This book provides comprehensive and concise definitions of risk pooling and risk-pooling methods, a straightforward statistical explanation, and a value-chain oriented framework for analyzing risk-pooling methods. Risk pooling mitigates demand and lead time uncertainty in logistics and supply chain management. The author also provides readers with a downloadable computerized decision support tool to compare and choose appropriate risk-pooling methods and to apply them in companies. Studen...

APPROACHES TO QUANTITATIVE RESEARCH is designed for both undergraduate and postgraduate business students who are planning to undertake a research project or dissertation. Due to a lack of formal research training and experience, students can find completing research projects a daunting task. This, coupled with a fear of statistics, can culminate in quite an overwhelming experience for many students. Therefore, APPROACHES TO QUANTITATIVE RESEARCH takes a practical approach to quantitative ...

Emphasizing practical understanding over the technicalities of specific algorithms, this elegant textbook is an accessible introduction to the field of optimization, focusing on powerful and reliable convex optimization techniques. Students and practitioners will learn how to recognize, simplify, model and solve optimization problems - and apply these principles to their own projects. A clear and self-contained introduction to linear algebra demonstrates core mathematical concepts in a way...

Why does the World Need—Excel Data Analysis, Modeling, and Simulation? When spreadsheets ?rst became widely available in the early 1980s, it spawned a revolution in teaching. What previously could only be done with arcane software and large scale computing was now available to the common-man, on a desktop. Also, before spreadsheets, most substantial analytical work was done outside the classroom where the tools were; spreadsheets and personal computers moved the work into the classroom. No...

Throughout the book, theoretical foundations necessary for understanding Electronic Commerce (EC) are presented, ranging from consumer behavior to the economic theory of competition. Furthermore, this book presents the most current topics relating to EC as described by a diversified team of experts in a variety of fields, including a senior vice president of an e-commerce-related company. The authors provide website resources, numerous exercises, and extensive references to supplement the ...

Data mining is the process of extracting hidden patterns from data, and it’s commonly used in business, bioinformatics, counter-terrorism, and, increasingly, in professional sports. First popularized in Michael Lewis’ best-selling Moneyball: The Art of Winning An Unfair Game, it is has become an intrinsic part of all professional sports the world over, from baseball to cricket to soccer. While an industry has developed based on statistical analysis services for any given sport, or...

The present book provides an enterprise-wide guide for anyone interested in pursuing analytic methods in order to compete effectively. It supplements more general texts on statistics and data mining by providing an introduction from leading practitioners in business analytics and real case studies of firms using advanced analytics to gain a competitive advantage in the marketplace. In the era of “big data” and competing analytics, this book provides practitioners applying business analytic...

Since research is best learned by doing, this book emphasizes a hands-on, do-it yourself approach. The readers have many opportunities to see how business researches affect and support management decision. The book used a case study approach for all the chapters with interactive videos. The book gave emphasis to quantitative data analysis using a software program, IBM SPSS 20.0. The data analysis chapters illustrate in detail each step in running the software programs. The software program...

Nearly everyone knows K-means algorithm in the fields of data mining and business intelligence. But the ever-emerging data with extremely complicated characteristics bring new challenges to this "old" algorithm. This book addresses these challenges and makes novel contributions in establishing theoretical frameworks for K-means distances and K-means based consensus clustering, identifying the "dangerous" uniform effect and zero-value dilemma of K-means, adapting right measures for cluster ...

This book covers important issues related to managing supply chain risks from various perspectives. Supply chains today are vulnerable to disruptions with a significant impact on firms’ business and performance. The aim of supply chain risk management is to identify the potential sources of risks and implement appropriate actions in order to mitigate supply chain disruptions.This book presents a set of models, frameworks, strategies, and analyses that are essential for managing sup...

This book constitutes revised selected papers from the 5th International Conference on Operations Research and Enterprise Systems, ICORES 2016, held in Rome, Italy, in February 2016.The 14 papers presented in this volume were carefully reviewed and selection from a total of 75 submissions. They are organized in topical sections named: methodologies and technologies; and applications.

A close look at the main developments in IT, business processes and offshore outsourcing. This book studies these topics in both theory and practice, exploring the rising prominence of outsourcing with a multi-dimensional, contextual perspective.