Reports from an ambitious MIT research project that makes the case for encouraging the colocation of manufacturing and innovation. Production in the Innovation Economy emerges from several years of interdisciplinary research at MIT on the links between manufacturing and innovation in the United States and the world economy. Authors from political science, economics, business, employment and operations research, aeronautics and astronautics, and nuclear engineering come together to explore the extent to which manufacturing is key to an innovative and vibrant economy. Chapters include survey research on gaps in worker skill development and training; discussions of coproduction with Chinese firms and participation in complex manufacturing projects in China; analyses of constraints facing American start-up firms involved in manufacturing; proposals for a future of distributed manufacturing and a focus on product variety as a marker of innovation; and forecasts of powerful advanced manufacturing technologies on the horizon. The chapters show that although the global distribution of manufacturing is not an automatic loss for the United States, gains from the colocation of manufacturing and innovation have not disappeared. The book emphasizes public policy that encourages colocation through, for example, training programs, supplements to private capital, and interfirm cooperation in industry consortia. Such approaches can help the United States not only to maintain manufacturing capacity but also, crucially, to maximize its innovative potential. Contributors Joyce Lawrence, Richard K. Lester, Richard M. Locke, Florian Metzler, Jonas Nahm, Paul Osterman, Elisabeth B. Reynolds, Donald B. Rosenfeld, Hiram M. Samel, Sanjay E. Sarma, Edward S. Steinfeld, Andrew Weaver, Rachel L. Wellhausen, Olivier de Weck

Events around the world are broadcast by giant media players such as CNN, BBC and NHK amongst others. This book explores how powerful political and economic agendas in the national media environment influence the production processes.

In the last 20 years, there has been a remarkable emergence of innovations and technological advances that are generating promising changes and opportunities for sustainable agriculture, yet at the same time the agricultural sector worldwide faces numerous daunting challenges. Not only is the agricultural sector expected to produce adequate food, fiber, and feed, and contribute to biofuels to meet the needs of a rising global population, it is expected to do so under increasingly scarce natural resources and climate change. Growing awareness of the unintended impacts associated with some agricultural production practices has led to heightened societal expectations for improved environmental, community, labor, and animal welfare standards in agriculture. Toward Sustainable Agricultural Systems in the 21st Century assesses the scientific evidence for the strengths and weaknesses of different production, marketing, and policy approaches for improving and reducing the costs and unintended consequences of agricultural production. It discusses the principles underlying farming systems and practices that could improve the sustainability. It also explores how those lessons learned could be applied to agriculture in different regional and international settings, with an emphasis on sub-Saharan Africa. By focusing on a systems approach to improving the sustainability of U.S. agriculture, this book can have a profound impact on the development and implementation of sustainable farming systems. Toward Sustainable Agricultural Systems in the 21st Century serves as a valuable resource for policy makers, farmers, experts in food production and agribusiness, and federal regulatory agencies.

This two-volume set presents selected and revised papers from the 10th International Conference of Production Research - Americas, ICPR-Americas 2020, held in Bahía Blanca, Argentina, in December 2020. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic the conference was held in a fully virtual format. The 41 full papers and 11 short papers were thoroughly reviewed and selected from 275 submissions. They are organized in topical sections on optimization; metaheuristics and algorithms; industry 4.0 and cyber-physical systems; smart city; intelligent systems and decision sciences; simulation; machine learning and big data.

Continued population growth, rapidly changing consumption patterns and the impacts of climate change and environmental degradation are driving limited resources of food, energy, water and materials towards critical thresholds worldwide. These pressures are likely to be substantial across Africa, where countries will have to find innovative ways to boost crop and livestock production to avoid becoming more reliant on imports and food aid. Sustainable agricultural intensification - producing more output from the same area of land while reducing the negative environmental impacts - represents a solution for millions of African farmers. This volume presents the lessons learned from 40 sustainable agricultural intensification programmes in 20 countries across Africa, commissioned as part of the UK Government's Foresight project. Through detailed case studies, the authors of each chapter examine how to develop productive and sustainable agricultural systems and how to scale up these systems to reach many more millions of people in the future. Themes covered include crop improvements, agroforestry and soil conservation, conservation agriculture, integrated pest management, horticulture, livestock and fodder crops, aquaculture, and novel policies and partnerships.

Our economy and future way of life depend on how well American manufacturing managers adapt to the dynamic, globally competitive landscape and evolve their firms to keep pace. A major challenge is how to structure the firms environment so that it attains the speed and low cost of high-volume flow lines while retaining the flexibility and customization potential of a low-volume job shop. The books three parts are organized according to three categories of skills required by managers and engineers: basics, intuition, and synthesis. Part I reviews traditional operations management techniques and identifies the necessary components of the science of manufacturing. Part II presents the core concepts of the book, beginning with the structure of the science of manufacturing and a discussion of the systems approach to problem solving. Other topics include behavioral tendencies of manufacturing plants, push and pull production systems, the human element in operations management, and the relationship between quality and operations. Chapter conclusions include main points and observations framed as manufacturing laws. In Part III, the lessons of Part I and the laws of Part II are applied to address specific manufacturing management issues in detail. The authors compare and contrast common problems, including shop floor control, long-range aggregate planning, workforce planning and capacity management. A main focus in Part III is to help readers visualize how general concepts in Part II can be applied to specific problems. Written for both engineering and management students, the authors demonstrate the effectiveness of a rule-based and data driven approach to operations planning and control. They advance an organized framework from which to evaluate management practices and develop useful intuition about manufacturing systems.