f Big data is big news, and large companies in all sectors are making significant advances in their customer relations, product selection and development and consequent profitability through using this valuable commodity. Small and medium enterprises (SMEs) have proved themselves to be slow adopters of the new technology of big data analytics and are in danger of being left behind. In Europe, SMEs are a vital part of the economy, and the challenges they encounter need to be addressed as a matter of urgency. This paper identifies barriers to SME uptake of big data analytics and recognises their complex challenge to all stakeholders, including national and international policy makers, IT, business management and data science communities.The paper proposes a big data maturity model for SMEs as a first step towards an SME roadmap to data analytics. It considers the 'state-of-the-art' of IT with respect to usability and usefulness for SMEs and discusses how SMEs can overcome the barriers preventing them from adopting existing solutions. The paper then considers management perspectives and the role of maturity models in enhancing and structuring the adoption of data analytics in an organisation. The history of total quality management is reviewed to inform the core aspects of implanting a new paradigm. The paper concludes with recommendations to help SMEs develop their big data capability and enable them to continue as the engines of European industrial and business success.

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This paper presents a high performing Discrete Artificial Bee Colony algorithm for the blocking flow shop problem with flow time criterion. To develop the proposed algorithm, we considered four strategies for the food source phase and two strategies for each of the three remaining phases (employed bees, onlookers and scouts). One of the strategies tested in the food source phase and one implemented in the employed bees phase are new. Both have been proved to be very effective for the problem at hand. The initialization scheme named HPF2(λ,µ) in particular, which is used to construct the initial food sources, is shown in the computational evaluation to be one of the main procedures that allow the DABC_RCT to obtain good solutions for this problem. To find the best configuration of the algorithm, we used Design of Experiments (DOE).This technique has been used extensively in the literature to calibrate the parameters of the algorithms but not to select its configuration. Comparing it with other algorithms proposed for this problem in the literature demonstrates the effectiveness and superiority of the DABC_RCT.

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A novel maturity model for the information-driven decision-making process (DMP) in organisations is presented. The 'circumplex hierarchical representation of organisation maturity assessment' (CHROMA) model was developed for evaluating organisations regarding their competence and readiness in using information to support decisions. This model groups the most important informed decision factors into five dimensions data availability, data quality, data analysis and insights, information use and decision-making. The model addresses these dimensions in an organised and systematic way, providing a framework for characterising the organisation's use of information in DMPs from an uninitiated stage to a completely embedded one. This model was tested in a pilot study on three small/medium-sized enterprises. The assessment involves interviewing key company personnel and evaluating the attributes and dimensions of the CHROMA model. Results indicate that the model is useful for identifying strengths and weaknesses, thereby providing insights for prioritising improvement actions.Peer ReviewedPostprint (author's final draft

We consider the NP-hard problem of scheduling n jobs in F identical parallel flow shops, each consisting of a series of m machines, and doing so with a blocking constraint. The applied criterion is to minimize the makespan, i.e., the maximum completion time of all the jobs in F flow shops (lines). The Parallel Flow Shop Scheduling Problem (PFSP) is conceptually similar to another problem known in the literature as the Distributed Permutation Flow Shop Scheduling Problem (DPFSP), which allows modeling the scheduling process in companies with more than one factory, each factory with a flow shop configuration. Therefore, the proposed methods can solve the scheduling problem under the blocking constraint in both situations, which, to the best of our knowledge, has not been studied previously. In this paper, we propose a mathematical model along with some constructive and improvement heuristics to solve the parallel blocking flow shop problem (PBFSP) and thus minimize the maximum completion time among lines. The proposed constructive procedures use two approaches that are totally different from those proposed in the literature. These methods are used as initial solution procedures of an iterated local search (ILS) and an iterated greedy algorithm (IGA), both of which are combined with a variable neighborhood search (VNS). The proposed constructive procedure and the improved methods take into account the characteristics of the problem. The computational evaluation demonstrates that both of them –especially the IGA– perform considerably better than those algorithms adapted from the DPFSP literature.Peer ReviewedPostprint (author's final draft

Different critical values deduced by simulation have been proposed that greatly improve Lenth's original proposal. However, these simulations assume that all effects are zerosomething not realistic--producing bigger than desired critical values and thus significance levels lower that intended. This article, in accordance with George Box [2] well known idea that Experimental Design should be about learning and not about testing and based on studying how the presence of a realistic number and size of active effects affects critical values, proposes to use t = 2 for any number of runs equal or greater than 8. And it shows that this solution, in addition of being simpler, provides under reasonable realistic situations better results than those obtained by simulation.