This paper addresses some of the challenges faced by a company which is responsible for delivering coal to its four subsidiaries situated along a river, through river hired or selfowned vessels. We propose to adopt a vendor managed inventory concept that involves establishment of a central warehouse at the port, and apply the Markov Decision Process (MDP) to formulate both ordering and delivery...

Operating rooms serve as costly wards of hospitals, so any cost reduction affects the total costs. This study examined supply chain surgical supplies in operating under uncertainty. room consumable items are received from supplier sterile and nonsterile forms then sent to before surgery. If surgeon requests items, these first core, sterilized transferred room. There may be during operation due ...

this study aimed at identifying components of the household health costs.this study was a qualitative research conducted in two main phases. the first phase consisted of interviews with sample households selected in eight provinces of iran. they were to identify components of the household health costs. in the second phase, components were determined as direct, indirect and intangible based on ...

In the absence of billing data, alternative methods are used to estimate the cost of hospital stays, outpatient visits, and treatment innovations in the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA). The choice of method represents a trade-off between accuracy and research cost. The direct measurement method gathers information on staff activities, supplies, equipment, space, and workload. Since it ...

This paper addresses the integrated production-inventory-distribution decisions in a three-echelon supply chain (SC) network. The studied SC network is composed of a raw material processor that supplies different types of processed raw materials to a set of manufacturing facilities which in turn deliver their end products to a set of retailers facing external demand from end customers. A mixed ...

The Pau Branco mine supplies two blast furnaces with iron ore lumps, and currently, charcoal consumption for pig iron production accounts for 47% of the blast furnaces’ operational cost. A geometallurgical model is presented to support an economic study considering reserve volumes, product quality, and operational costs based on the metallurgical performance of different iron ore typologies. Sa...

the prevalence of atrial fibrillation (af) is 1-2 % in the general population, and the risk of embolic stroke in af patients is 4-5 times higher than that in the general population. af-related strokes are often severe, and the rate of permanent disability is much higher among individuals who have af-related strokes than in those who have strokes unrelated to af. in patients with af, more than 9...

Energy issues have become increasingly important for our world. It could be plausibly argued that energy will shortly be the single most important problem for industrialized countries, on the same footing as food, water and overpopulation, for the world as a whole. On a timescale of decades, our world may face an inevitable exhaustion of nonrenewable energy supplies. Even at the present time, e...

In developing countries, where more than 99% of all human rabies deaths occur, nervous tissue antirabies vaccines are still the most widely used because of their relatively low cost and despite their variable potency and the risk of neurological complications. The supplies of modern and safe vaccines for many developing countries are grossly inadequate whereas the demand for affordable and safe...

Power system modeling is a software management tool for managing electricity demand, power system trading electricity and power system generation expansion planning purposes, through the combination of various models and their comparison, which can be used by the Government for its policy support and by the power enterprises for their business development planning decision support, and ensure t...