Graham Coates

Understanding and profitably managing customer loyalty.

Purpose – The purpose of the paper is to draw together the salient issues surrounding customer loyalty and customer relationship management (CRM) into a single coherent discussion. Various schools of academic thought are examined. The paper concludes with practical implications for managers.Design/methodology/approach – The literature surrounding customer loyalty, customer satisfaction, effective CRM and managing loyalty in a profitable manner are all reviewed. The paper allows managers to consider a wide range of material in the context of their business.Findings – The need for businesses to retain customers is an important issue in todays global marketplace. To retain customers, a business must forge loyal and long‐term relationships with profitable customers. Reasons why customers leave a company are discussed, and preventative strategies are considered. Loyalty schemes are considered and their relative merits examined.Practical implications – A key implication of this paper is the need to focus atten...

Agent-based simulation for large-scale emergency response: A survey of usage and implementation

When attempting to determine how to respond optimally to a large-scale emergency, the ability to predict the consequences of certain courses of action in silico is of great utility. Agent-based simulations (ABSs) have become the de facto tool for this purpose; however, they may be used and implemented in a variety of ways. This article reviews existing implementations of ABSs for large-scale emergency response, and presents a taxonomy classifying them by usage. Opportunities for improving ABS for large-scale emergency response are identified.

Engineering management: operational design coordination

Effective engineering management is acknowledged as being fundamental to the successful operation of organizations. While traditional and contemporary approaches to operational engineering management are of great significance, there remains a need to make further advances in this field. Such advances will enable an increase in the competitiveness of an organization by contributing toward delivering quality products in shorter timescales at an acceptable cost. As such, there is a requirement for a more comprehensive and innovative approach that offers a means of improving the operational management of engineering. Existing approaches recognize coordination as an important and pervasive characteristic of operational engineering management; however, they fail to offer a consistent understanding and appreciation of the concept. This paper comprehensively identifies the key elements of operational design coordination, which will provide the basis for an improved approach to engineering management.

A multi-objective combinatorial model of casualty processing in major incident response

During the emergency response to mass casualty incidents decisions relating to the extrication, treatment and transporting of casualties are made in a real-time, sequential manner. In this paper we describe a novel combinatorial optimization model of this problem which acknowledges its temporal nature by employing a scheduling approach. The model is of a multi-objective nature, utilizing a lexicographic view to combine objectives in a manner which capitalizes on their natural ordering of priority. The model includes pertinent details regarding the stochastic nature of casualty health, the spatial nature of multi-site emergencies and the dynamic capacity of hospitals. A Variable Neighborhood Descent metaheuristic is employed in order to solve the model. The model is evaluated over a range of potential problems, with results confirming its effective and robust nature.

A practical implementation of a distributed control approach for microGrids.

Abstract Public low voltage feeders containing a mixture of several micro-sources, distributed energy storage units (ESUs) and controllable loads, which appear to the upstream distribution network as controllable entities, are known as MicroGrids. Through intelligent co-ordination of micro-generators and ESUs, coupled with demand side management techniques, MicroGrids have the potential to offer significant improvements in the commercial value and environrnental impact of installed micro-generators. Furthermore, using appropriate active control techniques, MicroGrids could potentially overcome the low voltage distribution network constraints associated with high levels of micro-generation. The reseazch described in this paper builds upon previous research carried out at Durham University, which proposed a preliminary distributed control approach for MicroGrids. The fast steps in this approach have now been implemented using agent technology on the laboratory based Experimental MicroGrid at Durham Universi...

Agent co-ordination aided distributed computational engineering design

Abstract Co-ordination is a key research area in engineering design and distributed artificial intelligence, as well as a number of other disciplines. This paper highlights the need for co-ordination within distributed computational design environments. The key characteristics of co-ordination identified are coherence, communication, task management, resource management, schedule management, and real-time support. These key characteristics are integrated within a methodology, which is realised in a multi-agent system aimed at co-ordinating distributed computational design. Co-ordination in real-time is responsive and adaptive to changes in the distributed environment, such that the computational design analysis can be performed in an efficient manner. The agent-based co-ordination system has been applied to two case studies. Firstly, to a theoretical research-based case study related to an aspect of structural analysis involved in conceptual aircraft wing design. Secondly, the system is applied to a practical industrial-based case study involving turbine blade design. In both case studies the multi-agent system enables the respective computational design analysis to be conducted in a coherent and organised fashion making more efficient use of time and resources.

A generic coordination approach applied to a manufacturing environment

This paper describes a generic coordination approach applied to the field of manufacturing engineering. The objective of the coordination mechanism with respect to this application is twofold. Firstly, it is shown that utilising the developed system can result in the efficient organisation of processes leading to a near optimum time taken to manufacture a number of artefacts. Secondly, successful operation of the system in this environment will demonstrate that the approach is generic in nature. The results already achieved using this system within a computational analysis environment supports this hypothesis.

An integrated agent-oriented approach to real-time operational design coordination

Within the engineering design community there is support for further research into the development of improved approaches to design management. Such research has lead to coordination being identified as an important and pervasive characteristic of many existing approaches (e.g., concurrent engineering and work-flow management). In this article, operational design coordination is proposed as the basis for an improved approach. This article also presents a novel integrated approach that incorporates the key elements of operational design coordination: coherence, communication, task management, resource management, schedule management, and real-time support. Through unifying these key elements, this approach provides an integrated means of managing design in a controlled and harmonious fashion. The approach also provides knowledge of the constituent techniques involved in operational design coordination, the interrelationships and dynamic interactions between them, and the knowledge used and maintained within and between them. The approach has been realized within an agent-oriented system called the Design Coordination System, which provides a systematic means of simultaneously coordinating operational management tasks and technical design tasks. To evaluate the approach, the system has been applied to an industrial case study involving the computational process of turbine blade design. This application has been shown to enable the structured undertaking of interrelated tasks by allocating and using resources of varying performance efficiency in an optimized fashion in accordance with dynamically derived schedules in a coherent, appropriate, and timely manner. This is achieved by managing tasks, their dependencies, and the information required to undertake them. In addition, the approach enables and sustains the continuous optimized use of resources by monitoring, forecasting, and disseminating resource performance efficiency. The approach facilitates dynamic scheduling and the subsequent enactment of the resulting schedules. Decision making for rescheduling is also incorporated within the approach such that it is only performed as and when appropriate. If rescheduling is performed, it is done so in parallel with task enactment such that resources continue to be utilized in an optimized manner.

Agent-based simulation of emergency response to plan the allocation of resources for a hypothetical two-site major incident

During a major incident, the emergency services work together to ensure that those casualties who are critically injured are identified and transported to an appropriate hospital as fast as possible. If the incident is multi-site and resources are limited, the efficiency of this process is compromised as the finite resources must be shared among the multiple sites. In this paper, agent-based simulation is used to determine the allocation of resources for a two-site incident which minimizes the latest hospital arrival times for critically injured casualties. Further, how the optimal resource allocation depends on the distribution of casualties across the two sites is investigated. Such application supports the use of agent-based simulation as a tool to aid emergency response.

Integrated Engineering Environments for Large Complex Products

An introduction is given to the Engineering Design Centre at the University of Newcastle upon Tyne, along with a brief explana tion of the main focus towards large made-to-order products. Three key areas of research at the Centre, which have evolved as a result of collaboration with industrial partners from various sectors of industry, are identified as (1) decision support and optimisation, (2) de sign for lifecycle, and (3) design integration and co-ordination. A summary of the unique features of large made-to-order products is then presented, which includes the need for integration and co-ordination technologies. Thus, an overview of the existing integration and co ordination technologies is presented followed by a brief explanation of research in these areas at the Engineering Design Centre. A more detailed description is then presented regarding the co-ordination aspect of research being conducted at the Engineering De sign Centre, in collaboration with the CAD Centre at the University of Strathelyde. Concurrent Engineering is acknowledged as a strategy for improving the design process, however design co-ordination is viewed as a principal requirement for its successful implementation. That is, design co-ordination is proposed as being the key to a mechanism that is able to maximise and realise any potential opportunity of concurrency. Thus, an agent-oriented approach to co-ordination is presented, which incorporates various types of agents responsible for managing their respective activities. The co-ordinated approach, which is implemented within the Design Co-ordination System, in cludes features such as resource management and monitoring, dynamic scheduling, activity direction, task enactment, and information management. An application of the Design Co-ordination System, in conjunction with a robust concept exploration tool, shows that the computational design analysis involved in evaluating many design concepts can be performed more efficiently through a co-ordinated approach.