Empirical investigation into impact of IT adoption on supply chain agility in fast food sector in Pakistan

Information technology and supply chain agility are in vogue. The present study aims to investigate the impact of information technology (IT) on supply chain agility and its outcomes such as cost reduction and operational performance in fast food companies' chains. A total of 240 employees from fast food chains were selected as respondents. Data was collected using five-point Likert scale questionnaire developed from previous studies. The statistical results confirmed that adoption of IT is playing a vibrant role in achieving supply chain agility and supply chain agility helps to reduce cost and improves operational performance of firms. The study model provides a useful framework to examine the impact of IT adoption on supply chain agility and its outcomes. In conclusion, the firms have to focus on their supply chain management and make it efficient and agile by implementing the advanced technologies to gain operational performance. Implications have been discussed.

Economics of a Health System's Direct-to-Consumer Telemedicine for Its Employees

Am J Manag Care. 2023;29(6):In Press _____ Takeaway Points The value of direct-to-consumer (DTC) telemedicine services offered by academic health systems is understudied. * DTC telemedicine services for low-acuity or minor illnesses are increasingly offered as an employee benefit, but any per-episode unit cost advantage may be offset by overuse of care. * DTC telemedicine staffed by an academic health system and offered to its employees resulted in lower per-episode unit costs for care within 7 days and only marginally increased the use of services. * DTC telemedicine staffed by an academic health system and offered directly to employees was cost-saving. _____ Employers in the United States have increasingly been offering a direct-to-consumer (DTC) telemedicine benefit for low-acuity or minor illnesses to their employees.1-3 By 2021, more than 95% of employers with 50 or more employees provided some coverage for DTC telemedicine in their largest health plan;more than 75% felt that offering telemedicine was important and nearly 20% either limited or eliminated cost sharing for telemedicine.4 Despite these trends among general employers, few health systems have directly provided DTC telemedicine to their own employees. [...]because these services are easy to access (often available immediately, around the clock, and without travel), they may induce overuse of care, especially for self-limited conditions such as viral upper respiratory infections for which the alternative to in-person care is no care at all, thus increasing the overall cost of care.5-11 Telemedicine will save money relative to in-person care if any unit price advantages are not overwhelmed by the increased use of care overall, induced by its convenience. Employers provide health insurance coverage for 158 million Americans or nearly 50% of the population. Since the COVID-19 pandemic began, telemedicine has represented a significantly larger portion of all medical claims—consistently more than 5% of all medical claims by mid-202112-15—and the estimated value of the global telemedicine industry is projected to reach a quarter of a trillion dollars by 2024.13 Yet, the future of telemedicine remains undetermined with reimbursement rates in debate,16-18 driven in large part because its economic value is understudied and uncertain. Penn Medicine is self-insured and more than 95% of employees use its only employer-sponsored plan—a preferred provider organization (PPO) plan—rather than insurance obtained individually or through a family member. Since 2017, these PPO-insured employees have been offered Penn Medicine OnDemand,19 a 24/7 DTC telemedicine benefit to employees and their adult (≥ 18 years) dependents.

Vito Project: Hull / Mooring Design & Platform Installation

In 2009, the Vito field was discovered in more than 4,000 ft of water approximately 150 miles offshore from New Orleans, Louisiana. The project produces from reservoirs nearly 30,000 feet below sea level. This paper provides an overview of the Hull & Mooring system, executing a minimum technical scope to produce a simplistic design. This paper is part of a Vito Project series at OTC 2023, and the other papers are listed in the references. The original Vito project execution strategy was to replicate the Shell mega-project of Appomattox. As the industry and market began to change in 2015, the project faced significant financial hurdles, and the project team decided to refresh the design concept to reduce cost and simplify. The team regrouped to propose a smaller semi-submersible Floating Production System (FPS) with a simplistic mooring design. The Topsides was designed to be lifted as a single module, with a payload of less than 10,000 st to enable competitive tendering process. The redesigned FPS concept was moored with 12 taut, chain – polyester – chain mooring line system utilizing an in-line mooring tensioner, removing the traditional mechanically complicated and space demanding "on-vessel" winch systems. Vito employed a passive hull system, with all ballasting occurring over the top without hull penetrations. There were no pump rooms within the hull as equipment is accessed from top of column, removing the need for regular hull access to maintain equipment. The hull compartmentation also followed a simple approach, containing only 12 ballast tanks to reduce fabrication cost. The hull design also included simplified ring stiffening for columns which eliminated the traditional orthogonally stiffened systems. Additionally, the structure utilized an upper column frame structure to support the topsides deck and served as a bracing for supporting columns at the top for squeeze-pry loads and bracing for supporting columns during dry tow. The simplification of the stiffening system and topsides deck support design reduced interfaces between hull and topsides and also opened up options for fabrication of topsides and hull. Key challenges included developing installation methods without traditional FPS mooring chain jacks and increasing installation options by not requiring a large installation derrick barge and enabling use of common anchor handler vessels. The project experienced fabrication delays due to COVID-19, which required creative solutions transporting the FPS from Singapore to the Gulf of Mexico. The design team © 2023, Offshore Technology Conference.

Take-off, turbulence and turnaround

PurposeThe aim of this paper is to explore the evolving nature of the work of cabin crew in a Scandinavian carrier in three eras, drawing on theories of gender and emotional labour.Design/methodology/approachThe paper draws on ethnographic data from fieldwork, interviews and documents.FindingsFrom being a feminized and temporary occupation for young, upper- and middle-class women in the 1970s, the occupation became a full-time job and with greater diversity of cabin crew. Today there are signs of the job becoming a precarious and temporary one of demanding and devalorized work in a polarized and class-divided labour market. Changing circumstances impact on the emotional labour requirement and terms and conditions at work.Research limitations/implicationsA limitation is that the research design was not initially longitudinal in the sense that the author does not have exactly the same kind of data from each era. The author has, however, been involved in this field for two decades, used multiple methods and interacted with different stakeholders and drew on a unique data material.Practical implicationsThe development in aviation is contributing to new discriminatory practices, driving employee conditions downwards and changing the job demands. This development will have practical consequences for the lives and families of cabin crew.Social implicationsThe analysis illustrates how work ‘constructs' workers and contributes in creating jobs that are not sustainable for the employees. Intensification of work, insecurity and tougher working conditions also challenge key features in the Nordic model such as proper pay, decent work and a life-long employment. Much indicates that the profession is again becoming a temporary one of demanding work with poor working conditions in a polarized and class-divided labour market.Originality/valueThe research contributes to the literature on emotional labour, gender and the evolving nature of the work of cabin crew. The unique data material, the longitudinal aspect of the research and the focus on a single network carrier are good in charting changes over time.

Redesigning Chronic Care delivery using Mobile Health Technology

Typical management of chronic conditions is through sporadic office visits. But health indicators (such as blood pressure) can fluctuate significantly within a day. The infrequent office visits, however, offer the provider little information about the medical history of the patient between office visits resulting in delayed and sometimes inappropriate interventions. Use of mobile health (mHealth) technology in clinical care can help make appropriate interventions at the patient's location before the worsening condition leads to costlier consequences. mHealth enables patients to remotely upload measurements and providers to continuously monitor these measurements and intervene if necessary. mHealth, therefore, results in bidirectional information flow between providers and patients, thereby reducing information asymmetry. Our study examines redesigning of chronic care delivery using mHealth. It is important to make sure the redesigned delivery process is both efficient (reduces cost) and effective (improves patient health). In this paper, we first present a big picture of the redesigned care delivery process. We then show how this delivery process can improve patient health by analyzing a panel dataset of 1627 patients. We examine the relationship between use of mobile health applications and quality of care delivery for hypertensive patients. We observe the blood pressure readings to decrease with frequency of app usage and time since adoption. With the use of mHealth apps increasing in the post COVID-19 era, our analysis indicates an efficient use of physician's time and an increased role for support-staff under the supervision of the physician. The chronic care delivery process can therefore be redesigned with the help of mHealth, improving patient health and reducing cost for both patients and providers. © 2023 IEEE Computer Society. All rights reserved.

Hospital at Home: Paying for What It's Worth

Am J Manag Care. 2021;27(9):369-371. https://doi.org/10.37765/ajmc.2021.88739 _____ Takeaway Points A framework centered around cost, quality, and equity is essential to define the value of hospital-at-home programs. * Validated disease-specific tools should be consistently used to measure process metrics, outcome metrics, quality-of-life measures, and caregiver satisfaction measures. * Equity-focused process metrics, care utilization measures, and risk-adjusted outcome metrics should be reported. * Total costs of care for hospital-at-home programs should be consistently measured through a time-driven activity-based costing method. * Personal, societal, technical, and allocative value should be considered when determining the value of hospital-at-home programs. _____ In recent years, home health care has grown to 3% of overall US health care spending.1 Investment in home health care delivery including telemedicine grew considerably during the COVID-19 pandemic.2 One area that has lagged in terms of growth has been the hospital-at-home model. For home health agencies (different from hospital-at-home programs, which provide more acute care services), CMS uses a more comprehensive Home Health Quality Reporting process to assess risk-adjusted process measures, outcomes measures, occurrences of adverse events, utilization of care measures, and cost measures.9 After the COVID-19 pandemic, similar reporting processes should be implemented for measuring the quality and outcomes of hospital-at-home programs. Because hospital-at-home programs share features of both inpatient hospital admissions and home health agencies, they are uniquely positioned to both treat the patient acutely and improve the living conditions and resources that led to the acute illness. The American Heart Association's Get With the Guidelines – Heart Failure, an in-hospital program, describes a comprehensive, robust set of quality measurements including process and outcome measurements for heart failure management.11 Process metrics include assessment of left ventricular ejection fraction, adherence to guideline-recommended medical therapy at discharge, and scheduled follow-up;process metrics correlate well to high-quality heart failure care.12 Outcome metrics include 30-day mortality and 30-day readmission rates.12 Although hospital-at-home programs have been associated with lower costs, these cost reductions are mostly due to reduced length of hospitalization,13 number of consultations,14 and clinical testing.13 It is yet unclear if the reduction in services utilized also leads to a reduction in value for the patient—either through fewer completed process metrics or significantly increased caregiver burden. Of 34 studies included in a meta-analysis comparing the costs of hospital at home with those of hospitalizations, 32 studies found hospital at home to cost less.3 For example, in a recent randomized controlled trial evaluating patients treated in a hospital-at-home program compared with those treated in a traditional hospital, the risk-adjusted cost reduction of home care management was 19%.15 In this trial, costs were calculated by summing the costs of labor, equipment, medications, laboratory tests, imaging tests, and transport during the period of hospitalization.15 In hospital-at-home models, cost savings are thought to be achieved due to reduced length of hospitalization,13 decreased number of consultations,14 reduced nursing labor costs,15 and decreased clinical testing.13 However, no uniform method exists to track and assess costs,16 and there is worry that the costs of hospital-at-home programs are underestimated.17 To fill this gap, these programs should report and analyze the total costs of care—including costs incurred by patients and their caregivers—rather than simply the reimbursement rates for care.

An Intent-driven DaaS Management Framework to Enhance User Quality of Experience

Desktop as a Service (DaaS) has become widely used by enterprises. In 2020, the use of DaaS increased dramatically due to the demand to work remotely from home during the COVID-19 pandemic. The DaaS market is expected to continue growing rapidly [1]. The quality of experience (QoE) of a DaaS service has been one of the main factors to enhance DaaS user satisfaction. To ensure user QoE, the amount of cloud computation resources for a DaaS service must be appropriately designed. We propose an Intent-driven DaaS Management (IDM) framework to autonomously determine the cloud-resource-amount configurations for a given DaaS QoE requirement. IDM enables autonomous resource design by ing the knowledge about the dependency between DaaS workload, resource configuration, and performance from previous DaaS performance log data. To ensure the IDM framework's applicability to actual DaaS services, we analyzed five main challenges in applying the IDM framework to actual DaaS services: identifying the resource-design objective, quantifying DaaS QoE, addressing low log data availability, designing performance-inference models, and addressing low resource variations in the log data. We addressed these challenges through detailed designing of IDM modules. The effectiveness of the IDM framework was assessed from the aspects of DaaS performance-inference precision, DaaS resource design, and time and human-resource cost reduction. © 2022 Copyright held by the owner/author(s). Publication rights licensed to ACM.

An Efficient and Intelligent Systems for Internet of Things Based Health Observance System for Covid 19 Patients

This paper describes how an IoT -based health monitoring system was conceived and built (IoT). With the proliferation of new technologies, doctors nowadays are constantly on the lookout for cutting-edge electronic tools that will make it simpler to detect abnormalities in the human body. The Internet of Things makes it possible to create cutting-edge, non-intrusive healthcare assistance systems. In this article, we introduce the Comprehensive Health Monitoring System, or CHMS. Normal people can't afford to buy separate devices or make frequent trips to hospitals. Our CHMS will monitor a patient's vitals, including temperature, heart rate, and oxygen saturation (OS), and relay that information to a portable device. To make sense of the information gathered by the physical layer's sensors, the logical layer must analyses it. The application layer then makes judgments based on the processed data from the logical layer. The primary goal is to reduce costs for average consumers. Patients will have simple access to individual healthcare, in addition to financial sustainability. This study introduces an IoT -based system that would streamline the operation of a complex medical gadget while reducing its associated cost, allowing its users to do so from the comfort of home. The public's adoption of these gadgets as aids in a given setting might have significant effects on their own lives. © 2023 IEEE.

Virtual worx™: Transforming maintenance concepts through augmented reality collaboration capabilities

VirtualWorx™ began as a 2015 Raytheon Six Sigma process improvement project to solve challenges faced by customers who were being asked to "do more with less"such that Operations Sustainment (OS) costs became a significant aspect in the planning and awarding of new systems, as well as for upgrades to existing systems. This raised the need to investigate opportunities that reduced OS costs, which spanned the spectrum from technology-enabled maintenance operations to autonomy and analytics. VirtualWorx™ focused on the former and in particular, the process of flying technicians to international field sites to solve challenging troubleshooting and repair issues that were beyond the capabilities of the local maintainers but would have broader implications affecting product maintainability.The opportunity focused on business process improvement through the insertion of technology to better leverage global human resources and extend the significant breadth and depth of engineering expertise from Raytheon Centers of Excellence. This would allow support of deployed systems anywhere in the world through secure two-way audiovideo communication up to and including augmented reality-based interactive remote collaboration. Figure 1 depicts the brainstorming session that resulted in a "back-of-The-napkin"design.The vision was to provide a secure enterprise, technical collaboration solution by implementing augmented reality-based communication capability to improve operational availability (Ao) of a system to perform its mission, reduce overall sustainment costs (including significant reduction in program travel), and provide effective troubleshooting of systems under repair.The proposed strategy prioritized customer driven use cases and network architecture development to:•Establish scalable Outside Contiguous United State (OCONUS) reach-back connectivity for technical support between a remote user and subject matter expert over a secure infrastructure worldwide•Facilitate technical support via a common environment using Augmented Reality (AR) capabilities over existing company network infrastructure•Enable the spectrum of collaboration across the enterprise to reduce staffing costs, leverage technical expertise, and provide improved Efficiency, Effectiveness, Capacity, and Capability (E2C2).With a strong business case, a successful proof-of-concept phase gained support from senior leadership in engineering and digital technology and earned further investment through Raytheon Independent Research and Development (IRAD) funding to move the project forward into a pilot phase for the first use case-remotely supported maintenance.To date, VirtualWorx™ has been successfully piloted and deployed on various internal and customer programs handling a variety of data and communication-rich exchanges that span the entire development life cycle.Underneath the system's hardware and Raytheon Technologies' global network infrastructure, VirtualWorx™ is powered by Librestream's Onsite software platform that provides responsive technical support throughout the product life cycle allowing the emerging workforce to respond in a way employees feel most comfortable-via video.VirtualWorx™ has become a Raytheon Technologies Enterprise solution for end-To-end augmented reality collaboration specifically tailored to support remote maintenance of aerospace and defense repairable assets. The on-premises solution carries export controlled technical data and delivers live reach-back support over an increasing variety of use cases since the initial proof-of-concept-to support maintenance and repair of deployed systems around the world. It streams AR-enhanced live audiovideo between field service engineers, subject matter experts, domestic and international business partners and is accessible anywhere on the company's global network and through virtual private networking (VPN) access from off-site locations.Return on investment (ROI) has been realized from the initial remote maintenance use case to broader applications of the technology to reso ve both internal and external challenges. Many of these recent challenges were especially brought on by recent COVID pandemic conditions that restricted global travel, limited face-To-face communication, and prevented movement of personnel as sites were locked-down due to COVID exposure concerns. © 2023 IEEE.

Strategic Alliances, Innovation Capability, Cost Reduction, Customer Loyalty and Competitive Advantage in B2B Alliances

Disruptive business environment such as the Covid-19 pandemic and the recent high volatility in commodity prices has changed the way businesses were conducted. The heavy equipment industry is one of many industries affected by such an environment, especially those who are related to the mining industry where the volatility of the commodity prices has a significant impact on their business performance. Alliances are commonly formed by heavy equipment distributors and their customers to create a mutual benefit to sustain their performance. Strategic alliances have attracted substantial attention from industry as well as academia as a way to stay competitive. They mostly focus on the partner-to-partner alliances in serving their customers. Consumer behaviour has changed due to changes in the environment that make firms' strategic focus more on human-centric business approaches. This study looks at the roles of the partner-to-customer alliances, innovation capability, and cost reduction toward customer loyalty and competitive advantage. Data was collected from 335 respondents from the firms that have entered into alliances. This study finds strategic alliances have the highest association with cost reduction, followed by their association with innovation capability. They enhance customer loyalty through innovation capability. Cost reduction is not a lever to develop customer loyalty in the partner-to-customer relationship. The study also confirms that operational efficiencies are necessarily the source of competitive advantage, but strategic alliances are. © 2022, Academic Conferences and Publishing International Limited. All right reserved.

The Factors Affecting Digital Transformation in Vietnam Logistics Enterprises

In the context of the industrial revolution 4.0 that is firmly taking place globally, the digital transformation process is considered a revolution that changes the operating and business model. In Vietnam, logistics is one of eight areas that need to be prioritized in the national conversion program to 2025, the orientation towards 2030 by the Prime Minister under Decision No. 749/QĐ-TTg. Digital transformation is an essential solution that helps businesses improve their competitiveness, increase labor productivity, sustainably develop businesses, and integrate with the global economy. This study analyzes the influencing factors of digital transformation and the situation in Vietnam's logistics enterprises. This paper used a qualitative research method carried out through direct interviews with 20 digital transformation experts in the field of logistics about the current situation, adjusting models and scales, and discussing research results. Quantitative research was conducted online through 258 survey questionnaires of logistics enterprises in the country. The authors performed descriptive statistics, tested the scale, analyzed EFA using SPSS software, and tested the research hypotheses. Research results indicate that five factors—managers, digital transformation human resources, information technology, investment cost, and support services for digital transformation—affect the digital conversion activity in logistics enterprises. Afterward, the research team proposed solutions to promote this operation in Vietnam's logistics enterprises, contributing to implementing critical tasks of the government's digital transformation.

Factors That Affect the Effectiveness of Management Accounting Software

This study aims to examine the suitability of the conceptual model regarding the effect of business strategy, user competence, organizational structure on the Effectiveness of Management Accounting Software (MAS), and how the influence between the variables studied during the Covid 19 Pandemic took place. Quantitative methods are used to test the suitability of the proposed model and to determine the predicted effect between the variables studied. The data were tested using Covarian Base Structural Equation Model (CB-SEM) with Lisrell 8.5 software. This study uses primary data collected through questionnaires to a population of 118 State-Owned Enterprises (SOEs) Management Accounting departments in Indonesia, with a selected sample size of 100 SOEs, which were selected using a simple random technique. The results of this study succeeded in confirming the conceptual model developed by the researcher and empirically proving the influence of business strategy on MAS Effectiveness, user competence on MAS Effectiveness and organizational structure on MAS Effectiveness in Indonesian SOEs companies. The effectiveness of MAS depends on the relevance of the needs of its users. The right business strategy, effectively provides relevant information for the company to design MAIS according to user needs, so that the company's operational activities run effectively and efficiently, the company is able to implement a Cost Reduction Strategy through production cost savings, production process accuracy, implementing product differentiation and low pricing strategy with a focus on customer needs during the Covid-19 pandemic. The results of this study contribute to producing strategic management accounting information to anticipate business continuity during and after the Covid 19 Pandemic and to help overcome the crisis due to the Covid 19 pandemic in the early stages of the Covid 19 Pandemic by optimizing business strategy, organizational structure, and company HR competencies. © 2022 IEEE.

Optimizing computational costs of Spark for SARS-CoV-2 sequences comparisons on a commercial cloud

Cloud computing is currently one of the prime choices in the computing infrastructure landscape. In addition to advantages such as the pay-per-use bill model and resource elasticity, there are technical benefits regarding heterogeneity and large-scale configuration. Alongside the classical need for performance, for example, time, space, and energy, there is an interest in the financial cost that might come from budget constraints. Based on scalability considerations and the pricing model of traditional public clouds, a reasonable optimization strategy output could be the most suitable configuration of virtual machines to run a specific workload. From the perspective of runtime and monetary cost optimizations, we provide the adaptation of a Hadoop applications execution cost model extracted from the literature aiming at Spark applications modeled with the MapReduce paradigm. We evaluate our optimizer model executing an improved version of the Diff Sequences Spark application to perform SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus pairwise sequence comparisons using the AWS EC2's virtual machine instances. The experimental results with our model outperformed 80% of the random resource selection scenarios. By only employing spot worker nodes exposed to revocation scenarios rather than on-demand workers, we obtained an average monetary cost reduction of 35.66% with a slight runtime increase of 3.36%. © 2023 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

SG-APSIC1063: Building and application of e-learning software for infection control, Cho Ray Hospital

Objectives: In the context of the COVID-19 pandemic over the past 2 years, training regarding infection and prevention control (IPC) has become essential in responding promptly to the pandemic. Many healthcare workers from Cho Ray Hospital and provincial hospitals need IPC training;however, human resources and facilities for continuous education and training are lacking. Therefore, IPC e-learning has become necessary for medical staff, and we designed IPC e-learning courses to meet healthcare workers' needs for efficient, time and cost-saving training to ensure safety during the COVID-19 pandemic. Methods: All medical staff of Cho Ray Hospital were invited to participate in the infection control e-learning study. The software was developed based on the existing lectures from practical infection control protocols. Healthcare workers were asked to study the software and take a test on the their training. Results: We built the e-learning course of IPC for 5,000 participants as well as management software to manage lessons, member data, and test results. After implementation for 2 months in the hospital, 207 participants had taken the exam 2,234 times. Overall, 70.5% of participants were nurses and 14.9% were doctors. Moreover, 66.4% of participants passed the test the first time they took it, and 33.6% took the test a second time. After the second test, the percentage of members who passed the exam was 100%. Conclusions: Building and applying e-learning software for IPC training has brought about efficiency and quality of training, has reduced the use of human resources for training, and has decreased costs. The software application is being expanded to all hospitals in Vietnam.

A New Approach for Forecasting Crude Oil Prices Based on Stochastic and Deterministic Influences of LMD Using ARIMA and LSTM Models

Crude oil is one of the non-renewable power sources and is the lifeblood of the contemporary industry. Every significant change in the price of crude oil (CO) will have an effect on how the global economy, including COVID-19, develops. This study developed a novel hybrid prediction technique that depends on local mean decomposition, Autoregressive Integrated Moving Average (ARIMA), and Long Short-term Memory (LSTM) models to increase crude oil price prediction accuracy. The original data is decomposed by local mean decomposition (LMD), and the decomposed components are reconstructed into stochastic and deterministic (SD) components by average mutual information to reduce the computation cost and enhance forecasting accuracy, predict each individual reconstructed component by ARIMA, and integrate the residuals with LSTM to capture the nonlinearity in residuals and help to find the final prediction result. The new hybrid model LMD-SD-ARIMA-LSTM has reduced the volatility and solved the issue of the overfitting problem of neural networks. The proposed hybrid technique is validated using publicly accessible data from the West Texas Intermediate (WTI), and forecast accuracy are compared using accuracy measures. The value of Mean Absolute Error (MAE) and Mean Absolute Percentage Error (MAPE) for ARIMA, LSTM, LMD-ARIMA, LMD-SD-ARIMA, LMD-ARIMA-LSTM, LMD-SD-ARIMA-LSTM, and Naïve are 1.00, 1.539, 5.289, 0.873, 0.359, 0.106, 4.014 and 2.165, 1.832, 9.165, 1.359, 1.139, 1.124 and 3.821 respectively. From these results, it is concluded that the proposed model LMD-SD-ARIMA-LSTM has minimum values for MAE and MAPE which assured the superiority of the proposed model in One-step ahead forecasting. Moreover, forecasting performance is also compared up to five steps ahead. The findings demonstrate that the suggested approach is a helpful tool for predicting CO prices both in the short and long term. Furthermore, the current study reduces labor costs by combing the stationary and non-stationary Product Functions (PFs) into stochastic and deterministic components with improved accuracy. Meanwhile, the traditional econometric model can strengthen the prediction behavior of CO prices after decomposition and reconstruction, and the new hybrid forecasting method has better performance in medium and long-term forecasting of the CO price. Moreover, accurate predictions can provide reasonable advice for relevant departments to make correct decisions. © 2013 IEEE.

The Distance Cure: A History of Teletherapy by Hannah Zeavin (The MIT Press, 2021)

Book Review Book Review ;The Distance Cure: A History of Teletherapy, by Hannah Zeavin (MIT Press, 2021) Elizabeth Ellcessor University of Virginia eae2f@virginia.edu We are surrounded by remote or "virtual” therapy. During the COVID-19 pandemic, remote therapy services have been increasingly promoted by insurance companies, podcast advertisements, Reddit forums, and corporate wellness offices as a plausible solution to the rising rates of depression and other mental health concerns exacerbated by death, unemployment, and endless uncertainty. For people with interest or experience using telehealth or app-based mental health services, the last two chapters offer analyses of computer-driven and self-directed therapies. Efforts to broader access to therapy have often relied upon increased mediation to reduce costs and simultaneously reduce the availability of dedicated professional attention.

INVENTORY MANAGEMENT OPTIMIZATION FOR CAPITAL GOODS MAINTENANCE

Spare parts play an important role in supporting capital goods maintenance, contributing to downtime reduction and lifetime extension. However, once systems are becoming more and more advanced, and their reliability has also increased, both trends enlarged the amount of components with low demand, and spare parts management are becoming more complicated. Consequently, given the mindset change about delivery times with Covid-19 pandemic and the concern related to global spending in aftersales services, together with customers demanding high uptime levels and TCO (Total Cost of Ownership) reduction, the search for more efficient methods to manage spare parts inventory has emerged. Based on the use of industry 4.0 techniques, the aim of this study is to propose a framework for spare parts provisioning, reducing both maintenance and downtime costs. Copyright, American Society for Engineering Management, 2022.

Joint Decisions of Components Replacement and Spare Parts Ordering Considering Different Supplied Product Quality

In addition to equipment maintenance decisions, spare parts ordering decisions from different suppliers play a key role in reducing related costs (e.g., maintenance, inventory and ordering costs). Since suppliers may use different production technologies and materials, spare parts (or products) from different suppliers can be different in quality. Nevertheless, in recent studies, the quality of spare parts is rarely considered to incorporate both equipment maintenance and spare parts ordering. In this paper, we investigate the joint optimization of condition-based maintenance and spare parts provisioning policy under two suppliers with different product quality. We formulate a sequential-decision problem with a Markov decision process and consequently obtain an optimal maintenance and ordering policy by an exact value iteration algorithm. To improve computation efficiency, based on the principle of sequential optimization, we develop heuristic methods. Extensive numerical experiments are conducted to assess the overall performance of the developed heuristic methods. Compared to the optimal method, results showed that the average cost gap is about 2% and computation time is reduced by 94% on average under the proposed heuristic method. Note to Practitioners—This paper is motivated by the observation that automobile industries tried to integrate emergency suppliers from which spare parts have different quality into maintenance schedules to avoid stockout and reduce equipment failure during the Covid-19 pandemic. Specifically, the article focuses on balancing the trade-offs between condition-based maintenance and inventory management from two suppliers with different lead times and spare parts quality for multi-unit systems. On the one hand, effective maintenance scheduling relies on spare parts for replacement to ensure the stability of production. On the other hand, inventory management needs to select the supplier with appropriate lead time and product quality to reduce the ordering cost and avoid stockout based on the degradation states of equipment. The joint optimization of these two aspects serves to reduce the total maintenance and ordering cost. Nevertheless, most existing research aims to optimize them separately. In this paper, we formulate the joint decision problem considering the two aspects based on a Markov decision process. We obtain an optimal maintenance and ordering policy by an exact value iteration algorithm and present heuristics to improve the computation efficiency when the system contains multiple machines. Practitioners can implement the proposed methodology to make condition-based maintenance and inventory management when spare parts with different qualities are ordered from two suppliers. To balance cost and computational efficiency, it is suggested to implement the optimal policy by an exact value iteration algorithm when the number of machines is small in the system and use the heuristic methods when the number of machines is large (i.e., usually larger than 3). IEEE

Content validation of value-adding indicators for corporate real estate management: insights from a developing country

PurposeThe purpose of this study is to test the content validity of value-adding indicators derived from a comprehensive review of literature and expert interviews within the context of the nascent corporate real estate management (CREM) practices in Ghana.Design/methodology/approachA questionnaire survey was conducted on a panel of experts to assess the content relevance and clarity of the value-adding indicators. The individual content validity (I-CVI) index as well as the average scale content validity index (S-CVI) were computed. Preliminary interviews were analyzed using summative content analysis.FindingsThe I-CVI for relevance and clarity ranged from 0.33 to 1.00, whereas the average S-CVI was > 0.80. Critical analysis of the results by corrections, eliminations due to lower I-CVI scores and suggestions from the experts resulted in a final list of 50 indicators grouped under 10 domains. The results from the content validity confirm the applicability of the value-adding indicators in literature within the Ghanaian context. The study provides detailed sustainability indicators while introducing a new value-adding parameter that relates to CREM preparedness for pandemics such as the Covid-19.Research limitations/implicationsFurther psychometric assessment such as construct validity, inter- and intra-examiner reliability and internal consistency of the indicators is recommended.Practical implicationsThe indicators developed through the content validation can assist in the design and review of measures for the assessment of added value by corporate real estate managers and researchers.Originality/valueThe paper presents the first attempt to test and develop added value indicators within the context of a developing country by taking a systematic content validation procedure.

Factors influencing green hotel revisit intentions after the COVID-19 in Bangladesh

PurposeThe purpose of this study is to explore the factors influencing customers' revisit intentions of green hotels after the COVID-19 pandemic.Design/methodology/approachThe study is based on the existing literatures and interviews of 404 respondents visiting hotels after the pandemic. The partial least square structural equation modeling is used to analyze the data.FindingsThe findings show that green attitude, green personality and personal norms significantly influence post-COVID-19 green hotel revisit intentions.Practical implicationsThe findings of the study may be useful to hotel operators in formulating focused business strategies improving customers' green hotel revisit intentions and coping with the new normal business environment of the hospitality industry.Originality/valueThe study presents a unique case highlighting how the hospitality business is changing after the COVID-19 pandemic. The study provides important insights for industry operators by integrating attitudes, personality and norms of the customers in examining the green hotels revisit intentions.