How have Japanese companies become world leaders in the automotive and electronics industries, among others? What is the secret of their success? Two leading Japanese business experts, Ikujiro Nonaka and Hirotaka Takeuchi, are the first to tie the success of Japanese companies to their ability to create new knowledge and use it to produce successful products and technologies. In The Knowledge-Creating Company, Nonaka and Takeuchi provide an inside look at how Japanese companies go about creating this new knowledge organizationally. The authors point out that there are two types of knowledge: explicit knowledge, contained in manuals and procedures, and tacit knowledge, learned only by experience, and communicated only indirectly, through metaphor and analogy. U.S. managers focus on explicit knowledge. The Japanese, on the other hand, focus on tacit knowledge. And this, the authors argue, is the key to their success--the Japanese have learned how to transform tacit into explicit knowledge. To explain how this is done--and illuminate Japanese business practices as they do so--the authors range from Greek philosophy to Zen Buddhism, from classical economists to modern management gurus, illustrating the theory of organizational knowledge creation with case studies drawn from such firms as Honda, Canon, Matsushita, NEC, Nissan, 3M, GE, and even the U.S. Marines. For instance, using Matsushita's development of the Home Bakery (the world's first fully automated bread-baking machine for home use), they show how tacit knowledge can be converted to explicit knowledge: when the designers couldn't perfect the dough kneading mechanism, a software programmer apprenticed herself withthe master baker at Osaka International Hotel, gained a tacit understanding of kneading, and then conveyed this information to the engineers. In addition, the authors show that, to create knowledge, the best management style is neither top-down nor bottom-up, but rather what they call "middle-up-down," in which the middle managers form a bridge between the ideals of top management and the chaotic realities of the frontline. As we make the turn into the 21st century, a new society is emerging. Peter Drucker calls it the "knowledge society," one that is drastically different from the "industrial society," and one in which acquiring and applying knowledge will become key competitive factors. Nonaka and Takeuchi go a step further, arguing that creating knowledge will become the key to sustaining a competitive advantage in the future. Because the competitive environment and customer preferences changes constantly, knowledge perishes quickly. With The Knowledge-Creating Company, managers have at their fingertips years of insight from Japanese firms that reveal how to create knowledge continuously, and how to exploit it to make successful new products, services, and systems.

The knowledge-creating company

Introduction to linear and nonlinear programming

THE NEED FOR QUALITY The first thing that we need to consider, in any organization, is that quality is the most important thing. The quality of your work defines you.  Whoever you are,  Whatever you do,  I can find the same products and services cheaper somewhere else. But your quality is your signature. Developing and delivering high quality products and services means that you are doing things correctly from the beginning. As a consequence, you are reducing the need for additional services, from verification to warranty.

Total quality management.

Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences

Energy storage technologies and real life applications – A state of the art review

In these days, considering the growth of knowledge about sustainability in enterprise, the sustainable supplier selection would be the central component in the management of a sustainable supply chain. In this paper the sustainable supplier selection criteria and sub-criteria are determined and based on those criteria and sub-criteria a methodology is proposed onto evaluation and ranking of a given set of suppliers. In the evaluation process, decision makers' opinions on the importance of deciding the criteria and sub-criteria, in addition to their preference of the suppliers' performance with respect to sub-criteria are considered in linguistic terms. To handle the subjectivity of decision makers' assessments, fuzzy logic has been applied and a new ranking method on the basis of fuzzy inference system (FIS) is proposed for supplier selection problem. Finally, an illustrative example is utilized to show the feasibility of the proposed method.

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Sustainable supplier selection: A ranking model based on fuzzy inference system

In the competitive market , virtual teams represent a growing response to the need for fasting time-to- market, low-cost and rapid solutions to complex organizational problems. Virtual teams enable organizations to pool the talents and expertise of employees and non-employees by eliminating time and space barriers . Nowadays, companies are heavily investing in virtual team to enhance their performance and competitiveness. Despite virtual teams growing prevalence, relatively little is known about this new form of team. Hence the study offers an extensive literature review with definitions o f virtual teams and a structured analysis of the present body of knowledge of virtual teams. First, we distinguish virtual teams from conventional teams , different types of virtual teams to identify where current knowledge applies. Second, we distinguish what is needed for effective virtual team considering the people, process and technology point of view and underlying characteristics of virtual teams and challenges they entail. Finally, we have identified an d extended 12 key factors that need to be considered, and describes a methodology focused on supporting virtual team working, with a new approach that has not been specifically addressed in the existing literature and some guide line for future research extracted.

Virtual Teams: a Literature Review

Iron and steel industry is the largest energy consuming manufacturing sector in the world. It is responsible for emitting 4–5% of the total anthropogenic CO2. Due to consistently increasing demand of iron and steel products for human needs, fossil-fuel energy use and CO2 emission will continue to grow in this industry. So there is a strong motivation to develop and implement energy-efficient and low-carbon technologies as well as carbon reduction programs for this industry. Enhancing the development and deployment of high-temperature waste heat energy recovering technologies along a desired combination of carbon capture and storage (CCS) technologies will be the effective solution to reducing CO2 emissions from iron and steel production. The aim of this paper is to provide a comprehensive overview of the worldwide carbon reduction programs and new CO2 breakthrough technologies for energy saving and carbon capture and storage in iron and steel making processes by collating updated information from a wide range of sources. Also, a discussion on the selection of the appropriate technology and their barriers and stages of development and deployment is presented. It is found that lots of factors that limit the role of using biomass in CO2 abatement, so implementation of CCS technology in coal-based integrated steel plant would be an efficient means for sustainable green iron and steel manufacturing.

A comprehensive review on energy efficient CO2 breakthrough technologies for sustainable green iron and steel manufacturing

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Quality management (QM) cannot be assured unless some objective assessments are undertaken. A number of tools and techniques are available to conduct such analysis. Although some of them are product or service specific, however, a few basic tools and techniques are commonly used in manufacturing firms. This study focuses on the state of application of QM tools and techniques in small and medium industries (SMIs). The findings reveal that by‐and‐large, lack of methodical analysis is a major weakness of SMIs. Still some rule‐of‐thumb and subjective observations are dominating over objective evaluation in the process of quality control decisions. A few case studies which have been conducted, and one that has been briefly reported here, also support this conclusion. The methodology of the study has three folds: literature review, survey in SMIs and case studies.

Shamsuddin Ahmed

Papers

Sustainable supplier selection: A ranking model based on fuzzy inference system

Virtual Teams: a Literature Review

A comprehensive review on energy efficient CO2 breakthrough technologies for sustainable green iron and steel manufacturing

Virtual Teams: a Literature Review

Survey and case investigations on application of quality management tools and techniques in SMIs