Modern manufacturing has to deal with global competition, in which customers have high purchasing power. Production efficiency and rapid response to customer demand are dominant conditions for enterprises to stay successful. Reconfigurable Manufacturing Systems (RMSs) are designed to have a modular architecture …

Competitive advantage is probably the most popular business concept today (Mooney, 2007). This article aims to investigate critically the discourse on competitive advantage, as expressed by business literature, by locating its meanings in the public higher education sector. This research reveals that …

Professional interventions are rarely successful when used to “normalize” the behaviour of a disruptive group of Dutch-Caribbean migrants. Surprisingly a large number of professionals have not succeeded in assimilating a relatively small group. Foucault developed a means of analysing power mechanisms, …

Industries involved in creating, producing, commercializing and distributing content find themselves facing major change because of digitization. These include the music and film sectors, and for over a decade now also the games sector. Digitization is changing the face of the content industry, with …

Individual cities across the globe are profiling themselves as attractive cities. Their aim is to attract groups such as tourists, new inhabitants, businesses and students; that will result in a growth of economy (Kotler, Economic development, 1993, p. 75). City marketing is an excellent tool to use …

The adaptive approach to thermal comfort has gained unprecedented exposure and rising status recently among the thermal comfort community at the apparent expense of the heat balance approach for the evaluation of naturally ventilated buildings. The main appeal of this adaptive approach lies in its simplicity …

The way that innovation is currently done requires a new research methodology that enables co-creation and frequent, iterative evaluation in realworld settings. This paper describes the employment of the living lab methodology that corresponds to this need. Particularly, this paper presents the way that …

In order to receive a licence to produce, poultry farmers have to take into account societal demands, among others: animal welfare, healthy working conditions for the workers and landscape quality. A way to reach a combination of these goals is to create a design for the poultry house and outdoor run. …

Contribution to exhibition Qua Art - Qua Science. The artist Joost Verhagen represents spaces in an original way by using colours, texture and forms. He invokes thoughts and feelings with his works of art. The concept of ambient intelligence also deals with space, but especially with spaces that are …

This chapter discusses the concept of sensitive environments. Sensitive environments are essentially spatial and public areas like streets or school that are provided with an intelligent infrastructure that collects sensory information of users while they move and interact. Such sensitive environments …