When the pharmaceuticals giant Merck reports promising results for a potential "blockbuster" drug, the story makes the evening news. Now, at a time when new product development has become critical to success in so many industries, The Development Factory proves that process innovation - not just product innovation - can be the key to competitive edge. In this multiyear study of pharmaceutical and biotechnology firms, Gary Pisano explores the dynamics of superior product and process development in a highly competitive industry that lives and dies by its R&D and depends heavily on rapid time to market. His work reveals that behind the success of many new product introductions lies the development of novel process technologies that provide lower costs, higher quality, and increased flexibility. Pisano challenges the widely held product-process life cycle view of competition, which suggests that industries tend to emphasize either product innovation or process innovation. He also questions the notion that there is a conflict between pursuit of product innovation and pursuit of lower costs, arguing that product development and process development capabilities are complementary. Extending the lessons to a wide variety of manufacturing industries, The Development Factory will guide companies toward unlocking the potential of process development and understanding the patterns of organizational behavior and managerial actions that help create and implement new capabilities over time.

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. Digital Factory for Human-oriented Production Systems investigates the impact of the digital factory through a consideration of the entire product/process lifecycle, and the broad network of product engineering, material and component suppliers, manufacturing equipment suppliers, and customers involved in current and next generation manufacturing. It covers the utilization and integration of: human body ergonomics models; production system discrete event simulation; 3D/virtual and augmented reality visualization; collaborative design tools; automatic data capture; and knowledge management systems based on semantic web ontologies integrated by a continuous data management. The coverage of various types of factory and manufacturing phases, representations and simulations allows researchers in academia and industry to perform a dynamic analysis and up-to-date modeling of the processes involved. Digital Factory for Human-oriented Production Systems describes the tools that allow a move towards the integrated digital factory and underlines the business impact that companies can obtain by adopting these tools. As well as benefiting international organizations, the proposed methodologies and technologies have also been developed in order to facilitate their adoption by small or medium-sized businesses, making them relevant to all product engineers and managers who want improve the efficiency and effectiveness of their enterprises.

With more emphasis being placed on the cost and quality of new products and on reducing the lead time to develop them, attention is turning to the increasingly important topic of design for manufacturing (DFM). This involves the collaboration among research and development, manufacturing, and other company functions and is aimed at accelerating the new product development process from product conception to market introduction. A company can create a competitive advantage for itself by managing the process and its related organizational dynamics effectively. This collection of essays focuses on the development of strategic capabilities through use of DFM tools and practices, the role of DFM in specific product development phases, and the social, political, and cultural context within which DFM is introduced.

This book constitutes the refereed conference proceedings of the 13th IFIP WG 6.11 Conference on e-Business, e-Services and e-Society, I3E 2014, held in Sanya, China, in November 2014. The 32 revised full papers presented were carefully reviewed and selected from 42 submissions. They are organized in the following topical sections: digital services, digital society, and digital business.

This handbook introduces a methodical approach and pragmatic concept for the planning and design of changeable factories that act in strategic alliances to supply the ever-changing needs of the global market. In the first part, the change drivers of manufacturing enterprises and the resulting new challenges are considered in detail with focus on an appropriate change potential. The second part concerns the design of the production facilities and systems on the factory levels work place, section, building and site under functional, organisational, architectural and strategic aspects keeping in mind the environmental, health and safety aspects including corporate social responsibility. The third part is dedicated to the planning and design method that is based on a synergetic interaction of process and space. The accompanying project management of the planning and construction phase and the facility management for the effective utilization of the built premises close the book. The Authors Prof. em. Dr.-Ing. Dr. mult. h.c. Hans-Peter Wiendahl has been director for 23 years of the Institute of Factory planning and Logistics at the Leibniz University of Hannover in Germany. Prof. Dipl.-Ing. Architekt BDA Jürgen Reichardt is Professor at the Muenster school of architecture and partner of RMA Reichardt – Maas – Associate Architects in Essen Germany. Prof. Dr.-Ing. habil. Peter Nyhuis is Managing Director of the Institute of Factory Planning and Logistics at the Leibniz University of Hannover in Germany.

In this work the author endeavors to treat “Danwei” system as a special and highly organized form of community and sets about his study from the perspectives of “Danwei–community’s” change and urban community reconstruction. When it comes to the construction and development of urban communities in contemporary China, academic circles at home often attempt to unravel its intimate and indissoluble connection with “Danwei” system and seek to lay emphasis upon the great complexity of their interactive relationship with each other. However, academic circles generally incorporate “Danwei” system taken as a national system as well as a universal institution into their fields of research, whereas they rarely enter into a critical examination of the variations in its multiplicity of specific denotations by taking account of such variables as space, region and culture, nor do they show much concern about the existence of different types of “Danwei”. In view of the foregoing difficulties in which the study of “Danwei” system gets entangled, this study attempts to accomplish the following main purposes. Firstly, this study shall introduce such a variable as locality into the research on “Danwei-community” by starting off from the research perspectives of “Danwei-community’s” origin, formation and change. Secondly, several super-large industrial communities in the old industrial bases shall be chosen as classic cases in illustration of long-standing complications and entanglements enmeshed in this study. And thirdly, it seeks to reveal the mode and experience of urban community development against a background of “Danwei” system reform so that by gaining a full understanding of as well as making an in-depth analysis of their rich implications we can enrich the theory of urban community construction in the Chinese context and hence grapple successfully with some theoretical problems confronting urban community reconstruction against a background of “Danwei-community” change, which shall eventually bring about a smooth transition of “Danwei” society. This book will assuredly open an exceptional window to the transition of China from traditional to modern society, the transition of Chinese society from planned economy to market economy, and the change track of the interplay between the Chinese government and modern Chinese society after the founding of New China in 1949, at the present time and even in the foreseeable future.

The Future of Airplane Factory: Digitally Optimized Intelligent Airplane Factory defines the architecture, key building blocks, and roadmap for actualizing a future airplane factory (FAF) that is digitally optimized for intelligent airplane assembly. They fit and integrate with other FAF building blocks that aggregate to a Digitally Optimized Intelligent Airplane Factory (DOIAF). The word "intelligent" refers to the ability of a system to make right decisions and take right action in the highly dynamic and fluid environment of the modern airplane manufacturing space. The event-driven dynamics inherent in the complexity of this environment drive the need for expert knowledge which resides in intelligence systems incorporating the experience of experts. Expert knowledge need not be smart, brilliant, or possess genius as long as the outcomes are derived from right decisions resulting in right actions-applied rapidly to sustain an optimized factory enterprise. Complete factory enterprise visibility requires a higher order of decision capability that current operating systems do not have. A highly visible factory collects and displays data and information as it happens-at a rate beyond the ability of humans and current systems to analyze, process, decide, and act upon. Expert systems are constructed to present humans with right decisions in the form of optimal choices for right actions by incorporating the knowledge of experts into the logic for the decision. Structured Knowledge-Based Expert Systems (SKBES) are incorporated in this book and defined as a critical component for full enterprise actionable visibility. The power of the Digitally Optimized Intelligent Airplane Factory not only is found in its ability to unify the factory, reduce touch labor, improve quality, and streamline throughput but it also enables a significant reduction in above-the-shop-floor support and management. Such an ecosystem frees the human to focus on the complexity of interpersonal responsibilities. If the use of a DOIAF can be viewed as a holistic mechanism, then the human can be the agent engaging with that mechanism; improving negotiations for pricing, contracts, or other person-to-person events that require instinct and relationship.

There are plenty of books that show you how to write applications in a specific language. They explain the nuts and bolts of the syntax and the use of the tools to build applications with the latest features and functionality available. There are also a number of fine books that show you how to be "a computer consultant." But there are a whole host of issues specific to the business of writing, delivering and supporting custom software systems. This is the only book that will take you on a step-by-step tour of the entire process. "DevGuide 3", with over 150 pages of new material, shows you how to do "The Other 90%" of the work involved in producing custom software applications.