This report summarises the findings of a study on the growth factors and growth prospects of the business services (BS)industry, applying an internationally comparative perspective. The report untangles factors behind the extraordinary growth of the BS industry during last decade,comparing it...

After a characterization of the cost-oriented assembly line balancing problem it will be shown that by loading the stations maximally the cost-oriented optimum can be missed. Instead of loading the stations maximally the criterion two-stations-rule a has to be used. For generating optimal...

This paper is focused on the solution quality and computing time requirements of heuristic methods for cost-oriented assembly line balancing. It is based on a recent paper (Amen, International Journal of Production Economics 68 (2000), which describes in detail the solution process of existent...

This paper is concerned with cost-oriented assembly line balancing. This problem occurs especially in the final assembly of automotives, consumer durables or personal computers, where production is still very labour- intensive, and where the wage rates depend on the requirements and...

Bilateral contracts are important risk-hedging instruments constituting a major component in the portfolios held by many electric power market participants. However, bilateral contract negotiation is a complicated process because it involves risk management, strategic bargaining, and...

Open Source Software (OSS) expresses the idea that developers should be able to license the publication of their software in a manner permitting anyone to freely use, modify, and distribute the software. Today OSS is widely used in the software industry, such as for language development tools...

Power systems have distinctive features that greatly complicate the development of auction designs. This study reviews the theory and practice of auction design as it relates specifically to U.S. restructured wholesale power markets, i.e., centrally-administered wholesale power markets with...

This study uses a dynamic 5-bus test case implemented via the AMES Wholesale Power Market Test Bed to investigate strategic capacity withholding by generation companies (GenCos) in restructured wholesale power markets under systematically varied demand conditions. The strategic behaviors of the...

In this tutorial paper, different AC and DC optimal power flow (OPF) models are presented to help understand the derivation of Locational Marginal Prices (LMPs) in restructured wholesale power markets. As a byproduct of this analysis, the paper provides a rigorous explanation of the basic LMP...

Wholesale power markets around the world are currently undergoing a controversial restructuring of their architecture and rules of operation. Some commentators have argued that restructuring has not produced the intended improvements in market efficiency while at the same time it has complicated...