In this paper, lean buffering (i.e., the smallest level of buffering necessary and sufficient to ensure the desired production rate of a manufacturing system) is analyzed for the case of serial lines with machines having Weibull, gamma, and log-normal distributions of upand downtime. The results obtained show that: (1) the lean level of buffering is not very sensitive to the type of upand downt...

Abstract It is increasingly evident that climate sustainability depends not only on societal actions and responses, but also ecosystem functioning responses. The capacity of global ecosystems to provide services such as sequestering carbon regulating hydrology being strongly reduced both by change itself unprecedented rates degradation. These rely functional aspects are causally linked—the same...

Riparian buffer strips are a widely accepted tool for helping to sustain aquatic ecosystems and to protect downstream resources and values in forested areas, but controversy persists over how wide a buffer strip is necessary. The physical integrity of stream channels is expected to be sustained if the characteristics and rates of tree fall along buffered reaches are similar to those in undistur...