Robert Van Der Meer - Academia.edu (original) (raw)
Papers by Robert Van Der Meer
Call centres have an operating model that aim to reduce costs - this has led to both customers an... more Call centres have an operating model that aim to reduce costs - this has led to both customers and employees having issues with the current model. This has led to the view that contact centres are not entities in which innovation would occur. This paper identifies the barriers and enablers to innovation activities within call centres and discusses the implications of these to the wider service context.
The paper provides a critical review on the subject of Service, followed by recommendations to re... more The paper provides a critical review on the subject of Service, followed by recommendations to review and revise the concept and its associated movements in academia and industry. Service Science or SSME, promoted by the IBM, is now becoming a serious research and teaching agenda in many academic institutes and industrial research centres and is viewed as the future of teaching and research in the area of service. The main idea of Service Science is to adopt an interdisciplinary approach in teaching, research and management of service/services. While there is no doubt that the main idea behind Service Science is a beneficial one, it is not clear how and to what extent its specific features apply to different types of services. In terms of teaching, there seems to be some significant disagreements among academia about how to adopt the concept. The aim of the paper is to illustrate, through a number of conceptual models, the divergence and variety of understandings and perceptions about the concept itself, and its associated academic and practical issues. The areas of disagreement, less defined concepts and uncertainties about approaching the idea are discussed. The ultimate objective of the paper is to identify the areas of concern in Service Science, as a movement, and to present recommendations to study these areas. Main issues to be discussed are the title of Service Science itself, its definitions, scope, content, applicability in different services stake holders and sought outcomes, including the concept of T shape people.
This conference paper discusses the factors impacting innovation management in UK contact centres.
Journal of Manufacturing Technology Management, 2010
Marisa is a research fellow with the Strathclyde Institute for Operations Management. Her researc... more Marisa is a research fellow with the Strathclyde Institute for Operations Management. Her research concentrates on contact centre operations, in particular how to influence innovation and change in contact centres. As part of her PhD work she has carried out case studies with a number of different contact centres within the UK, to understand how their characteristics impact on their capacity to innovate. She is also interested in how lean principles are applied to the service operations context. To date Umit has published three edited books and over 100 papers in international journals and conferences. Dr Robert van der Meer Dr Robert B. van der Meer gained his Bachelor's degree in Economics and Business Administration from the University of Amsterdam, his Master's degree in Economics from the London School of Economics, and his Ph.D. from the University of Strathclyde. His main research interests are in management science, operations management and strategy, and the economics of organisation, management and strategy.
International Journal of Innovation Management, 2008
Management literature prescribes innovation as a stimulus for sustained competitive advantage in ... more Management literature prescribes innovation as a stimulus for sustained competitive advantage in companies; however, the nature of the development in this field has resulted in the literature being broad and fragmented. This paper focuses on the body of literature concerned with the factors which influence innovation management in organisations. The aim of this research is to present a holistic view of the factors that affect innovation management. Using a systematic literature review approach, using over 100 papers, this research identifies nine key factors that impact on an organisation's ability to manage innovation. These nine factors have been identified as management style and leadership, resources, organisational structure, corporate strategy, technology, knowledge management, employees and innovation process. This paper then discusses the inductively derived model that presents the important relationships identified between the factors to present a holistic view of innov...
Fraser of Allander Economic Commentary, 2019
This article describes research conducted by University of Strathclyde academics that has success... more This article describes research conducted by University of Strathclyde academics that has successfully impacted upon policy implementation. Specifically, we describe the innovative application of Discrete Event Simulation (DES) in an action research framework to develop bottom-up micro costing models to determine the cost effectiveness of a radically new ‘virtual clinic’ pathway for orthopaedic trauma patients. The use of DES allowed stakeholders to compare the costs of the new approach (virtual fracture clinic) against the baseline (traditional fracture clinic) in sufficient detail. The insights generated from this research enabled health policy stakeholders to build a convincing case for the diffusion and reliable implementation of virtual pathways for orthopaedic trauma patients in other hospitals in Scotland and well beyond. Wider dissemination of this work has seen continued government funding for the use of DES for cost effectiveness studies in other healthcare settings, as we...
Motivated by earlier works on business process management in general and manage processes in part... more Motivated by earlier works on business process management in general and manage processes in particular, this paper seeks to understand the current state of knowledge on manage-processes and propose a research agenda that would lead to a better understanding of manage-processes. Our curiosity is motivated by the belief that the capabilities and
Motivated by earlier works on business process management in general and manage processes in part... more Motivated by earlier works on business process management in general and manage processes in particular, this paper seeks to understand the current state of knowledge on manage-processes and propose a research agenda that would lead to a better understanding of manage-processes. Our curiosity is motivated by the belief that the capabilities and
Advances in information and communications technology (ICT) has allowed the location of contact c... more Advances in information and communications technology (ICT) has allowed the location of contact centres to be disjointed from the country they are providing service to, resulting in the UK having to compete with other countries as a location for contact centres, but the UK industry cannot match the low labour cost of many offshore locations. This means that the UK contact centres have to now compete on other factors rather than cost. There are many ways in which organisations can compete but one of the key ways for developed economies to compete is through increased innovation. Therefore the aim of the research is to examine how UK contact centres approach innovation. The research is carried out through a structured methodology of a systematic literature review and comparative case studies. The main findings of the research are that UK contact centres approach innovation in two main ways, either structured or ad-hoc and that they are involved in a range of different types of innovat...
There are several OR techniques used within healthcare operations management. They range from bas... more There are several OR techniques used within healthcare operations management. They range from basic soft OR methods to a more formal analysis of an operational problem. However, there is a need to provide a more structured and precise framework for healthcare professionals to understand the operational dynamics of the system right from the beginning. In most cases, they are able to capture the details about various aspects through discussion, modelling, brainstorming and find ways to record them in the operations management process. However, the specific information about the logical operational rules are not easily identifiable at the initial stages, mainly because there are not many techniques that can capture these details. In this talk, we present results of a short study conducted at a user group event attended by 25 healthcare professionals that reveals interesting points about their understanding and structuring of these logical rules. A framework to visually structure these ...
While there is growing interest in supply chain resilience, conceptualization of the main constru... more While there is growing interest in supply chain resilience, conceptualization of the main constructs is discussed at a high level in the literature. We aim to learn more about what supply chain resilience means through modelling, specifically using Dynamic Bayesian Networks (DBNs). DBNs are directed acyclic graphs for reasoning under uncertainty through time. A DBN is capable of using partial knowledge about one variable to update the uncertainty about other variables in the model. In principle, DBNs present a possible model class for analysing resilience because they can capture the dynamic uncertain behaviour of a supply chain due to the effects of potential hazards. Between 2013-15 we have conducted multiple cases for four distinct manufacturing and retail supply chains with focal companies based in the UK, Canada and Malaysia. We present the characteristics of each chain and the insights gained through application of our DBN modelling protocol. Our analysis has generated better ...
Infection control and hospital epidemiology, 2021
Purpose of the research Public and private organisations in sectors such as health care, construc... more Purpose of the research Public and private organisations in sectors such as health care, construction and logistics that require satellite data for ensuring target locations are faced with a proliferation of positioning applications. Continuously Operating Reference Stations (CORS) constitutes one of the technologies designed as a supplement to Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) signals to improve positioning precision (GPS.GOV, 2017). Effectively implementing this land-based augmentation system has presented difficulties for countries such as Thailand. In particular, independent ownership and management of the GNSS CORS network has led to problems of duplication and overinvestment and the lack of facility sharing has adverse effects on the budgetary requirements of individual CORS users. To resolve such complications, the various Thai government agencies involved have developed a form of collaborative innovation. But this must take account of the different levels of power am...
This paper discusses the adoption of E-collaboration technology in decision-making process and de... more This paper discusses the adoption of E-collaboration technology in decision-making process and development of inter-organizational trust
This report looks at the preliminary findings on the impact of robotics-led organisational change... more This report looks at the preliminary findings on the impact of robotics-led organisational change on the pharmacy workforce
Journal of the Operational Research Society
Crew scheduling problems have been widely studied in various transportation sectors, such as airl... more Crew scheduling problems have been widely studied in various transportation sectors, such as airlines, railways and urban buses. However to date it appears that application of these problems in sea transport has been very limited. In this paper, we explore key differences between various transport settings, and propose mixed-integer programming formulations for both the crew scheduling and rescheduling problems for a company operating a fleet of Offshore Supply Vessels (OSVs) on a global scale. Computational results on an extensive set of problems show that our proposed models are practically applicable to generate real-time solutions. We also present a thorough statistical analysis of key problem parameters, and share insights regarding their impacts.
International Journal of Production Economics
Due to the stricter government regulations on end-of-life product treatment and the increasing pu... more Due to the stricter government regulations on end-of-life product treatment and the increasing public awareness towards environmental issues, remanufacturing has been a significantly growing industry over the last decades, offering many potential business opportunities. In this paper, we investigate a crucial problem apparent in this industry, the remanufacturing lot-sizing problem with separate setups. We first discuss two reformulations of this problem, and remark an important property with regards to their equivalence. Then, we present a theoretical investigation of a related subproblem, where our analysis indicates that a number of flow cover inequalities are strong for this subproblem under some general conditions. We then investigate the computational effectiveness of the alternative methods discussed for the original problem. Detailed numerical results are insightful for the practitioner, indicating that in particular when the return variability increases or when the remanufacturing setup costs decrease relevant to manufacturing setup costs, the flow covers can be very effective.
Call centres have an operating model that aim to reduce costs - this has led to both customers an... more Call centres have an operating model that aim to reduce costs - this has led to both customers and employees having issues with the current model. This has led to the view that contact centres are not entities in which innovation would occur. This paper identifies the barriers and enablers to innovation activities within call centres and discusses the implications of these to the wider service context.
The paper provides a critical review on the subject of Service, followed by recommendations to re... more The paper provides a critical review on the subject of Service, followed by recommendations to review and revise the concept and its associated movements in academia and industry. Service Science or SSME, promoted by the IBM, is now becoming a serious research and teaching agenda in many academic institutes and industrial research centres and is viewed as the future of teaching and research in the area of service. The main idea of Service Science is to adopt an interdisciplinary approach in teaching, research and management of service/services. While there is no doubt that the main idea behind Service Science is a beneficial one, it is not clear how and to what extent its specific features apply to different types of services. In terms of teaching, there seems to be some significant disagreements among academia about how to adopt the concept. The aim of the paper is to illustrate, through a number of conceptual models, the divergence and variety of understandings and perceptions about the concept itself, and its associated academic and practical issues. The areas of disagreement, less defined concepts and uncertainties about approaching the idea are discussed. The ultimate objective of the paper is to identify the areas of concern in Service Science, as a movement, and to present recommendations to study these areas. Main issues to be discussed are the title of Service Science itself, its definitions, scope, content, applicability in different services stake holders and sought outcomes, including the concept of T shape people.
This conference paper discusses the factors impacting innovation management in UK contact centres.
Journal of Manufacturing Technology Management, 2010
Marisa is a research fellow with the Strathclyde Institute for Operations Management. Her researc... more Marisa is a research fellow with the Strathclyde Institute for Operations Management. Her research concentrates on contact centre operations, in particular how to influence innovation and change in contact centres. As part of her PhD work she has carried out case studies with a number of different contact centres within the UK, to understand how their characteristics impact on their capacity to innovate. She is also interested in how lean principles are applied to the service operations context. To date Umit has published three edited books and over 100 papers in international journals and conferences. Dr Robert van der Meer Dr Robert B. van der Meer gained his Bachelor's degree in Economics and Business Administration from the University of Amsterdam, his Master's degree in Economics from the London School of Economics, and his Ph.D. from the University of Strathclyde. His main research interests are in management science, operations management and strategy, and the economics of organisation, management and strategy.
International Journal of Innovation Management, 2008
Management literature prescribes innovation as a stimulus for sustained competitive advantage in ... more Management literature prescribes innovation as a stimulus for sustained competitive advantage in companies; however, the nature of the development in this field has resulted in the literature being broad and fragmented. This paper focuses on the body of literature concerned with the factors which influence innovation management in organisations. The aim of this research is to present a holistic view of the factors that affect innovation management. Using a systematic literature review approach, using over 100 papers, this research identifies nine key factors that impact on an organisation's ability to manage innovation. These nine factors have been identified as management style and leadership, resources, organisational structure, corporate strategy, technology, knowledge management, employees and innovation process. This paper then discusses the inductively derived model that presents the important relationships identified between the factors to present a holistic view of innov...
Fraser of Allander Economic Commentary, 2019
This article describes research conducted by University of Strathclyde academics that has success... more This article describes research conducted by University of Strathclyde academics that has successfully impacted upon policy implementation. Specifically, we describe the innovative application of Discrete Event Simulation (DES) in an action research framework to develop bottom-up micro costing models to determine the cost effectiveness of a radically new ‘virtual clinic’ pathway for orthopaedic trauma patients. The use of DES allowed stakeholders to compare the costs of the new approach (virtual fracture clinic) against the baseline (traditional fracture clinic) in sufficient detail. The insights generated from this research enabled health policy stakeholders to build a convincing case for the diffusion and reliable implementation of virtual pathways for orthopaedic trauma patients in other hospitals in Scotland and well beyond. Wider dissemination of this work has seen continued government funding for the use of DES for cost effectiveness studies in other healthcare settings, as we...
Motivated by earlier works on business process management in general and manage processes in part... more Motivated by earlier works on business process management in general and manage processes in particular, this paper seeks to understand the current state of knowledge on manage-processes and propose a research agenda that would lead to a better understanding of manage-processes. Our curiosity is motivated by the belief that the capabilities and
Motivated by earlier works on business process management in general and manage processes in part... more Motivated by earlier works on business process management in general and manage processes in particular, this paper seeks to understand the current state of knowledge on manage-processes and propose a research agenda that would lead to a better understanding of manage-processes. Our curiosity is motivated by the belief that the capabilities and
Advances in information and communications technology (ICT) has allowed the location of contact c... more Advances in information and communications technology (ICT) has allowed the location of contact centres to be disjointed from the country they are providing service to, resulting in the UK having to compete with other countries as a location for contact centres, but the UK industry cannot match the low labour cost of many offshore locations. This means that the UK contact centres have to now compete on other factors rather than cost. There are many ways in which organisations can compete but one of the key ways for developed economies to compete is through increased innovation. Therefore the aim of the research is to examine how UK contact centres approach innovation. The research is carried out through a structured methodology of a systematic literature review and comparative case studies. The main findings of the research are that UK contact centres approach innovation in two main ways, either structured or ad-hoc and that they are involved in a range of different types of innovat...
There are several OR techniques used within healthcare operations management. They range from bas... more There are several OR techniques used within healthcare operations management. They range from basic soft OR methods to a more formal analysis of an operational problem. However, there is a need to provide a more structured and precise framework for healthcare professionals to understand the operational dynamics of the system right from the beginning. In most cases, they are able to capture the details about various aspects through discussion, modelling, brainstorming and find ways to record them in the operations management process. However, the specific information about the logical operational rules are not easily identifiable at the initial stages, mainly because there are not many techniques that can capture these details. In this talk, we present results of a short study conducted at a user group event attended by 25 healthcare professionals that reveals interesting points about their understanding and structuring of these logical rules. A framework to visually structure these ...
While there is growing interest in supply chain resilience, conceptualization of the main constru... more While there is growing interest in supply chain resilience, conceptualization of the main constructs is discussed at a high level in the literature. We aim to learn more about what supply chain resilience means through modelling, specifically using Dynamic Bayesian Networks (DBNs). DBNs are directed acyclic graphs for reasoning under uncertainty through time. A DBN is capable of using partial knowledge about one variable to update the uncertainty about other variables in the model. In principle, DBNs present a possible model class for analysing resilience because they can capture the dynamic uncertain behaviour of a supply chain due to the effects of potential hazards. Between 2013-15 we have conducted multiple cases for four distinct manufacturing and retail supply chains with focal companies based in the UK, Canada and Malaysia. We present the characteristics of each chain and the insights gained through application of our DBN modelling protocol. Our analysis has generated better ...
Infection control and hospital epidemiology, 2021
Purpose of the research Public and private organisations in sectors such as health care, construc... more Purpose of the research Public and private organisations in sectors such as health care, construction and logistics that require satellite data for ensuring target locations are faced with a proliferation of positioning applications. Continuously Operating Reference Stations (CORS) constitutes one of the technologies designed as a supplement to Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) signals to improve positioning precision (GPS.GOV, 2017). Effectively implementing this land-based augmentation system has presented difficulties for countries such as Thailand. In particular, independent ownership and management of the GNSS CORS network has led to problems of duplication and overinvestment and the lack of facility sharing has adverse effects on the budgetary requirements of individual CORS users. To resolve such complications, the various Thai government agencies involved have developed a form of collaborative innovation. But this must take account of the different levels of power am...
This paper discusses the adoption of E-collaboration technology in decision-making process and de... more This paper discusses the adoption of E-collaboration technology in decision-making process and development of inter-organizational trust
This report looks at the preliminary findings on the impact of robotics-led organisational change... more This report looks at the preliminary findings on the impact of robotics-led organisational change on the pharmacy workforce
Journal of the Operational Research Society
Crew scheduling problems have been widely studied in various transportation sectors, such as airl... more Crew scheduling problems have been widely studied in various transportation sectors, such as airlines, railways and urban buses. However to date it appears that application of these problems in sea transport has been very limited. In this paper, we explore key differences between various transport settings, and propose mixed-integer programming formulations for both the crew scheduling and rescheduling problems for a company operating a fleet of Offshore Supply Vessels (OSVs) on a global scale. Computational results on an extensive set of problems show that our proposed models are practically applicable to generate real-time solutions. We also present a thorough statistical analysis of key problem parameters, and share insights regarding their impacts.
International Journal of Production Economics
Due to the stricter government regulations on end-of-life product treatment and the increasing pu... more Due to the stricter government regulations on end-of-life product treatment and the increasing public awareness towards environmental issues, remanufacturing has been a significantly growing industry over the last decades, offering many potential business opportunities. In this paper, we investigate a crucial problem apparent in this industry, the remanufacturing lot-sizing problem with separate setups. We first discuss two reformulations of this problem, and remark an important property with regards to their equivalence. Then, we present a theoretical investigation of a related subproblem, where our analysis indicates that a number of flow cover inequalities are strong for this subproblem under some general conditions. We then investigate the computational effectiveness of the alternative methods discussed for the original problem. Detailed numerical results are insightful for the practitioner, indicating that in particular when the return variability increases or when the remanufacturing setup costs decrease relevant to manufacturing setup costs, the flow covers can be very effective.