Hon& of America has developed a comprehensive approach to teaching the principles of lean
production to its suppliers. The centerpiece of these efforts is a program called BP (for ?Best process?,
?Best Performance ?, ?Bs Practice?), in which a crossfunctional…

Organizations must establish processes for managing knowledge across boundaries because of the specialized and task-dependent forms of knowledge required to deliver products and services. To address this challenge an integrative framework is developed that identifies and integrates the value of…

This study offers a detailed case study of how Toyota facilitates interorganizational knowledge transfers among within its production network. In particular, we identiify and examine six key institutionalized knowledge sharing routines developed by Toyota and its suppliers. By examining how…

This paper presents a knowledge-based approach to
reducing impediments to collaboration in a
distributed environment. A major impediment to
such collaboration is the issue of communications -
clearly and efficiently expressing the desires of every
stakeholder in the process, as…

Three important trends - unrelenting globalization, growing worldwide electronic connectivity, and increasing knowledge intensity of economic activity - are creating new opportunities for global politics, with challenging demands for information access, interpretation, provision and overall use. This has serious implications…

This paper presents a knowledge-based approach for capturing data and rationale, so
that the experience and insights gained while pursuing a major project or endeavor can
be utilized when pursuing future endeavors of a similar nature. The proposed

This paper demonstrates the importance of knowledge for effective
management of outsourcing. Drawing on an empirical study on automakers?
management of supplier involvement in product development in Japan, this paper shows
that the level of own knowledge is critical for…

This paper presents a knowledge-based approach to facilitate the engineering design
process relating to spacecrafts. Because the design evolves over a long time and typically
involves individuals working at different locations and frequently for different
organizations, the degree of collaboration…

This paper analyzes the suitability of reinforcement learning (RL) for both programming and adapting situated agents. We discuss two RL algorithms: Q-learning and the Bucket Brigade. We introduce a special case of the Bucket Brigade, and analyze and compare its…

Our approach for automating the negotiation of business
contracts proceeds in three broad steps. First, determine
the structure of the negotiation process by applying general
knowledge about auctions and domain-specific knowledge
about the contract subject along with preferences from po-