Faking it: Personality and individual difference predictors of willingness to buy counterfeit goods

Counterfeiting is now widely regarded as a serious social, economic, and political issue. This study examined demographic, personality, and individual difference predictors of willingness to buy counterfeit goods (WBCG) in a community sample of British adults. Two-hundred and thirty-seven participants completed a questionnaire that assessed their willingness to buy 19 types of counterfeit goods, attitudes towards counterfeiting, material values, Big Five personality traits, and demographics. Structural equation modelling showed that attitudes towards counterfeiting were the strongest predictors of WBCG. In addition, material values predicted both WBCG directly and indirectly through attitudes towards counterfeiting. Older participants showed lower WBCG, although this effect was moderated by participants’ conscientiousness, material values, and attitudes towards counterfeiting. There were no sex differences in WBCG once participants’ age and conscientiousness had been taken into account. These results are discussed in relation to the extant literature on the profiles of consumers who buy counterfeit products.     

Material hardship and 529 college savings plan participation: The mitigating effects of Child Development Accounts

Experience of material hardship can adversely affect a family’s ability to make long-term investments in children’s development. We examine whether material hardship is associated with one indicator of such investments: participation in a tax-advantaged college savings plan (529 plan). Data for this study come from the SEED for Oklahoma Kids (SEED OK) experiment, an intervention that offers Child Development Accounts with financial incentives to encourage the accumulation of college savings for children from the time of their birth. Results show that material hardship is negatively associated with 529-plan participation, and this association varies by treatment status. At all levels of material hardship, treatment-group mothers are more likely to hold accounts than control-group mothers. These findings suggest that CDAs can be a useful policy tool to support families’ financial preparation for college.     

Order Promising and the Master Production Schedule*

Previous research on material requirements planning (MRP) systems has rarely considered the impact of the master production scheduling method used to promise customer orders and to allocate production capacity. Based on a simulation study of an MRP environment, we show that the correct selection of a master production schedule (MPS) method depends on the variance of end-item demand. In addition, we find evidence that the effectiveness of a particular MPS method can be enhanced by holding buffer inventory at the same level in the product structure as in the MPS.     

Filling holes in the safety net? Material hardship and subjective well-being among disability benefit applicants and recipients after the 1996 welfare reform

Some of the rapid recent growth in disability income receipt in the United States is attributable to single mothers post-welfare reform. Yet, we know little about how disability benefit receipt affects the economic well-being of single mother families, or how unsuccessful disability applicants fare. We compare disability recipients to unsuccessful applicants and those who never applied among current and former welfare recipients, and examine how application and receipt affect material hardships and subjective measures of well-being. We then examine whether alternative ways of making ends meet mediate differences in well-being. After controlling for alternative sources of support, no significant differences in overall actual hardships or difficulty living on current income remained between the three groups. However, even after controlling for these strategies, unsuccessful applicants were significantly more likely to report that they expected hardships in the next two months. Our results suggest a pervasive level of economic insecurity among unsuccessful applicants.     

COST INCREASES DUE TO DEMAND UNCERTAINTY IN MRP LOT SIZING

This paper analyzes the cost increases due to demand uncertainty in single-level MRP lot sizing on a rolling horizon. It is shown that forecast errors have a tremendous effect on the cost effectiveness of lot-sizing techniques even when these forecast errors are small. Moreover, the cost differences between different techniques become rather insignificant in the presence of forecast errors. Since most industrial firms face demand uncertainty to some extent, our findings may have important managerial implications. Various simulation experiments give insight into both the nature and the magnitude of the cost increases for different heuristics. Analytical results are developed for the constant-demand case with random noise and forecasting by exponential smoothing. It is also shown how optimal buffers can be obtained by use of a simple model. Although the analysis in this paper is restricted to simplified cases, the results merit further consideration and study. This paper is one of the first to inject forecast errors into MRP lot-sizing research. As such it attempts to deal with one of the major objections against the practical relevance of previous research in this area.     

A LOWER BOUND FOR THE SINGLE-LEVEL DYNAMIC HORIZON LOT-SIZING PROBLEM

Conventional production planning methods assume the existence of a medium- or longrange demand horizon. However, demand usually is known over a much shorter range; scheduling decisions must be made within this “decision window,” which rolls forward in time. This paper presents a new lower bound for lot-sizing heuristics in a rolling-horizon framework and compares it to the well-known Wagner-Whitin bound. The new bound indicates heuristic schedules that have costs close to the optimum. Rolling-horizon schedule costs are compared to corresponding static-horizon schedule costs (assuming the whole horizon is known in advance), using the ratio of decision-window size to the natural order cycle as a parameter. For values below unity, the rolling-horizon policy is significantly more costly. For values above one, the two policies have similar costs and actually converge as the parameter value increases.     

“材料成形技术基础”课程教学改革探讨

介绍了"材料成形技术基础"课程的发展历程,系统分析了教学内容的优化途径,通过"教、学、研"一体化的教学理念,用实例说明围绕该教学理念开展教学工作设计的基本步骤;展示了全方位、多样化的教学手段,着重说明"与校外企业合作开展课程教学工作"和注重实践、课内外结合式教学手段的实现过程;最后对采用多层次考核方法提高学生的学习兴趣和学习效率进行了探讨。     

A modified hierarchical production planning system integrated with MRP: A case study

In this paper, a hierarchical planning system is proposed which integrates aggregate capacity planning with MRP. This system is to be implemented in a metal box manufacturing company which multi-user MRP system covering manufacturing activities as well as procurement sales order processing and accounting systems. The hierarchical planning system includes a medium-range aggregate planning model adapted to the firm's requirements and strategies. The model consists of a mathematical formulation which covers labour capacity has already installed a constraints and includes certain cost estimations in the objective function. The planning horizon of the medium range planning is taken as twelve months in order to cover sales seasonality. The aggregate production quantities resulting from the optimized medium-range planning model are disaggregated according to procedures already found in the literature. Furthermore, the theoretical infeasibilities pertaining to the disaggregation procedures are also resolved in an heuristic manner. Using the latter modified disaggregation procedure, a feasible disaggregated plan is generated for the whole planning horizon. The proposed plan is compared with the current production policy of the firm and it is observed that the proposed plan leads to backorder reduction.     

论我国酌定不起诉权行使的条件

从立法机关对检察机关的酌定不起诉权的态度和《刑法》的相关规定分析,"犯罪情节轻微"是我国检察机关行使酌定不起诉权的前提条件,而将"犯罪情节"理解为量刑情节则有助于充分实现酌定不起诉权的积极功能。     

Performance of TOC based finite capacity material requirement planning system for a multi-stage assembly factory

This paper aims to develop a finite capacity material requirement planning (FCMRP) system based on TOC philosophy (TOC-MRP) for multi-stage assembly factory that has some bottleneck stations. The proposed TOC-MRP system tries to load and schedule operations on bottleneck stations in a manner that they are free of idle time and overtime. The schedules on non-bottleneck stations will be arranged until they are not conflicting with those on the bottleneck stations. The non-bottleneck stations are allowed to have idle time and overtime if necessary. To analyse whether TOC-MRP is effective, it is compared with a FCMRP method that does not adopt TOC philosophy. The experimental results reveal that the TOC-MRP outperforms the FCMRP without TOC philosophy.