RESEARCH BRIEF: Using GIS for competitive business advantage

by Melissa Brenes, MS candidate, mbrenes@vt.edu

Recognize characteristics of clients such as where they live, their behavior, and their preferences on stores has become a necessity for companies now a days. (Badea, R. Bagu, C. Badea, A & Moises, C., 2009). Knowing that such characteristics of customers are so significant for the business, it is important to accelerate processes such as customer profiling, and profile behavior which will give the corporation a competitive advantage.

http://www.digitalmarketingstrategies.ie

By combining conventional marketing techniques with geospatial methods enables users to picture the spatial distribution of data in maps -such as the distribution process, the market diverse- also complementing it with statistical graphs and diagrams will link  marketing and Geographical Information Systems (GIS). (Musyoka, S.M, Mutyauvyu S.M, Kiema J.B.K, Karanja F.N,  & Diriba D.N. , 2007).

With GIS Business Analysis users can better understand their organization environment information, the competition, and also improve the decision making process related to customer behavior. In addition, business analysis can build models that fit into the organization’s analysis workflow for site evaluation, market penetration, and conduct customer prospecting. (Raduj, C. 2009).

According to (Lawrence E., 2007) faculty and leaders of colleges of business apparently are not aware of GIS and its capability in helping make solid immediate business decisions, regarding site analysis, and spatial management of business activities. In a research conduct by Lawrence (2007), only 5 of 140 colleges of business have GIS courses in their curricula and just 23 of these have courses included spatial analysis. On 2007, only few curricula’s include GIS analysis as an effective business decision-making tool.

There is much work to be done not only in the academic collaborations of colleagues of business and geographic departments  in helping companies to embrace the GIS as a effective way of making decisions, develop marketing strategies, and gaining a competitive advantage in their industry sector.

References

  • Raduj, C. (2009) The GIS and data solutions for advanced business analysis. Economia, Seria Management. Vol. 12, No. 2, 2009.
  • Badea, R. Bagu, C. Badea, A & Moises, C. (2009) Costumer Profiling Using GIS. International DAAAM Symposium, Vol. 20, No. 1, 2009.
  • Musyoka, S.M, Mutyauvyu S.M, Kiema J.B.K, Karanja F.N,  & Diriba D.N.  (2007). Market segmentation using geographic information systems (GIS). Marketing Intelligence & Planning. Vol. 25, No. 6, 2007.
  • Lawrence E. (2007). GIS and Collegues of Business: A curricular Exploration. Journal of Real Estate Literature. Vol. 15, No. 3, 2007

Third Innovation-based Manufacturing Workshop

Participants of the II CIbM workshop participate in a innovation game directed by Dr. Chris Williams.

The Center for Innovation-based Manufacturing (CIbM) at Virginia Tech would like to invite the University community, surrounding industry, and the general community interested in learning the most recent developments in the advancement of innovation to increase and support manufacturing in Virginia.

This one-day event is focused on providing experiences and opinions of industry and faculty speakers in the development of tools, concepts, and methods for bridging ideas into commercial products. The workshop will also cover current issues limiting the advancement of manufacturing and recent policy developments to support manufacturing. The event is also the culmination stage of the student innovation competition sponsored by the CIbM.

Panelists of the II CIbM workshop answer questions from participants.

Agenda

8:30 am. Jaime Camelio, Director of the Center for Innovation-based Manufacturing at Virginia Tech .

8:45 am. Erin Sparks, Senior Policy Analyst at the National Governos Association

9:30 am. Coffee break.

10:00 am. David Cochran, Director of the Center in Excellence in Systems Engineering at Indiana University-Purdue University Fort Wayne.

10:45 am. Matt Jackson. Open Innovation. Engineer at Local Motors

11:30 am. Panel discussion: Tracy Wilkins (Techlab), Michael Fleming (TORC), Michael Miller (Virginia Tech Intellectual Properties, Inc) (and Matt Jackson (Local Motors)

12:15 pm. Boxed Lunch

1:15 pm. Student innovation competition

2:30 pm. Adjourn.

Location and date

The Graduate Life Center (GLC) at Virginia Tech. November 13, 2012.

Registration

Registration fee is $100. Fee is waived for members of the Virginia Tech community. For registration please follow this link http://www.cpe.vt.edu/reg/ibmw/

Questions

For questions or comment contact Dr. Henry Quesada at quesada@vt.edu

Quesada delivers a workshop on Business Process Management (BPM) conjointly with Costa Rica Tech

BLACKSBURG, VA. Business Process Management (BPM) is an initiative to orchestrate all processes in an organization. As business organizations compete and become innovators, a higher level of coordination between primary and supporting processes is necessary for the organization to achieve their goals. BPM foundation is the realization and understanding that any organization is composed of processes that are grouped in value chains and those value chains need to be continuously improved using known methodologies such as lean thinking or six sigma. Once the processes are organized and improved, an information technology solution can be incorporated to automate, synchronize, control, and manage the work flow among the processes.

Participants at the BPM workshop learn how to model a process using BPMN 2.0.

During July 26-27, 2012 assistant professor Henry Quesada, from the Department of Sustainable Biomaterials (SBIO) at Virginia Tech, delivered a BPM workshop in San Jose, Costa Rica. A total of 19 people registered for the event, which was organized in conjunction with Costa Rica Tech. This is part of the efforts of SBIO to impact the international community in topics related to sustainable enterprises.

Participants in the workshop learned how to recognize business processes and how to develop a business architecture. Next, participants were introduced to the most important continuous improvement methodologies and they also learned how to model a process using the BPM notation (BPMN 2.0). Finally, a procedure to deploy a BPM initiative was presented through examples and case studies. A variety of teaching methods were used such as teamwork games, business simulations, online delivery, experiential learning, and face-to-face delivery.

If you are interested in learning more about BPM and how it can help your organization to become more competitive, please contact Dr. Henry Quesada at quesada@vt.edu.

Application of Lean in the Forest Products Industry

Shawn Crawford, MS candidate, Virginia Tech.

The application of lean in the wood products and furniture industry is a relatively well known concept, specially in the Appalachian Region.  Recent surveys suggest that Virginia wood products and furniture industries have heard of terms like lean management, lean manufacturing, and lean thinking however, are unfamiliar with the tools that make up these terms (Fricke, 2010). The segments of the sector with the highest amount of lean awareness and implementation were engineered wood, manufactured homes, household furniture manufacturing as opposed to sawmills and wood container and pallets with the lowest amount of awareness and implementation (Fricke, 2010).

There is a great need for process improvements in the Forest Products industry, specifically lean.  Lean thinking is the philosophy, as it applies to manufacturing, of doing more with less (Womack and Jones, 2003).  By incorporating lean tools like value stream mapping, production performance and efficiency can be enhanced without throwing high energy consuming automated systems or technology to improve the process.  The lack of R&D suggest that the forest products industry has a high potential for saving energy if they use lean tools like benchmarking and create a pull production system as opposed to pushing the product through.  Lean manufacturing allows an operation to enhance production performance which has a direct correlation on energy consumption.  For example, a production process that doubles throughput while using almost the exact same equipment cuts energy consumption in half.

Continue reading “Application of Lean in the Forest Products Industry”

WORKSHOP: Quantitative Decision Management

Presented by Henry Quesada, Assistant Professor of Business Management and Operations Research, Virginia Tech

Workshop description:

Decision making techniques can be defined as a collection of qualitative and quantitative analytical tools that allows business and process managers to outline and analyze potential scenarios when searching for solutions given a specific problem or situation.
Participants in this two-day workshop will learn how to use different quantitative tools to build models and integrate computer applications to solve current business and manufacturing problems.

  • Course outline:
    • Basics of decision making
    • Spreadsheet basics
    • Basic statistical concepts
    • Data generation using Montecarlo methods
    • Forecasting
    • Inventory control models
    • Design of experiments
    • Linear programming
    • Queue Analysis
    • Markov Analysis
    • Simulation

 

  • Workshop objectives:
    • Understand the basic steps for decision making
    • Understand the main applications of a variety of decision making techniques
    • Learn how to integrate computer applications such as spreadsheets with quantitative decision making tools
    • Understand how to incorporate decision making tools in simulation modeling

 

  • Who should attend:
    • Managers who wish to increase their decision making skills by introducing quantitative tools into their work environments
    • Engineers interested in formulating better planning tools for their supply chain management, optimization of manufacturing processes, and general process modeling for continuous improvement
    • Business process engineers in service industries interested in learning quantitative tools to model and optimize processes
    • Marketing researcher looking for proven techniques to analyze marketing data
    • Researchers in need of learning quantitative methods to test ideas and concepts

 

  • Unique value of the workshop:
    • Application of the techniques and tools to sample problems to facilitate the learning process
    • Integration of decision making tools with computer applications such as spreadsheets
    • Focus on managerial aspects and less in the mathematical details of the techniques. Participants are required to have basic knowledge of algebra.
    • Participants will develop unique skills to incorporate “easy to use and implement” decision making tools into their daily activities

 

  • Location and Registration
    Workshop is scheduled for October 18-19, 2012 from 8:30 am to 5:00 pm at the Virginia Tech Roanoke Center in Roanoke, VA.

 

  • Registration fee
    Workshop investment is $400 and includes:
    •Certificate of attendance. Ask for CPU credits.
    • Two coffee breaks and one lunch per day
    • Material print outs and spreadsheet templates

To register please follow this link. For further details or questions please contact Henry Quesada at quesada@vt.edu or 540 231 0978.

Instructor summary:
Dr. Henry Quesada works for the Department of Sustainable Biomaterials at Virginia has an expert in business management and operations research. His academic program focuses on process improvement for service and manufacturing firms and he has over 12 years of experience as a consultant and researcher in medical device components, forest products, microelectronic, financial, and telecommunications industry sectors.

If you are a person with a disability and desire any assistive devices, services or other accommodations to participate in this activity, please contact Dr. Henry Quesada at (540) 231 0978 during business hours of 8 a.m. and 5 p.m. to discuss accommodations 5 days prior to the event. TDD number is (800) 828-1120.