Allocating buffers in manufacturing systems is one of easiest ways to improve the throughput of the system, as changes can be implemented quickly and the initial cost of the change is low. Yet, while an increase in the buffer size usually increases the throughput, it often also increases the work in progress and the makespan, therefore increasing the inventory and the time to the customer. Subs...

Allocating buffers in manufacturing systems is one of easiest ways to improve the throughput of the system, as changes can be implemented quickly and the initial cost of the change is low. Yet, while an increase in the buffer size usually increases the throughput, it often also increases the work in progress and the makespan, therefore increasing the inventory and the time to the customer. Subs...

A discrete bat algorithm (DBA) is proposed for optimal permutation flow shop scheduling problem (PFSP). Firstly, the discrete bat algorithm is constructed based on the idea of basic bat algorithm, which divide whole scheduling problem into many subscheduling problems and then NEH heuristic be introduced to solve subscheduling problem. Secondly, some subsequences are operated with certain probab...

INTRODUCTION Vape shops sell electronic cigarettes and related products such as e-liquids, which may contain nicotine. Direct contact with nicotine can lead to adverse health effects, and few regulations exist on how nicotine is handled in vape shops. This study examined how customers and employees come into contact with, and handle, nicotine-containing e-liquids in vape shops with the goal of ...

INTRODUCTION Vape shops are popular brick-and-mortar stores that sell e-cigarette products but are not understood well. Previous analysis of Yelp reviews of vape shops located in various ethnic neighborhoods in Los Angeles, California in 2014 identified characteristics of vape shop as delineated by consumers. In this study, we assessed the associations between these characteristics and vape sho...

Industrial and academic interest converge on scheduling flow shops with sequence- time-dependent maintenance. We posit that anticipatory, integrated of operational maintenance tasks leads to superior performance purely ‘wait-then-fix’ handling the tasks. Motivated by an industrial problem (sequence dependent) setup times, maximum separation constraints, a combination time- dependent tasks, this...

A study on the prevalence and levels of Campylobacter, Salmonella and E. coli on broiler chicken carcasses, wash and rinse water from pluck shops/ cottage poultry processors (CPP) in county Nariva Mayaro Trinidad was done. There are 21 pluck shops/ cottage poultry processors in the county, 14 pluck shops were randomly selected for the study. Samples consisted of 28 broiler carcasses, 14 wash wa...

Purpose – The purpose of this article is to examine how often urban children in mainland China interact with different types of retail shops, how they learn about new products and services, and their attitudes toward different sources of product information. Design/methodology/approach – A survey of 965 urban children ages six to 13 in four Chinese cities, including Beijing, Guangzhou, Nanjing ...