This edited volume presents new insights and challenges in the field of electric mobility in relation to new mobility and infrastructure concepts as well as to renewable energies. The book covers the socio-economic view on the topic as well as technical aspects and thus offers valuable knowledge for future business models. It primarily addresses practitioners and researchers in the field but may also be of use to graduate students.
The innovation economy sets new standards for global business and requires efficient innovation management to plan, execute and evaluate innovation activities, establish innovative capability and coordinate resources and capacities for innovation on an intra- and inter-organizational level. Moreover, communication of innovation is one essential impact factor of innovation success due to successful launches of innovations into markets, establishment of stakeholder relationships, and strengthened corporate reputation in the long-run. Consequently, the portfolio of communication activities for innovations has to be mastered by a company or collaborative network equal to the innovation portfolio. Thus, management of innovation and innovation communication on a strategic level play an important role in business nowadays. This new book concentrates on new approaches and methods for strategies and communications for innovations. As one part of the book, integrated perspectives on strategy and communication for innovation intend to bridge the gap between innovation management and communication management. This new book shall contribute to management science and answer current question in business. It provides cutting-edge information and offers a knowledge source for researchers, students, and business representatives who design, implement and manage innovation and innovation communication / marketing of innovation.
The scope of this study is to assess the performance of cold chains for fruit and vegetables by analyzing causes and effects of cold chain ruptures. It is based on a literature review on cold chain related publications collected in scientific databases and includes reports and papers published between 1969 and 2010. Weak points were analyzed and the implications for the management of cold chains examined. Major areas of concern were for example the lack of adequately skilled staff, careless physical handling of the produce, and the deficient management of product and information flow. This report contributes to the understanding of cold chain ruptures and helps managers in cold chain logistics to adapt the supply chain configuration to the challenges encountered.
One of the great challenges in flexible production and supply chains is the availability of necessary information at any time and any place. As a result of increasing dynamical and structural complexity of structures and processes in production it is often impossible to make all necessary information available to a central instance in real time and to perform appropriate measures of control in terms of a defined target system. A fast and flexible adaptation to changing basic conditions ought to be achieved by establishing autonomous logistics processes. In this context several fundamental questions concerning autonomous cooperating logistics processes were investigated: The identification problem: What are autonomous logistics processes and how do they differ from conventionally managed processes? The description problem: Which changes will autonomy cause in order processing? One of the first results is a definition for the term autonomy for applications in engineering science. The constituent characteristics of this definition were considered within the development of the catalogue of criteria in order to describe autonomous logistic processes. Regarding the modelling of autonomous processes, first requirements for modelling methods were specified. To validate the research results, a production-logistic shop-floor scenario and a practical scenario based on the real business processes of an automobile terminal were developed. Simulation studies concerning autonomously controlled allocation of parking areas document comprehensive opportunities for improvement.
