...Taylor, Amazon.com’s Director of European Supply Chain Operations, sat in his office in Slough, United Kingdom, and pondered what changes Amazon needed to make to sustain its growth in Europe. Established in the fall of 1998 through the acquisitions of two on-line Logistics Planning & Modelling Techniques booksellers, Bookpages.co.uk in Britain and Telebuch.de in Germany, Amazon.com’s European Distribution Strategy International, comprising Amazon Europe and Amazon Japan, now Amazon Europe had developed into three strong, independently run, country-based organizations in the UK, Germany, and France. Amazon represented 35% of Amazon revenues and was the fastest growing segment of the company (see Exhibit 1). Amazon.com’s European Distribution Strategy Amazon.com’s European Distribution Strategy Amazon.com’s European Distribution Strategy Amazon.com’s European Distribution Strategy To sustain its growth, Amazon Europe faced multiple expansion Taylor felt that a lot had been accomplished since his arrival six months options: it could replicate the broad array of product lines Amazon earlier. His team had managed to standardize and improve supply offered in the US, launch new Marketplacea activities, or expand into chain processes across Europe in the areas of vendor management, other European countries. In addition, Amazon Europe had to decide sales and operations planning, customer backlogs, and inventory which of...
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...Information Systems 38 (2013) 1046–1069 Contents lists available at SciVerse ScienceDirect Information Systems journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/infosys Version management for business process schema evolution Xiaohui Zhao a,n, Chengfei Liu b a b Information Systems Discipline, University of Canberra, Canberra, Australia Faculty of Information and Communication Technologies, Swinburne University of Technology, Melbourne, Australia a r t i c l e in f o abstract Article history: Received 20 October 2009 Received in revised form 22 January 2013 Accepted 28 March 2013 Recommended by M. Weske Available online 6 April 2013 The current business environment changes rapidly, dictated by user requirements and market opportunities. Organisations are therefore driven to continuously adapt their business processes to new conditions. Thus, management of business process schema evolution, particularly process version control, is in great demand to capture the dynamics of business process schema changes. This paper aims to facilitate version control for business process schema evolution, with an emphasis on version compatibility, co-existence of multiple versions and dynamic version shifts. A multi-level versioning approach is established to specify dependency between business process schema evolutions, and a novel version preserving graph model is proposed to record business process schema evolutions. A set of business process schema updating...
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...Systems Research and Behavioral Science Syst. Res. 15, 365–372 (1998) & Research Paper Evolution and Thermodynamics: The New Paradigm{ Jeffrey S. Wicken* Department of Biochemistry, Penn State University, Erie, Pennsylvania, USA This paper introduces the new evolutionary paradigm born of the synthesis of Darwinism and thermodynamics. It also introduces this volume, whose theme is the integration of life and social process with physical law. The sense of this expansion is as follows: Darwinism has come under intense scrutiny in recent years, from several fields. These range from statistical mechanics to developmental biology. In this paper, I will discuss the direction the revision of the Darwinian program is taking through thermodynamics, which is the science of irreversible process and self-organization. My objective is to show the coherence of life with the rest of nature. # 1998 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Keywords evolution; emergence; thermodynamics INTRODUCTION Evolutionary theory is presently undergoing the kind of massive conceptual restructuring that marked the two great scientific revolutions of our century: relativity and quantum mechanics. Like those two revolutions, the one occurring in evolutionary theory has tremendous practical and epistemological implications for understanding, and dealing with, nature. Much is dissonant in the Darwinian world. The ecological relationality of life had, from the time of Aristotle, suggested a functional order of nature...
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...Enterprise resource planning in the global marketplace, advantages and limitations Name: Michael Yin Course: OPM-5050 Professor: R. Levary Abstract Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) is one of the major issues the modern-day entrepreneurial world. This paper discusses ERP in details and extensively. The paper introduces ERP by giving background information, discusses the evolution of ERP systems, analyses the advantages and limitations of ERP systems, and concludes by giving a summary of the important aspects of ERP discussed. Enterprise resource planning in the global marketplace, advantages and limitations Introduction The entrepreneurial scene and global market have become more vibrant in the recent years, and for this reason, there have been debates and concerns on how enterprises and companies should enhance their competitiveness and agility. The greatest concern in the business world is profitability, and in accomplishing this, enterprises have put in place strategies and measures that gradually help make strides towards the desired direction. Another primary focus of enterprises is to see an improvement of their business agility and to accomplish this, enhancements have been made including efficiency of production, product and service quality, as well as response time to consumers. A fundamental aspect of the accomplishment of the mentioned enhancements and objectives is information technology. As much as its installation and implementation in enterprises is costly...
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...Chapter 1 Evolution of Human REsouRcE managEmEnt and Human REsouRcE infoRmation systEms The Role of InfoRmaTIon Technology Mohan ThiTe, Michael J. Kavanagh, and RichaRd d. Johnson EDITORS’ NOTE The purpose of this chapter is to provide an introduction to the fields of human resource management (HRM) and information technology (IT) and to the combination of these two fields into human resource information systems (HRIS). The history of the field of HRM and the impact of computer technology on HRM will be covered, as well as the advent of using a human resource information system and the subsequent effects on both HR and IT professionals. The different types of HR activities will be discussed as well as the different types of information systems used in HRIS. A central focus of this chapter is the use in managerial decision making of results and reports from an HRIS. The development of the HRIS field has been seen to have a significant impact on the emergence of strategic human resource management (Strategic HRM), as is discussed in this chapter. This first chapter will lay the groundwork for the remainder of this book, and, consequently, it is important to understand thoroughly the concepts and ideas it presents. This chapter contains definitions for a number of terms in common use in the HRM, IT, and HRIS fields. (Note that a glossary defining these terms is also provided at the back of this book.) The central themes 2 Chapter 1 Evolution of Human Resource Management...
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...STUDY ON EVOLUTION OF COMPUTERS STUDY ON EVOLUTION OF SOFTWARE Introduction Computer software, or just software, is any set of machine-readable instructions that directs a computer's processor to perform specific operations. The term is used to contrast with computer hardware; the physical objects carry out the instructions. Hardware and software require each other and neither has any value without the other. The first theory about software was proposed by Alan Turing in his 1935 essay Computable numbers with an application to the Entscheidungsproblem (decision problem). Colloquially, the term is often used to mean application software. In computer science and software engineering, software is all information processed by computer system, programs and data. The academic fields studying software are computer science and software engineering. The types of software include web pages developed in languages and frameworks like PHP, Perl, JSP or ASP.NET and desktop applications like OpenOffice.org, Microsoft Word developed in languages like C, C++, Objective-C, Java, C#, or Smalltalk. Application software usually runs on underlying software operating systems such as Linux or Microsoft Windows. Software (or firmware) is also used in video games and for the configurable parts of the logic systems of automobiles, televisions, and other consumer electronics. Software evolution is the term used in software engineering (specifically software...
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...CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION TO OPERATIONS MANAGEMENT KEY IDEAS 1. Three Basic Business Functions. Operations is that part of an organization responsible for the creation of value in the form of goods and/or services, ideally balancing the supply of these items with customer demand. Operations works in conjunction with the complementary business functions of finance, responsible for securing and allocating the financial resources necessary to maintain the organization, and marketing, responsible for evaluating and enhancing customer demand. 2. Input, Output and Value-added. Any operation can be described as a set of inputs (i.e. labor and materials) that are transformed into a set of outputs (i.e. goods and/or services), as illustrated in Figure 1.4 of page 6 of the textbook. The essence of operations management is value-added, or the degree to which the value of all outputs of an operation exceed the value of its inputs. 3. Goods vs. Services. Goods imply tangible products, those that can handled and/or stored in some fashion, such as manufactured items or food. Services are intangible products, such as health care or education. Material goods often require a distribution system to get them into the hands of consumers, while service industries tend to deal directly with consumers. Other important points on which the production of goods and services differ are summarized in Table 1.3 on page 9 of the textbook. 4. Process Management. A process is any action involved...
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...Introduction Health care information systems (HCIS) have evolved so much in the last two decades. The evolution has helped transform the way administration and health service providers store and access data. The emergence of personal computers and the internet has helped change the physician workplace and the ease in which information is stored and utilized (Beaver, 2003). The last two decades have been periods of significant change as the health systems have increased in efficiency, decreased costs, increased the quality of care and improved channels of communication. Comparison between a current physician office and 20 years ago The Obama administration placed health reforms in place that have neccesitateed change of physician operations today. Health organizations can now purchase health insurance over the internet. Many health care providers are diverting their attention towards concierge and urgent care services in order to serve the rising demand for health services. Concierge care and critical care organizations have led to the integration of HCIS and improved quality, patient-centered care, assurance standards, easier reimbursement and easier control of costs (Koutsouris & Lazakidou, 2014). Urgent care is defined as offering ambulatory services outside the confines of a hospital. 80% of health organizations in the country today use technology for clinical systems while the other 20% have placed measures in place to do in the coming years (Koutsouris & Lazakidou, 2014)...
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...strategy and its evolution 7 II. DISCUSSION 9 A. The evolutions in the area of operations management 9 B. The new goals of Operations Management 10 CONCLUSION 11 APPENDIX 12 INTRODUCTION Operations management includes the conception of a product; the planning of the material, financial and human resources, and the recording and the control of the production activities. It consists in finding the best approach to organize the supply, the production and the distribution of services and goods. The purpose is to optimize the processes of added value, by minimizing the costs (in the investments and in the operations) improving continually the flows from the supplier to the customer in order to satisfy them. The principle of Operation Management was created in 1776 by Adam Smith. It is used by companies since its creation; they followed its evolutions by adapting the new methods of OM within their business. The aim of this essay is to discover and analyze the different sights of operations management, its evolutions and significant changes during the last decade and define what are the new objectives of OM through one sector: the retail industry and more particularly across Marks & Spencer. Finding out the techniques of management that M&S uses, evaluating them and see the future operations they intend to set up. First we are going to present Marks & Spenser, the historical context of the firm, its strategy and its evolution in the field of Operation Management;...
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...MANAGEMENT ACCOUNTING: AN OVERVIEW Learning Objectives Distinguish between managerial & financial accounting. Understand the evolution of management accounting. Explain about the IFAC model. Understand how managers can use accounting information to implement strategies. Explain about Relevant Lost & Relevant Regained. 2 Learning Objectives Distinguish between managerial & financial accounting. Understand the evolution of management accounting. Explain about the IFAC model. Understand how managers can use accounting information to implement strategies. Explain about Relevant Lost & Relevant Regained. 3 Accounting System (accumulates financial and managerial accounting data) Managerial Accounting Information for decision making, and control of an organization’s operations. Internal Users Financial Accounting Published financial statements and other financial reports. External Users Managerial Accounting Users of information Managers within company Regulation Financial Accounting Interested outside parties Required. Must comform to Not required because for internal GAAP which is regulated by use only FASB and SEC. Basic accounting system plus Almost exclusively from the Source of Data various other sources basic accounting system Reports often focus on subunits. Reports focus on the enterprise Nature of Reports Based on a combination of in its entirety. Based on and Procedures...
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...Linux is an open source operating system. Considering the difficulties and risks in developing an operating system, is it surprising that Linux has been as successful as it has? What makes it so successful, despite these difficulties? Write a short paper answering this question. OpenSorce Operating systems:- Opensource operating systems are the operating systems that are designed and licenced in such a way that they are free to use, free to change the os and can be distributed for free.the source code used to design the os is made free to public so that people can change and modify depending on their needs and can create their own custom versions and re entitiled to be mostly free the examples of the open source are linux operating systems like Ubuntu,Free BSD.The contrary of the opensource os are the regular copyrighted os and software where source code is not entitiled to be realsed and the os is completely copyrighted with the publisher like the windows and macos. Developping an Operating systems. An operating system is a software that will interact with the hardware resources of the computer and effectively use them inorder to input from the user/interface and get the desired results. Developping the early OS began in early 1950’s where the initial code is written in assembly language but soon after the evolution of C language most of the design for early unix is done in C language and the evolution lead to the opensource linux kernel which may or may not...
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...identity theft and compromising of sensitive information has increased in the last decade. Cybercrimes have evolved and intensified as hackers develop and supply exploits that can be used as tools for stealing valuable information from financial institution such as banks. Motivations and Evolution Since the evolution of hacking, the skills and creativity of hackers have matured and the motivation behind hacking has been revolutionized from the origins to its current form. Oriyano & Gregg (2011) opines that in the 1960’s, the first generation of hackers that emerged were technology enthusiasts who created the building blocks for technological advancement. These hackers were motivated by intellectual curiosity and entertainment (Oriyano & Gregg, 2011). However, Oriyano & Gregg (2011) argues that the negative connotations that society identifies hackers began in the 1980’s in which they became computer criminals. Hacker’s activities were predominantly theft of services motivated by financial gains or personal gratification (Oriyano & Gregg, 2011). Subsequently, numerous hackers did not seem satisfied with the benign exploration of computer systems simply to learn about their internal operations as the hackers were now interested in individual gains (Clarke, Clawson & Cordell, 2003). From the 1990’s to the present, hackers criminal pursuits have propelled from pranks to malicious DoS attacks, financial damages to numerous enterprises and a thriving business of stealing credit...
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...E-Business Evolution BIS375 November 2, 2015 E-Business Evolution The evolution of e-business started in the large spread of personal computers in the 1980’s and the commercial internet brought about in the 1990’s. The e-business spectrum refers to the implementation electronic technology in all business functions. E-business is inclusive of computers and internet for both internal and external operations as well communication and e-commerce across an organization. The e-business evolution has allowed businesses to go from storing physical paper in large filing containers to storing that data and much more in digital format on servers. The ability of organizations to electronically store and process data lets them improve both speed of information storage and processing. E-business has allowed organizations to go from manually forecasting business transactions to doing it with spreadsheets and dedicated software increasing information flow and speed to users and making the organization more efficient. The Internet has emerged as a significant aspect of today’s e-business evolution. In today’s marketplace larger companies have Internet accessibility to their goods as well services on their individual websites. The Internet will continues to change and improve, at some point even small businesses will need to acquire or develop their individual websites to be competitive in their own marketplace. The next e-business technology will be to have or acquire a mobile friendly...
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...Evolution of ERP Week 5 Individual Assignment University of Phoenix Online Mary A. Fuller CMGT 556 Dr. Manuel Torres September 9, 2012 The Evolution of Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) was developed to distribute computerized automation to several different entities of an organization to assist with problems of handling raw materials, inventory, order/data entry, and distribution. Before the evolution of ERP it was not possible for many of the functions in the past such as sales, marketing, and shipping to be done. It was impossible to integrate ERP with the capabilities of CRM whereas organizations would be able to use customer specific information to tie into a web portal for order services between a customer and a business. Integration between ERP and CRM was impossible during its earlier development. The evolution of ERP has developed into a comprehensive software activity that has extended its reach to encompass warehouses, distribution, and order/data entry. During the evolution of ERP it was made possible to integrate with CRM and ERP can now be used for marketing, sales, and the sharing of information across a web portal. The integration of ERP and CRM has made it possible for organizations to function at a reliable rate of success while accommodating entire organizations. Explanation of Evolutionary Timeline of ERP 1960s - (ERP) is born from a joint effort between J.I. Case, the manufacturer of tractors and other construction machinery, and partner...
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... In this company they use technology in operations management so they can have control of the operations, control manufactured goods and services, and to improve the plans within the organization and management functions. Technology aid in the decision making of management to provide solutions, alternatives, and should be followed to ensure the most excellent decisions are made from the information gathered. “Technology involves software, telecommunication, data base, and hardware” (Russell, Taylor, 2009). Technology allows management to have in sequence and facts to give the impression of being ahead of making a decision that can affect the organization. Information technology plays a major role in operations management in businesses today. Through its use, many businesses like that of Strike Deep Moving Consulting have come to improve their operating process, customer services, production levels, and capital. Properly managing operations within an organization is vital to a company’s success. Without adequate management, organizations will find it difficult to execute goals and meet consumer needs. Thus, the evolution of technology in operations management is constantly changing and innovating. It has made many businesses operate more efficiently by integrating software that can provide instant data on a company’s inventory, production levels, supply chain, and revenue. Additionally, through the evolution of information technology businesses today have the ability...
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