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
The current reality of intense competition has forced many companies to increase their performance and competitive advantages by pursuing innovation and improving and streamlining internal methods of designing products and processes. With shortening of product life cycle, in order for companies to survive, the need for a continuous stream of multiple innovations over time has arisen. However, the resources consumed by companies, whilst developing a product or process, are increasingly high, even in integrated approaches, and often the finished product or process arrives too late to provide the company with an edge over its competitors. Due to the large impact Lean philosophy has had in recent decades, within the manufacturing area, through the increase of efficiency and generation of continuous improvement, more companies have progressively applied Lean methods in their units of product and process development. This paper seeks to present a reference model for Lean implementation in the areas of product and process development in order to support companies in their path to streamline and make their innovative processes more efficient. The proposed reference model includes a concrete case study example that helps to explain the main concepts behind the proposed approach. © Springer International Publishing Switzerland 2013.

Abstract
Increasingly, consumer demand of fashionable products is arising as significant challenge for company managers. In order to respond to this demand, companies are asked to supply small series of innovative and fashionable goods of high quality, affordable price and eco-compatibility in short periods of time and with high service levels. As a result of these rapidly evolving challenges, companies are forming collaborative networks in order to design, develop, produce and distribute such products and services in a collaboratively way. These highly integrated and dynamic supply networks depend intensively in new set of tools, methods and related services in which rely the collaborative networking operation. This paper presents a specific case study implementation of these collaborative supporting services, through the realization of a collaborative portal.

Abstract
In fashion business, consumer needs and expectations of specific target groups—such as elderly, obese, disabled, or diabetic persons—are arising as challenging opportunities for European companies that are asked to supply small series of innovative and fashionable goods of high quality, affordable price and eco-compatible. This paper aims at proposing a reference model to support collaborative supply networks in addressing the need for Fashionable and Healthy Clothing and Footwear products. In particular this work describes the implementation of the model in a real case highlighting the developments and changes implied at network level. © Springer International Publishing Switzerland 2013.

Abstract
In recent decades, with globalization, the financial crisis and the entry of new players in the global markets, the industrial enterprises in order to survive are forced to update its supply chain strategy in line with the new and challenging circumstances. Thus, company managers have put a growing interest in developing strategies designed to provide companies with the resources, capabilities and ICT technologies in order to compete successfully in the market. Supply chain managers increasingly understand that it is the time to fundamentally rethink how to design and operate the supply chains that link with their own company, namely suppliers and customers. For too long, there has been a major concern with infrastructures, resource utilization and cut costing in the operation activities, ultimately in efficiency. However, even recognizing that maintaining lower levels of operating costs are important, achieving and maintaining future competitiveness demands more sophistication.

Abstract
s This paper presents a complete, quadratic programming formulation of the standard thermal unit commitment problem in power generation planning, together with a novel iterative optimisation algorithm for its solution. The algorithm, based on a mixed-integer formulation of the problem, considers piecewise linear approximations of the quadratic fuel cost function that are dynamically updated in an iterative way, converging to the optimum: this avoids the requirement of resorting to quadratic programming, making the solution process much quicker. From extensive computational tests on a broad set of benchmark instances of this problem, the algorithm was found to be flexible and capable of easily incorporating different problem constraints. Indeed, it is able to tackle ramp constraints, which although very important in practice were rarely considered in previous publications. Most importantly, optimal solutions were obtained for several well-known benchmark instances. including instances of practical relevance, that are not yet known to have been solved to optimality. Computational experiments and their results showed that the method proposed is both simple and extremely effective.