Stephane Gagnon

Resource‐based competition and the new operations strategy

Argues that operations strategy research should integrate recent theories from the resource‐based view of strategic management. Going beyond the model of Hayes and Wheelwright, this would call for the end of the market‐based view, where operations strategy merely follows the directions set by the marketing function. It would emphasize the dynamic development and leveraging of competencies and capabilities in order to set new business diversification strategies. A new paradigm of operations strategy could emerge, where “management fundamentals” such as learning and culture would be actively integrated within operations, in order to become key sources of competitive advantage. Accordingly, the operations function could progressively: take the leadership of strategy formulation; create “portfolios” of optional capabilities for strategies of organizational agility; and implement world‐class practices more effectively through evolutionary strategic frameworks.

BPM and SOA: synergies and challenges

While BPM and SOA have evolved independently, there is an inevitable symbiotic relationship between them. As well, a SOA can be developed using various service formats, whether unique Web Services, orchestrated services using the Business Process Execution Language (BPEL), or other service providers. A SOA promotes the creation of highly accessible, loosely coupled, discrete business services. For greatest reach, BPM consumes and leverages such services, tying them together to solve and streamline broad business challenges. Not surprisingly however, there are certain considerations while designing a SOA to support BPM. Certain service designs align well within a BPM solution or strategy, while others can cause significant headaches for an overall BPM solution. Conversely, SOA with BPM layered on top can become an entirely different value proposition as compared to SOA alone. As a backbone for SOA components, BPM can integrate important functionalities to extend the value of the SOA investment. Similarly, BPM can provide a platform for SOA service management. We will explore the interdependencies between BPM and SOA, and will provide practical guidance on how to make each implementation mutually supportive, extending the reach and value of each. We will also discuess whether SOA alone can provide the business service functionality required for BPM solutions of the future, or if other complementary architectures may also have a role to play.

The Next Web Apps Architecture: Challenges for SaaS Vendors

Many vendors dream about making it big in the cloud, but licensing Web apps is a fiercely competitive market with rampant risks. Software as a service must overcome several challenges to prove itself as a successful business model.

Strategic challenges in developing electric vehicles: a literature review

Within the next ten years, radical innovation in electric vehicles (EVs) will cause profound changes in the way automakers develop their products. The prevailing lean product development approach (LPDA), based on concurrent engineering (CE), may well be modified substantially to fit with EVs high technology content, high innovation rate and high uncertainty context. In addition, the fact that a large part of EVs technologies must come from outside the auto industry is another challenge in itself. Our literature review leads us to conclude: first, that strategy formulation should be driven by the emergence of a dominant design; second, we find that organisational change efforts will have to be focused more directly upon the management of knowledge; third, we finally argue that capabilities development will occur only if a number of adjustments are made to the LPDA, especially regarding suppliers, leaders, people and tools.

A trace abstraction approach for host-based anomaly detection

High false alarm rates and execution times are among the key issues in host-based anomaly detection systems. In this paper, we investigate the use of trace abstraction techniques for reducing the execution time of anomaly detectors while keeping the same accuracy. The key idea is to represent system call traces as traces of kernel module interactions and use the resulting abstract traces as input to known anomaly detection techniques, such as STIDE (the Sequence Time-Delay Embedding) and HMM (Hidden Markov Models). We performed experiments on three datasets, namely, the traditional UNM dataset as well as two modern datasets, Firefox and ADFA-LD. The results show that kernel module traces can lead to similar or fewer false alarms and considerably smaller execution times compared to raw system call traces for host-based anomaly detection systems.

Information technology strategy for a patient-oriented, lean, and agile integration of hospital pharmacy and medical equipment supply chains

Both public and private hospitals are increasingly under pressure to reduce costs while improving patient care across all medical disciplines and departments. Hospitals must become patient-oriented, lean, and agile in order to properly realign and integrate health care processes, helping to reconcile efficiency imperatives with patient needs and hospital mission. One of the highest potential for improvement can be found in supply chain management (SCM) practices for medical supplies, which often represent more than 40% of a hospital’s operating budget. We report on 3 case studies of business process management and reengineering projects, relying on advanced information technology, focused on the supply chains of two major urban hospitals, involving

Emerging Markets Reward Risk: Empirical Evidence from MENA during 2008 Financial Crisis

2 million in minimum stocks for drug inventory. Case study 1 deals with an in-depth analysis of SCM practices around a key medical asset in pharmaceutical supply, i.e. infusion pumps. Case study 2 builds upon the findings of case 1, and proposes an radio-frequency identification solution to support a new hospital-wide asset location process and system, aiming for just-in-time availability of infusion pumps for critical drugs administration. Case study 3 complements cases 1 and 2 by analysing the feasibility of integrating the various components of the hospital pharmacy inventories, which in turn could be integrated to asset location systems. Our 3 case studies lead us to a number of conclusions on how hospitals can develop a patient-oriented, agile, and lean perspectives and practices, as well as ensure the proper integration of patient needs within optimised supply chains.

Are we ready for the service oriented architecture

The relationship between risk and return in Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region stock markets is estimated during 2008 international financial crisis; including Jordan, KSA, Morocco, and Turkey. For comparison purpose, stock markets from Europe are also examined; including, FTSE (UK), CAC40 (France), DAX (Germany), and the Swiss market. The empirical findings show evidence that; contrary to European stock markets; MENA region stock markets generally reward risk during 2008 financial crisis. This result is important for international asset managers and investors to consider investing in emergent markets from MENA region.

A Sequential Probabilistic System for Bankruptcy Data Classification

This Industry Track Panel poses a strategic question, Are We Ready for the Service Oriented Architecture (SOA)? We discuss this issue from both vendor and adopter perspectives in the company of 5 IT Executives. In particular, we go beyond the discussion of SOA standards as such, and try to assess the importance of this approach from the point of view of related technologies, such as Business Process Management, Enterprise Architecture, Configuration Management, Business Rules Systems, and Open Source Solutions.