Data Mining - Concepts and Techniques.

Why are a select few service firms better at what they do - year in and year out - than their competitors? For most senior managers, the profusion of anecdotal "service excellence" books fails to address this key question. In this pathbreaking book, world-renowned Harvard Business School service firm experts James L. Heskett, W. Earl Sasser, Jr. and Leonard A. Schlesinger reveal that leading companies stay on top by managing the service profit chain. Based on five years of painstaking research, the authors show how managers at American Express, Southwest Airlines, Banc One, Waste Management, USAA, MBNA, Intuit, British Airways, Taco Bell, Fairfield Inns, Ritz-Carlton Hotel, and the Merry Maids subsidiary of ServiceMaster employ a quantifiable set of relationships that directly links profit and growth to not only customer loyalty and satisfaction, but to employee loyalty, satisfaction, and productivity. The strongest relationships the authors discovered are those between (1) profit and customer loyalty; (2) employee loyalty and customer loyalty; and (3) employee satisfaction and customer satisfaction. Moreover, these relationships are mutually reinforcing; that is, satisfied customers contribute to employee satisfaction and vice versa. Here, finally, is the foundation for a powerful strategic service vision, a model on which any manager can build more focused operations and marketing capabilities. For example, the authors demonstrate how, in Banc One's operating divisions, a direct relationship between customer loyalty measured by the "depth" of a relationship, the number of banking services a customer utilizes, and profitability led the bank to encourage existing customers to further extend the bank services they use. Taco Bell has found that their stores in the top quadrant of customer satisfaction ratings outperform their other stores on all measures. At American Express Travel Services, offices that ticket quickly and accurately are more profitable than those which don't. With hundreds of examples like these, the authors show how to manage the customer-employee "satisfaction mirror" and the customer value equation to achieve a "customer's eye view" of goods and services. They describe how companies in any service industry can (1) measure service profit chain relationships across operating units; (2) communicate the resulting self-appraisal; (3) develop a "balanced scorecard" of performance; (4) develop a recognitions and rewards system tied to established measures; (5) communicate results company-wide; (6) develop an internal "best practice" information exchange; and (7) improve overall service profit chain performance. What difference can service profit chain management make? A lot. Between 1986 and 1995, the common stock prices of the companies studied by the authors increased 147%, nearly twice as fast as the price of the stocks of their closest competitors. The proven success and high-yielding results from these high-achieving companies will make The Service Profit Chain required reading for senior, division, and business unit managers in all service companies, as well as for students of service management.

The Service Profit Chain: How Leading Companies Link Profit and Growth to Loyalty, Satisfaction, and Value (Цепочка создания прибыли в сфере услуг: как ведущие компании связывают прибыль и рост с лояльностью, удовлетворением и ценностью)

Operations Research for Green Logistics – An Overview of Aspects, Issues, Contributions and Challenges

Synthesizing prior research, this paper designs a relatively comprehensive and holistic characterization of business analytics - one that serves as a foundation on which researchers, practitioners, and educators can base their studies of business analytics. As such, it serves as an initial ontology for business analytics as a field of study. The foundation has three main parts dealing with the whence and whither of business analytics: identification of dimensions along which business analytics possibilities can be examined, derivation of a six-class taxonomy that covers business analytics perspectives in the literature, and design of an inclusive framework for the field of business analytics. In addition to unifying the literature, a major contribution of the designed framework is that it can stimulate thinking about the nature, roles, and future of business analytics initiatives. We show how this is done by deducing a host of unresolved issues for consideration by researchers, practitioners, and educators. We find that business analytics involves issues quite aside from data management, number crunching, technology use, systematic reasoning, and so forth. Holistic foundation of business analytics introduced, as an ontology for the fieldCharacterization business analytics as evidence-based problem recognition and solvingAdvance a framework of business analytics for a cohesive unifying view of the fieldStimulates thinking about nature, role and future of business analytics initiativesDeduces unresolved issues for considerations by researchers/educators/practitioners

A unified foundation for business analytics

This is a preliminary version of a paper prepared for the conference ‘‘Public Access to the Internet,’’ JFK School of Government, May 26--27 , 1993. We describe some of the technology and costs relevant to pricing access to the Internet and suggest a possible smart-market mechanism for pricing traffic on the Internet.

Pricing the Internet.

So far most stowage planning only consider the stowage of single type containers or do not consider the stability of the containership. Here a 0-1 linear programming model for this problem is proposed. The objective is to maximize space utilization while minimize the operation cost from upload and download of different types containers at each port of a multi-port journey, with vessel stability, industry regulations and customized rules as the constraints. Based on experiments by adopting branch & cut algorithm from COIN-OR(Common Optimization Interface for Operations Research) to such model. Successively, a simulation system is developed to verify the feasibility and practicability of the model. By using the branch and cut algorithm of COIN-OR, the simulation system has shown that our model is efficient and robust.

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An Integer Linear Programming for Container Stowage Problem

In this paper, a simple mix integer programming for distribution center location is proposed. Based on this simple model, we introduce two important factors, transport mode and carbon emission, and extend it a model to describe the location problem for green supply chain. Sequently, IBM Watson implosion technologh (WIT) tool was introduced to describe them and solve them. By changing the price of crude oil, we illustrate the its impact on distribution center locations and transportation mode option for green supply chain. From the cases studies, we have known that, as the crude oil price increasing, the profits of the whole supply chain will decrease, carbon emission will also decrease to some degree, while the number of opened distribution center will increase.

Distribution center location for green supply chain

A method, system and service for using a Component Business Model (CBM) of an enterprise to support value based pricing of business solutions. Business solutions are composed from, and are described in terms of, services exposed by business components. Pricing is represented as the product of iterative negotiations between a solution provider and a solution consumer. Both the provider and the consumer are analyzed in terms of constituent services. Value based pricing is applied to the constituent services, and a value based pricing schedule for the provider or the consumer is constructed from an evaluation of pricing schedules for the respective constituent services. The value based pricing schedules are themselves configured from a plurality of pricing strategies, the configuration being designed to optimize a pricing schedule for the mutual benefit of the provider and consumer.

Method and System for Using a Component Business Model to Support Value Based Pricing of Business Solutions

A solution for managing a business transformation is provided. The invention obtains an impact of a business solution for the business transformation on a business concern for an enterprise and relationship information for the business concern with one or more other business concerns and/or value (business) metrics. The impact of the business solution is propagated to a set of business concerns and/or value metrics based on the relationship information. The impact can include a time delay factor, which can be used during evaluation to perform numerous financial related metrics (e.g., return on investment). The relationship information and/or impact can be derived from empirical data using regression analysis or the like. In order to facilitate evaluation of the business transformation, various improved graphical interfaces can be generated that highlight the changes caused by the business transformation for use by a user.

Business transformation management

Identifying one or more source units for one or more food items may include assigning a sequence of numbers to a plurality of source units received at a processing entity and assigning a sequence of numbers to a plurality of end product units processed from the plurality of source units at the processing entity. A production rate associated with the end product units may be determined from a bill of materials associated with the end product units. A probability distribution function may be generated using at least the production rate. The probability distribution function maps a range of the sequence numbers associated with the plurality of source units to a range of sequence numbers associated with the end product units. A conversion algorithm may be generated that uses the probability distribution function to determine a source unit associated with a selected end product unit.

Wei Ding

Papers

An Integer Linear Programming for Container Stowage Problem

Distribution center location for green supply chain

Method and System for Using a Component Business Model to Support Value Based Pricing of Business Solutions

Business transformation management

Identifying source material associated with food products using bill of material