Since the seminal eCash paper by Chaum, Fiat and Naor [4], there have been many improvements to the original protocol. However, a protocol constitutes only a single layer of a production system. We examine the feasibility of using some of these new eCash protocols in a more massive system that replaces our current physical cash system. Our examples are taken from the Australian economy, but sho...

Cellular production is maintained to be a popular manufacturing and management philosophy, which is increasingly interested and intensified. In this study, group technology cells design and implementation project in a real life glass mould production system is described. All the stages of the project, the difficulties encountered, the strategies developed that overcome these difficulties and th...

This paper considers the case of a one-stage production system with several products and operating under tight production capacity constraints. The production schedule is cyclical, and there are long and sequence dependent setup times. The production system is regarded to consist of two components, namely a production unit and an inventory unit. The performance, with respect to inventory costs,...

We propose an innovative approach and its implementation as an expert system to achieve the semiautomatic detection of candidate attributes for scrambling sensitive data. Our approach is based on semantic rules that determine which concepts have to be scrambled, and on a linguistic component that retrieves the attributes that semantically correspond to these concepts. Because attributes cannot ...

Technology improvements are appraised by setting up different forage, animal breed/feed/management systems, cost of production, and associated technology adoption versions of the model to provide simulations with and without the smallholder dairy intensification technologies in Kenya agriculture. As a reminder, technologies currently in practice and considered in this assessment included tradit...

In this paper, we examine the applicability of lean production to knowledge work by investigating the implementation of a lean production system at an Indian software services firm. We first discuss specific aspects of knowledge work—task uncertainty, process invisibility, and architectural ambiguity—that call into question the relevance of lean production in this setting. Then, combining a det...

In order to improve a production system performance, a coalition of production agents is suggested as a way of coordination of agents in multi agents’ environment. A method for creating coalitions and decision making for each agent whether to join coalition or not is proposed in this paper. Some application areas and further research ideas are discussed in conclusion.

Globalization has changed the world as well as how a customer judges the value of a product, which has created a new business focus. Different approaches have been oriented on this direction, such as the lean manufacturing system and the concept of sustainability. However, these two notions are not easy to implement simultaneously; besides several authors have declared doubts with respect to re...

The System of Rice Intensification (SRI) follows a set of principles in rice production management for a more efficient interaction between plants, soil, water and nutrients; creating a congenial environment for the healthy growth of plants and realizing their best potential productive capacity. In brief, SRI involves: • Carefully planting single, young seedlings at optimally wide spacing • Kee...

Understanding consumers' perceptions of animal welfare is becoming increasingly important to livestock industries as they try to communicate their products. Many questions arise within livestock agriculture when trying to implement production systems that are acceptable socially and financially.