This paper analyses the importance of productive specialisation in explaining cost efficiency differences between banking companies. Taking as reference the Spanish banking sector during the period 1985-96, the study shows that if cost efficiency measurements are corrected for the effect of different specialisation by the estimation of separate frontiers for four different groups of competitors...

This paper is concerned with the problem of controlling a truncated general immigration process, which represents a population of harmful individuals, by the introduction of a predator. If the parameters of the model satisfy some mild conditions, the existence of a control-limit policy that is average-cost optimal is proved. The proof is based on the uniformization technique and on the variatio...

Cloud computing promises high performance and cost-efficiency. However, most cloud infrastructures operate at a low utilization, which greatly adheres cost effectiveness. Previous works focus on seeking efficient virtual machine (VM) consolidation strategies to increase the utilization of virtual resources in production environment, but overlook the under-utilization of backup virtual resources...

Stochastic flexible flow shop scheduling problem (SFFSSP) is one the main focus of researchers due to the complexity arises from inherent uncertainties and also the difficulty of solving such NP-hard problems. Conventionally, in such problems each machine’s job process time may encounter uncertainty due to their relevant random behaviour. In order to examine such problems more realistically, fi...

Cost efficiency measures the cost of resource by output production. While conventional cost efficiency models set targets separately for each DMU, There are cases where the Central decision making is seeking the above targets, and at the same tries to obtain the target of Min cost efficiency for the total consumption. in this paper we consider that there is a centralized decision maker (DM). In...

The future of manufacturing is here, compliments of intelligent machines that enable people, processes, products and infrastructure to seamlessly coordinate, creating finished goods that are more time-and cost-efficient to produce — and meet, if not exceed, customer expectations.

New and increasingly advanced data services are driving up wireless traffic, which is being further boosted by growth in voice applications in advanced market segments as the migration from fixed to mobile voice continues. Meanwhile, difficult market conditions have caused a number of operators to delay making substantial investments in upgrading their networks to higher capacity technology. In...

Electric-Drive Vehicle Fleets need proper charging infrastructure available in the area of operation. The number of potential locations can be quite large with differing costs for preparation, installations, operation and maintenance. We consider a planning approach based on vehicle movement scenarios. Given a large set of vehicle movements and parking activities, we search for a cost minimal s...

An innovative and sustainable approach to clinical e-learning is described The approach is based on a national federation to provide funding, clinical and educational expertise, IT solutions and program oversight; to develop, curate and champion a resource with multiple courses for healthcare professionals. The approach has resulted in formal recognition by nearly all Australian healthcare orga...