The Sandwich Generation: Dependency, Proximity, and Task Assistance Needs of Parents

This study was designed to determine the extent of sandwiched families and the impact of dependency and proximity to task assistance provided to parent(s). Data were collected in Idaho, Oregon, Utah, and Michigan from a random sample of 40–65-year-old respondents. Fifteen percent are sandwiched between needs of aging parents and financially dependent children. Respondents are much more likely to be providing assistance to mothers than fathers. Parents are most likely to live near, but not necessarily with, the respondent. Spouses and partners' parents, however, are likely to live farther away. Task assistance provided most often to aging parent(s) includes help with transportation and shopping; financial assistance was reported least often. Income of respondent and dependency and proximity of parents are significantly related to providing assistance to parents. This study offers a unique glimpse at the relationships between personal characteristics, dependency, proximity, and task assistance issues as they pertain to the sandwich generation.     

组织成员绩效结构理论研究述评

在过去的许多年,对工作绩效的研究出现了许多问题,不断重复的实证研究以及在工作绩效结构研究方面的混乱状态引起了学者们的严厉批评.这方面的研究主要包括组织公民行为、亲社会组织行为、关系绩效和任务绩效、角色行为和角色外行为以及任务绩效和非任务绩效.正是这些理论导致我们对工作绩效范围的重新思考.继续将非任务绩效看作是超越工作范畴或正式系统的非报酬行为是没有益处的.文章对组织成员行为绩效的主要成果给予介绍和评价,其主要目的是综合国内外现存文献,以便于将来学者们研究.     

Staff rostering in call centers providing employee transportation

We address the staff rostering problem in call centers with the goal of balancing operational cost, agent satisfaction and customer service objectives. In metropolitan cities such as Istanbul and Mumbai, call centers provide the transportation of their staff so that shuttle costs constitute a significant part of the operational costs. We develop a mixed integer programming model that incorporates the shuttle requirements at the beginning and end of the shifts into the agent-shift assignment decisions, while considering the skill sets of the agents, and other constraints due to workforce regulations and agent preferences. We analyze model solutions for a banking call center under various management priorities to understand the interactions among the conflicting objectives. We show that considering transportation costs as well as agent preferences in agent-shift assignments provides significant benefits in terms of both cost savings and employee satisfaction.     

A harmony search-based memetic optimization model for integrated production and transportation scheduling in MTO manufacturing

This paper investigates an integrated production and transportation scheduling problem in an MTO supply chain. A harmony search-based memetic optimization model is developed to handle this problem, in which certain heuristic procedures are proposed to convert the investigated problem into an order assignment problem. A novel improvisation process is also proposed to improve the optimum-seeking performance. The effectiveness of the proposed model is validated by numerical experiments. The experimental results show that (1) the proposed model can solve the investigated problem effectively and that (2) the proposed memetic optimization process exhibits better optimum-seeking performance than genetic algorithm-based and traditional memetic optimization processes.     

Demand for gambling: development and assessment of a gambling purchase task

Self-report purchase tasks are a novel approach examining the reinforcing value of addictive behaviour relative to increasing monetary costs required to access the addictive behaviour (i.e. demand). These measures reveal a positive relationship between the indices of demand and addiction problem severity and can elucidate factors associated with motivation for substance use. Gambling is an addictive behaviour that has not been examined using this paradigm. This study seeks to adapt and examine the purchase task for gambling behaviour. A gambling purchase task was devised that asked individuals how often per month they would gamble at various cover charges. Participants were 73 adults from the community with either gambling disorder (n = 28) or alcohol use disorder (n = 24) or were a healthy control (n = 21). Both the alcohol and gambling purchase tasks were administered. Results demonstrate discriminant validity of the gambling purchase task, as individuals with gambling disorder have significantly greater demand for accessing gambling than other groups. The alcohol purchase task also evidenced discriminant validity in that individuals with alcohol use disorder have significantly greater demand for alcohol than other groups. These findings support the use of the gambling purchase task to assess the demand for gambling.     

任务分解式教学法在检测技术实训中的应用

如何提高实践教学的教学质量是高校教育中亟待解决的问题。以安全检测技术实训为例,采用任务分解式教学方法对这一问题进行了探讨,在实训过程中,通过不断增加具体任务难度、分组打擂、优秀组讲解程序等方式,将安全检测技术各个部分内容有机结合起来,从而为实践教学环节提供一些有益的思路。     

带工期指派的产品服务系统订单随机调度问题研究

针对由一个制造工厂和多个区域服务中心组成的服务型制造企业，研究了考虑生产时间和服务时间均具有随机性且工期可指派的产品服务系统（PSS）订单调度问题。首先以最小化订单提前、误工和工期指派费用的期望总额为目标构建问题的优化模型，然后分析目标函数近似值的最优性条件，据此提出加权最短平均生产时间排序规则，并结合该规则与插入邻域局部搜索设计了启发式算法对问题进行求解，最后通过数值仿真验证算法的可行性和有效性。研究表明，提前费用偏差对PSS订单调度与工期指派决策的影响很小，因此企业管理者无需准确估计库存费用也能制定出比较有效的PSS订单调度策略；而工期指派费用偏差对决策结果的影响非常大，因此企业管理者在决策时必须谨慎估计该项费用。     

Unaddressed problems and research perspectives in scheduling blood collection from donors

Many optimisation problems arise in managing the Blood Donation (BD) supply chain. Most of them have been addressed in the literature, while other problems, e.g. donation scheduling, have not been sufficiently addressed so far. However, blood collection from donors may have a disruptive impact on the entire BD supply chain if not properly managed. For example, scheduling donation appointments based on some system metrics may improve the flow of blood units through the BD supply chain and increase the quality of service perceived by donors. In this short communication, we present the donation scheduling problem and highlight the lack of work in the literature that deals with this problem. Then, we analyse the impact of an unbalanced flow of blood units on the BD system and the benefits that may derive from a suitable appointment scheduling. Finally, we propose suggestions for future research in BD collection scheduling that may improve the BD process.     

Minimization of passenger takeoff and landing risk in offshore helicopter transportation: Models,approaches and analysis

Offshore petroleum industry uses helicopters to transport the employees to and from installations. Takeoff and landing represent a substantial part of the flight risks for passengers. In this paper, we propose and analyze approaches to create a safe flight schedule to perform pickup of employees by several independent flights. Two scenarios are considered. Under the non-split scenario, exactly one visit is allowed to each installation. Under the split scenario, the pickup demand of an installation can be split between several flights. Interesting links between our problem and other problems of combinatorial optimization, e.g., parallel machine scheduling and bin-packing are established. We provide worst-case analysis of the performance of some of our algorithms and report the results of computational experiments conducted on randomly generated instances based on the real sets of installations in the oil fields on the Norwegian continental shelf. This paper is the first attempt to handle takeoff and landing risk in a flight schedule that consists of several flights and lays ground for the study on more advanced and practically relevant models.     

Production and changeover control policies of a class of failure prone buffered flow-shops

This article deals with a stochastic optimal control problem for a class of buffered multi-parts flow-shops manufacturing system. The involved machines are subject to random breakdowns and repairs. The flow-shop under consideration is not completely flexible and hence requires setup time and cost in order to switch the production from a part type to another, this changeover is carried on the whole line. Our objective is to find the production plan and the sequence of setups that minimise the cost function, which penalises inventories/backlogs and setups. A continuous dynamic programming formulation of the problem is presented. Then, a numerical scheme is adopted to solve the obtained optimality conditions equations for a two buffered serial machines two parts case. A complete heuristic policy, based on the numerical observations which describe the optimal policies in system states, is developed. It will be shown that the obtained policy is a combination of a KANBAN/CONWIP and a modified hedging corridor policy. Moreover, based on our observations and existent research studies extension to cover more complex flow-shops is henceforth possible. The robustness of such a policy is illustrated through sensitivity analysis.