In reliability engineering, component importance measures are used to prioritise components in a system for purposes such as reliability improvement and maintenance planning. Existing importance measures have paid little attention to the costs incurred by maintaining a system and its components within a given time period. Cost-effectiveness analysis, however, is critically important in increasi...

In response to increasing concerns about quality, many countries are carrying out large scale programmes which include national quality strategies, hospital programmes, and quality accreditation, assessment and review processes. Increasing amounts of resources are being devoted to these interventions, but do they ensure or improve quality of care? There is little research evidence as to their e...

It is very exciting to see how operations research methods and models can be implemented in various disciplines and areas of industry. In this paper, two integer programming (IP) models are proposed to solve the layout problem in the fashion industry. Before cutting, several layers of cloth are put on a cutting table and several templates, indicating how to cut all material for a specific size,...

All Software Engineering (SE) processes include steps where several alternatives call for decisions. However, in many cases, the choice is intuitive and thereafter hazardous with unpredictable consequences. On the other side, the operational research domain has produced many methods that could be adequately used in these situations. Using these methods should facilitate the decision making acti...

Consumer finance has become one of the most important areas of banking both because of the amount of money being lent and the impact of such credit on the global economy and the realisation that the credit crunch of 2008 was partly due to incorrect modelling of the risks in such lending. This paper reviews the development of credit scoring,-the way of assessing risk in consumer finance-and what...

Purpose – The paper’s aim is to replicate and compare Huo et al.’s study to better understand performance drivers of third-party logistics (3PL) in mainland China and to disseminate Hong Kong 3PL providers’ experience to mainland China’s peers. Design/methodology/approach – A structural model is estimated to test the construct relationships using data collected from 105 mainland China’s 3PL pro...

Purpose The main aim of this research is to compare and distinguish between two salient means for improving the management of, and leveraging the effectiveness of, supply chains. Leanness and agility have been considered recently as prominent and successful means for competing. The paper examines the literature on leanness and agility thinking including their definitions, importance and practic...

Governments in developing countries are spending more and more money on antiretroviral medication programs in hope that the programs curb the spread of HIV/AIDS and reduce the suffering of those infected. This makes the question of determining the optimal mix of prevention and medication ever more pressing. We construct and parameterize a model of the spread of HIV/AIDS in Botswana that allows ...