Abstract
Worldwide competitiveness poses enormous challenges on managers, demanding a continuous quest to increase rationality in the use of resources. As a management philosophy, Lean Manufacturing focuses on the elimination of activities that do not create any type of value and therefore are considered waste. For companies to successfully implement the Lean Manufacturing philosophy it is crucial that the human resources of the organization have the necessary training, for which proper tools are required. At the same time, higher education institutions need innovative tools to increase the attractiveness of engineering curricula and develop a higher level of knowledge among students, improving their employability. This paper describes how Lean Learning Academy, an international collaboration project between five EU universities and five companies, from SME to Multinational/Global companies, developed and applied an innovative training programme for Engineers on Lean Manufacturing, a successful alternative to the traditional teaching methods in engineering courses.

Abstract
More than ever, the economic globalization is creating the need to increase business competitiveness. Lean manufacturing is a management philosophy oriented to the elimination of activities that do not create any type of value and are thus considered a waste. One of the main differences from other management philosophies is the shop-floor focus and the operators' involvement. Therefore, the training of all organization levels is crucial for the success of lean manufacturing. Universities should also participate actively in this process by developing students' lean management skills and promoting a better and faster integration of students into their future organizations. This paper proposes a single realistic manufacturing platform, involving production and assembly operations, to learn by playing many of the lean tools such as VSM, 5S, SMED, poke-yoke, line balance, TPM, Mizusumashi, plant layout, and JIT/kanban. This simulation game was built in tight cooperation with experienced lean companies under the international program "Lean Learning Academy,"1 and its main aim is to make bachelor and master courses in applied sciences more attractive by integrating classic lectures with a simulated production environment that could result in more motivated students and higher study yields. The simulation game results show that our approach is efficient in providing a realistic platform for the effective learning of lean principles, tools, and mindset, which can be easily included in course classes of less than two hours. © 2013 IEEE.

Abstract
In an increasingly competitive and globalized world, companies need effective training methodologies and tools for their employees. However, selecting the most suitable ones is not an easy task. It depends on the requirements of the target group (namely time restrictions), on the specificities of the contents, etc. This is typically the case for training in Lean, the waste elimination manufacturing philosophy. This paper presents and compares two different approaches to lean training methodologies and tools: a simulation game based on a single realistic manufacturing platform, involving production and assembly operations that allows learning by playing; and a digital game that helps understand lean tools. This paper shows that both tools have advantages in terms of trainee motivation and knowledge acquisition. Furthermore, they can be used in a complementary way, reinforcing the acquired knowledge. © 2013 IEEE.

Abstract

Abstract
In recent years, the technological developments in mobile and communication networks have paved the way for smart environments, whose final goal is to provide users with enhanced experiences. The measure of user experience satisfaction, or quality of experience, may be defined as an affective state in response to a service. Thus, an experiment was devised to explore the relationship between users' affective state and their context, for assessing quality of experience in urban public transport services. A pilot study, conducted to evaluate the feasibility and requirements of such an experiment is presented, leading to a large scale field study. © 2013 Authors.

Abstract
Environmental performance assessments are often conducted using environmental indicators. Although these indicators provide a starting point for performance assessments, they do not provide guidelines that countries should follow to improve performance. This paper develops an enhanced Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) model that provides a single summary measure of countries' environmental performance, based on the aggregation of the indicators that underlie the estimation of the Environmental Performance Index (EPI). The DEA model used is based on a novel specification of weight restrictions. The main contribution of the methodology used in this paper is to enable benchmarking in such a way that it becomes possible to identify the strengths and weaknesses of each country, as well as the peers with similar features to the country under assessment. These peers provide examples of good environmental practices that countries with worse performance should follow to improve performance. Journal of the Operational Research Society (2013) 64, 426-438. doi:10.1057/jors.2012.62 Published online 16 May 2012