Production quantity allocation for order fulfilment in the supply chain: a neural network based approach

In the current global business environment, it is very important to know how to allocate products from the producer to buyers (or distributors). If products are not appropriately distributed due to absence of an effective allocation policy, the producer and buyers cannot expect to increase customer satisfaction and financial profit. Sometimes some buyers can order more than the actual demand due to inappropriately forecasting customer orders. This is the big obstacle to the effective allocation of products. If the producer can become aware of buyers’ actual demands, it is possible to realise high-level order fulfilment through the effective allocation of products. In this study, new allocation policies are proposed considering buyers’ demands. The back propagation algorithm, one of the learning algorithms in neural network theory, is used to recognise actual demands from the previous buyers’ orders. After excluding surplus demands included in buyers’ demands, products are allocated to buyers according to one of the existing allocation policies depending on the company's decision. In the numerical examples, new allocation policies reducing buyers’ surplus demands outperform previous allocation policies with respect to average amount of backorder.     

The Bioaccessibility of Lead (Pb) from Vacuumed House Dust on Carpets in Urban Residences

Risk assessments for toxicants in environmental media via oral exposure often rely on measurements of total concentration in a collected sample. However, the human digestive system cannot dissolute all of a toxicant present in the binding matrix, and cannot absorb it with nearly 100% efficiency. In vitro bioaccessibility has been developed as a method to estimate oral bioavailability of a toxicant using a physiologically-based extraction procedure. Bioaccessibility measurements are more physiologically relevant than strong acid leaching measurements of concentration. A method for measuring bioaccessible lead in house dust was derived from the bioaccessibility method currently used for heavy metals in contaminated soils. House dust was collected from carpets in typical urban residences. Bioaccessible lead was measured in house dust (<75 microm) from the homes of 15 participants. The bioaccessibility ranged from 52.4% to 77.2% in gastric fluid, and 4.9% to 32.1% in intestinal fluid. House dust samples from five homes were analyzed to assess the relationship among lead bioaccessibility of three particle size fractions (<75, 75-150, and 150-250 microm). Changes in lead bioaccessibility as a function of particle size fraction were not significant for gastric fluid (p= 0.7019); however they were significant for intestinal fluid (p= 0.0067). This decrease of bioaccessibility may result from the readsorption of dissolved lead onto the dust particles or precipitation of lead with phosphates in a high-pH environment. The bioaccessibility data obtained for two biofluids were applied to the IEUBK model, and results for intestinal bioaccessibility of lead provide support for the model default value of 30% lead bioavailability of dust as a reasonable population indicator for dose, but the higher values for gastric bioaccessibility of lead appeared to provide an upper bound that approached actual blood lead levels in the children living in the studied homes. This upper bound seemed to overcome some of the limitations of the model when it lacks child-specific activity data and characterization of all exposure routes.     

Framing effect on the public's response to crisis: Human interest frame and crisis type influencing responsibility and blame

This study investigated the effects of a human interest frame and types of crisis in news coverage of a corporate crisis on people's responses to the crisis. To examine the effects, this study used 2 (human interest frame versus non-human interest frame) × 2 (an accident versus a transgression) mixed factorial design. The results indicate that the human interest frame influenced participants’ emotional response to the crisis and the emotional response influenced by the human interest frame was a significant predictor of blame and responsibility in a transgression crisis.     

Estimation of elderly housing demand in an Asian city: Methodological issues and policy implications

Projection of elderly housing demands and needs has always been complex because of the volatility and heterogeneity of the factors involved. This paper argues that in a society where the tradition of elderly parents co-habiting with the children's family is breaking up, the projection of elderly housing demands for planning and policy purposes may not be scientifically possible. This owes to the impossibility to gauge housing affordability of the elderly by conventional indicators and the lack of information on the market behaviour of the elderly alone. This paper suggests the analysis of pre-retirement income, housing arrangements and housing aspiration to help elderly housing service providers to make more informed decisions. However, the projection of housing needs is more plausible if the underlying demographic projection models take care of major demographic trends such as household sizes and types, and if surveys are carried out to gauge housing aspirations of contemporary elderly persons. By using the above methods, the paper projected the future elderly housing needs and demands of Hong Kong, and found that public rental housing was perceived as the most secure type of housing regardless of affordability. This preference may reflect anomalies in elderly policies, particularly the lack of housing choices to suit the varied needs and affordability.     

Improving sustainability: An international evolutionary framework

As emerging markets develop, foreign firms are being viewed less and less as providers of capital and/or technology, and more as integral parts of society in general, with much greater responsibilities that stem largely from their multinational roles. Recognizing these pressures and the increasing interaction between multinationals and societal institutions, we first briefly review the literature on role, stakeholder, and institutional theories, to develop a framework to improve our understanding of multinational sustainability. We next develop a three-stage model of the stages of societal development in general, and subsequently apply these stages to the development of China from 1978 to the present. We suggest that these changes have resulted in changing expectations of multinationals regarding their appropriate roles within China. We conclude by discussing lessons from our model for researchers, educators and practitioners.     

Makespan and workstation utilization minimization in a flowshop with operations flexibility

Production environments where there are more tasks than workstations and any task can be assigned to any workstation are examples of operations flexibility. This paper investigates the benefits of operations flexibility in a flowshop when the goals are to minimize the makespan and workstation utilization. Furthermore, machine dominance principles are extended to the case of a flowshop with operations flexibility. The proposed heuristic framework comprises of two phases, allocation of operations to workstations and generation of job sequencing. In addition, an improvement procedure based on simulated annealing is implemented for this problem. The experimental results identify the effects of the experimental factors; show the significance of the heuristic factor; and demonstrate the tradeoff between the two performance criteria.     

Constructing a Quality of Life Scale for Older Chinese People in Hong Kong (HKQoLOCP)

This paper reports a multi-stagestudy carried out between 1999 and 2001 whichaimed to develop an instrument to address theneed for a culturally relevant measure ofquality of life for Chinese older persons inHong Kong and similar communities. The firststage of the research involved a focus groupstudy conducted in August 1999 which it washoped would reflect how quality of life maybe interpreted by older persons themselves. Thenext stage, a content analysis of the focusgroups, enabled the construction of aquestionnaire containing over 100 items onvarious aspects of quality of life (QoL). Thequestionnaire was reviewed by a panel ofexperts and the items were refined and reducedto 86 to which were added a further 25 itemsfor socio-demographic background. This formedthe initial instrument. The final stage was avalidation study based on a representativecommunity survey, with a sample of 3,000respondents drawn for the research team by theCensus and Statistics Department of the HongKong Special Administrative Region (HKSAR)Government. The survey yielded 1,616 successfulinterviews with older persons aged 60 or above.The careful stratification of the sampleenabled us to say that subjects in all thestages of the survey had broadly similarcharacteristics to the general Hong Kongelderly population in sex and age distribution.After a rigorous process of validation, theresearch team recommended the adoption of bothan index and six domains for measuring HongKong older persons QoL. The new scale containsa total of 21 items which can be grouped intovarious domains: subjective well-being, with 4items; health with 5 items; interpersonalrelationships with 6 items; achievement-recognition with 4 items, finance and livingconditions (1 item each). The overall QoL scalehas a Cronbachs alpha of 0.72 with its domainsranging from 0.65 to 0.77 which indicates ahigh degree of statistical reliabilities. Thename recommended for the scale was Hong KongQuality of Life for Older Persons Scale-abbreviated as HKQoLOCP.     

Distributional and Peer‐Induced Fairness in Supply Chain Contract Design

Members of a supply chain often make profit comparisons. A retailer exhibits peer‐induced fairness concerns when his own profit is behind that of a peer retailer interacting with the same supplier. In addition, a retailer exhibits distributional fairness when his supplier's share of total profit is larger than his own. While existing research focuses exclusively on distributional fairness concerns, this study investigates how both types of fairness might interact and influence economic outcomes in a supply chain. We consider a one‐supplier and two‐retailer supply chain setting, and we show that (i) in the presence of distributional fairness alone, the wholesale price offer is lower than the standard wholesale price offer; (ii) in the presence of both types of fairness, the second wholesale price is higher than the first wholesale price; and (iii) in the presence of both types of fairness, the second retailer makes a lower profit and has a lower share of the total supply chain profit than the first retailer. We run controlled experiments with subjects motivated by substantial monetary incentives and show that subject behaviors are consistent with the model predictions. Structural estimation on the data suggests that peer‐induced fairness is more salient than distributional fairness.     

中国“三资”企业中的文化冲突与文化创新

自1980年以来,进入中国的外国投资越来越多,1995 年全国吸引外资总额375亿美元,2002 年为 527 亿美元。1外资投资于中国的动因主要是大陆低廉的劳动力成本和庞大的国内市场。早期的投资以前一种动因为主,由于供销市场都在海外,早期的“三资”2企业像“孤岛”一样与本地社会联系不大。随着中国经济持续多年的高速增长和进一步开放的政策的实施,国内市场成为吸引外资的主要动力。以立足中国为发展目标、国内采购和销售比例越来越大的外资企业必定与本地社会发展建立起更为密切的关系。随着“三资”企业本地化,发生在这些企业当中的中国员工与…