The efficient management of natural and man-made disasters typically represents a major information exchange and coordination challenge, as in most countries a number of organizations are involved in all phases of the disaster management cycle. In this article, the authors introduce the approach of the Austrian national project INKA, which aims at improving civil-military interoperability between the Austrian Armed Forces and the corresponding federal state level institutions through the introduction of IT-supported information exchange without media discontinuities. Apart from providing a comprehensive overview of their interdisciplinary research methodology, the authors present a number of important results which are based on a detailed qualitative assessment of stakeholder requirements. Furthermore, they provide first insights into designing a valuable IT-platform for civil-military interoperability in Austria.
PurposeThe new extremely demanding environment forces the enterprises to use more sophisticated tools/methodologies. Strategy alignment and modelling and simulation are some of those tools/methodologies that are growing in their complexity in order to respond to the new challenges. Applying the principles of strategy alignment to modelling and simulation leads to creation of vertical hybrid simulation models. This paper aims to discuss these issues.Design/methodology/approachThis paper shows the justification of building a hybrid simulation model for a complex scenario in a production example. In general, system dynamics (SD) is used for simulation of strategic issues and discrete event simulation (DES) is used for simulation on the operational level. Attempts to build holistic models only with SD or only with DES usually end in design of simplified models. This paper shows an approach how to combine SD with DES in order to get better models than using either modelling paradigms exclusively.FindingsThe results so far have shown that this approach is justified (meaning that it gives more accurate and reliable results with reasonable efforts) in even relatively simple cases.Practical implicationsThis kind of modelling and simulation can generally help the (industrial) engineers in optimization of different problems like optimization of the warehousing space, batches, manpower, etc. holistically and with higher accuracy.Originality/valueAlthough several researches on hybrid models have been reported (treating only very few industries), they very rarely tackle the justification of the implementation of such models. This paper justifies the hybrid approach through an example of optimization of the sales force in the pharmaceutical industry.
The availability of adequate and sustainable information systems has become one of the most important success factors for operations in safety critical environments, where life and safety of people is at stake. In this paper the development and the implementation of an information system for public safety is presented. In a more than two-year project various information services for the Austrian Federal Ministry of Interior where conceptualized, tested, and fully integrated in their IT-system environment. The presented case study shows an IT-service development procedure following a dedicated design pattern for systems architecture, design principles aiming for a sustainable service design, and project results in the form of operationally used information services supporting an organization operating in a safety critical environment.
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