THE DESIGN AND ANALYSIS OF EXPERIMENTS. By Oscar Kempthorne. New York, John Wiley and Sons, Inc., 1952. 631 pp. $8.50. This book by a teacher of statistics (as well as a consultant for \"experimenters\") is a comprehensive study of the philosophical background for the statistical design of experiment. It is necessary to have some facility with algebraic notation and manipulation to be able to use the volume intelligently. The problems are presented from the theoretical point of view, without such practical examples as would be helpful for those not acquainted with mathematics. The mathematical justification for the techniques is given. As a somewhat advanced treatment of the design and analysis of experiments, this volume will be interesting and helpful for many who approach statistics theoretically as well as practically. With emphasis on the \"why,\" and with description given broadly, the author relates the subject matter to the general theory of statistics and to the general problem of experimental inference. MARGARET J. ROBERTSON

The Design and Analysis of Experiments

An Introduction to MultiAgent Systems.

What makes organizations so similar? We contend that the engine of rationalization and bureaucratization has moved from the competitive marketplace to the state and the professions. Once a set of organizations emerges as a field, a paradox arises: rational actors make their organizations increasingly similar as they try to change them. We describe three isomorphic processes-coercive, mimetic, and normative—leading to this outcome. We then specify hypotheses about the impact of resource centralization and dependency, goal ambiguity and technical uncertainty, and professionalization and structuration on isomorphic change. Finally, we suggest implications for theories of organizations and social change.

The iron cage revisited: Institutional isomorphism and collective rationality in organizational fields (Chinese Translation)

The German manufacturing industry has to withstand an increasing global competition on product quality and production costs. As labor costs are high, several industries have suffered severely under the relocation of production facilities towards aspiring countries, which have managed to close the productivity and quality gap substantially. Established manufacturing companies have recognized that customers are not willing to pay large price premiums for incremental quality improvements. As a consequence, many companies from the German manufacturing industry adjust their production focusing on customized products and fast time to market. Leveraging the advantages of novel production strategies such as Agile Manufacturing and Mass Customization, manufacturing companies transform into integrated networks, in which companies unite their core competencies. Hereby, virtualization of the processand supply-chain ensures smooth inter-company operations providing real-time access to relevant product and production information for all participating entities. Boundaries of companies deteriorate, as autonomous systems exchange data, gained by embedded systems throughout the entire value chain. By including Cyber-PhysicalSystems, advanced communication between machines is tantamount to their dialogue with humans. The increasing utilization of information and communication technology allows digital engineering of products and production processes alike. Modular simulation and modeling techniques allow decentralized units to flexibly alter products and thereby enable rapid product innovation. The present article describes the developments of Industry 4.0 within the literature and reviews the associated research streams. Hereby, we analyze eight scientific journals with regards to the following research fields: Individualized production, end-to-end engineering in a virtual process chain and production networks. We employ cluster analysis to assign sub-topics into the respective research field. To assess the practical implications, we conducted face-to-face interviews with managers from the industry as well as from the consulting business using a structured interview guideline. The results reveal reasons for the adaption and refusal of Industry 4.0 practices from a managerial point of view. Our findings contribute to the upcoming research stream of Industry 4.0 and support decisionmakers to assess their need for transformation towards Industry 4.0 practices. Keywords—Industry 4.0., Mass Customization, Production networks, Virtual Process-Chain. Malte Brettel, chairholder, is with the Aachen University (RWTH), Kackertstraße 7, 52072 Aachen (e-mail: brettel@win.rwth-aachen.de). Niklas Friederichsen is with the Aachen University (RWTH), Kackertstraße 7, 52072 Aachen, (corresponding author; phone: +49/(0)241 80 99397; e-mail: friederichsen@win.rwth-aachen.de). Michael Keller and Marius Rosenberg are with the Aachen University (RWTH), Kackertstraße 7, 52072 Aachen (e-mail: keller@win.rwthaachen.de, rosenberg@win.rwth-aachen.de).

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How Virtualization, Decentralization and Network Building Change the Manufacturing Landscape: An Industry 4.0 Perspective

https://www.cirrelt.ca/DocumentsTravail/CIRRELT-2011-62.pdf

A review of dynamic vehicle routing problems

http://webuser.unicas.it/dweb/gestione/download.php?id=1432

Mass customization: Literature review and research directions

The mass customization decade: An updated review of the literature

Validation is important to the decision-making success and to the continued use of a Decision Support System (DSS). Without proper validation, DSSs may cause costly errors. However, little is known about available effective methods to validate such computer-based systems. In this paper a new method to validate DSS is presented. The approach combines several validation methods developed to validate Operations Research/Management Science (OR/MS) models and expert systems validation frameworks to define a practical guidance for the validation stage of the DSS development. A case study illustrates the effectiveness of the developed method.

Denis Borenstein

Papers

Mass customization: Literature review and research directions

The mass customization decade: An updated review of the literature

Towards a practical method to validate decision support systems

Real-time vehicle rerouting problems with time windows

A decision support system for the operational planning of solid waste collection.