Purpose
– The aim of this study is to investigate the competitiveness of the selected services in Turkey in comparison with the EU and the selected EU countries based on three comparative advantage indices.
Design/methodology/approach
– Three different revealed comparative advantage indices were utilised in a combined way. Import and export figures of six service sectors were taken into account for the period of 2000-2010. The selected services are: transportation, travel, construction, financial services and insurance, communications and IT services, and personal, cultural and recreational services. Consistency of the results was achieved through correlation analyses.
Findings
– Strong comparative advantages exist for Turkey in construction, tourism and transportation sectors. Although Turkish financial and insurance and communication and computer-information sectors appear to be weak compared to EU, there is a substantial potential for improvement.
Originality/value
– A detailed comparative investigation of services' competitiveness for Turkey was provided. The policy decision makers in Turkey and in Europe's selected countries can utilise the findings and recommendations of the study for projection of the investigated sectors.
There is a tough competition in the furniture sector like other sectors. Along with the varying product range, production system should also be renewed on a regular basis and the production costs should be kept under control. In this study, spring mattress manufacturing line of a furniture manufacturing company is analyzed. The company wants to increase its production output with new investments. The objective is to find the bottlenecks in production line in order to balance the semi-finished material flow. These bottlenecks are investigated and several different scenarios are tested to improve the current manufacturing system. The problem with a main theme based on the elimination of the bottleneck is solved using Goldratt and Cox’s theory of constraints with a simulation based heuristic method. Near optimal alternatives are determined by system models built in Arena 13.5 simulation software. Results show that approximately 46 % capacity enhancements with 2 buffer stocks have increased average production by 88.8 %.
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