overview of the state of the art, with detailed and easy to understand descriptions of numerous control techniques from Kanban to CONWIP to Backlog Control.

This book is the first comprehensive presentation of a Kaiyu Markov model with covariates and a multivariate Poisson model with competitive destinations. These two models are core techniques when the authors and colleagues conduct their Kaiyu studies. The two models are usually used to forecast the effects of specific urban redevelopment on both the number of visitors and consumer shop-around or Kaiyu movements. Their Kaiyu studies originated from the constructions of a Kaiyu Markov model and the disaggregated hierarchical decision Huff model almost simultaneously around the early 1980s. This book retrospectively reviews how these models have evolved from the start to the present state, and previews the ongoing efforts to make further extensions of these models. The extension of the Huff model started from the disaggregated hierarchical decision Huff model with shop-arounds. In retrospect, the model formulated the consumer’s simultaneous choice of destinations as a joint probability. The mechanism to determine this joint probability was a recursive conditional probability system. Now the Huff model has shifted from joint probability to multivariate frequency Poisson with competitive destinations. On the other hand, the Kaiyu Markov model started from a descriptive model. Because it cannot forecast changes in shop-arounds or consumer Kaiyu behaviors, the Kaiyu Markov model with covariates was developed in which entrance and shop-around choice probabilities are explained by the respective two logit models with covariates such as distances and shop-floor areas. The noticeable point is that it can explain consumers’ probability of quitting their shop-arounds. Thus, the model enables one to evaluate the effects of urban revitalization policy that promotes consumers’ shop-arounds or Kaiyu behaviors. Furthermore, if the Kaiyu Markov model can estimate the actual numbers of flows of consumers’ shop-arounds among shopping sites, the corresponding money flows also can be estimated as economic effects. This book discusses from scratch the evolution of all these topics. Thus this book provides the basics of the Kaiyu Markov model, a tutorial for the theory and estimation of the conditional logit model, and a chapter serving as a practical research manual for forecasting changes caused by urban development based on consumers’ Kaiyu behaviors.