This research explores the collective impact of overtime, random breakdown, discontinuous issuing rule, and scrap on batch production planning in a supply-chain environment. In today’s global business environment, manufacturing firms encounter numerous operational challenges. Externally, they must promptly satisfy the customers’ various requests, while internally, they must cautiously manage several inevitable issues in the fabrication process. These issues might be concerned with scrap, random breakdown, etc. Resolving such issues is crucial for meeting the due dates of customers’ orders, adhering to the expected manufacturing schedules, product quality, and minimizing the total fabrication-transportation-inventory costs. The study develops a model to characterize the system’s features mentioned above and assist the manufacturers with batch fabrication planning. The model proposes a solution process with an algorithm seeking an optimal runtime for the system. Additionally, it gives a numerical illustration depicting the collective and individual impacts of these special features on the operating policy and other performance indices. This model and the research findings can facilitate manufacturers’ decision-making for green batch fabrication and enhance competitive advantage.

This study employs mathematical modeling to explore the effects of overtime option, rework, and discontinuous end-item issuing policy on the economic manufacturing quantity (EMQ) model. Conventional EMQ model assumed that all products fabricated are of good quality and are issued under continuous policy. In real world, however, nonconforming items are randomly produced, due to diverse unexpected factors in fabrication process. When finished items are to be distributed to outside locations, discontinuous multi-shipment policy is often used rather than continuous rule. In addition, with the intention of increasing short-term capacity or shortening replenishment cycle length to smooth the production planning, adopting overtime option can be an effective strategy. To cope with the aforementioned features in real production systems, this study incorporates overtime option, rework, and multi-shipment policy into the EMQ model and explores their joint effects on optimal lot size and number of shipments, and on other relevant system parameters. Mathematical modeling and Hessian matrix equations enable us to derive the optimal policies to the problem. Through the use of numerical example, the applicability of research result is exhibited and a variety of significant effects of these features on the proposed system are revealed.

Project management tools and techniques provide the efficiency and effectiveness in managing and handling the projects. Many tools and techniques have been discovered and applied widely for a long period of time among project managers around the world with great contributions to the success of projects. Vietnam is a developing country and has become an attractive hub for national and international business opportunities. Consequently, there has been an increasing development and expansion of business projects in Vietnam. The purpose of this study is to analyze the use of project management tools and techniques in Vietnam. More specifically, this study aims at investigating: 1) the awareness of business people related to projects, 2) the application of project management tools and techniques within the organization and 3) the challenging obstacles that have prevented organizations in using the tools and techniques. The mixed-method methodology is employed to collect and analyze the data. This study uses interview and questionnaire techniques to collect the data for the study. Several companies in different industries in Vietnam participated in collection of the data. The findings of the study indicate lack of indepth understanding and recognition of project and project management tools and techniques in Vietnamese businesses. The term “project” has not yet become popular in Vietnam. Hence, companies in Vietnam have been facing many obstacles with the application of project management tools and techniques affected on the performance of the projects. The study suggests that the definition and recognition of Project Man-agement should go beyond the current assumption of the Vietnamese business people. Better exercises and practices of the concept of Project Management can benefit the local and international companies. Achieving higher awareness of projects and project management tools can significantly improve economic success of Vietnam.

The two-tier board system practiced in Indonesia provides greater opportunity for the majority shareholders to place representative on board which may expropriate interest of minority share-holders and increase information asymmetry. This study looks at the influence of family ownership on firm’s performance, by differentiating the influence of family ownership from family involvement in companies listed on the Indonesia Stock Exchange. Family ownership is measured based on family’s equity ownership in the firm and family’s involvement. This study explores family in-volvement in threefold: involvement in the board of commissioners, involvement in the board of directors and involvement in both boards. Firm performance is measured based on Value Added Intellectual Coefficient (VAIC) which comprises of capital employed efficiency, human capital efficiency, and structural capital efficiency. Data was collected for a period of three years from 2007 to 2009 on 155 firms which were identified as family firms. The findings show that family ownership has a positive influence on firm performance. Family involvement, however, shows mixed results. Family involvement in the board of commissioners has a positive but insignificant influence on firm’s performance. Family involvement in the board of directors has a negative influence on firm’s performance. Family involvement in both boards has a positive influence on firm performance. The findings suggest that family involvement in both boards creates a balance between the supervisory function and the management function, thus resulting in a more effective monitoring of firm’s management.

This paper presents a joint economic lot size model for a single manufacturer-a single buyer. The purposed model involves the greenhouse gas emission from industrial and transport sectors. We divide the emission into two types, namely the direct and indirect emissions. In this paper, we consider the Government’s penalty and incentive policies to reduce the emission. We assume that the demand of the buyer is normally distributed and partially backordered. The objective is to minimize joint total cost incurred by a single manufacturer-a single buyer and involves the transportation costs of the freight forwarder. Transportation costs are the function of shipping weight, distance, fuel price and consumption with two transportation modes: truckload and less-than-truckload shipments. Finally, an algorithm procedure is proposed to determine the optimal order quantity, safety factor, actual shipping weight, total emission and frequency of deliveries. Numerical examples and analyses are given to illustrate the results.

This study explores the impact of board characteristics and ownership structures on the strategic decisions taken for R&D investment. The study employs a sample comprising 1736 firm-year observations of 434 technological firms listed on the Taiwanese Stock Exchange (TWSE) between 2014 and 2017. Contrary to extant research, the findings reveal that board independence plays a crucial role relative to R&D intensity, as strong evidence reflects a positive and significant relationship thereon. Moreover, the empirical results demonstrate negative and significant relationships between CEO Duality, Board size (in big companies), Executive & Manager, Board of Directors and Top Blockholders; ownership structures, and firm R&D intensity. Interestingly, the ownership structure results emerging from this Taiwanese contextual study support, and are consistent with the predictions of the ‘entrenchment argument’ and are counter to the ‘convergence of interest’ argument. The findings emerging from this research provide an opportunity for further discussion and analysis regarding corporate governance principles and regulations. Firms seeking to optimize their R&D policy imperatives may benefit from such a study.

This study explores and analyzes students’ difficulties in learning an ERP system to help design more appropriate teaching methods and materials. Global enterprises have widely used ERP systems to manage their operations effectively and efficiently. Hence, many business schools have offered courses on ERP systems to sharpen ERP skills for their students. To help design more appropriate teaching methods and materials for ERP learning, one must know students’ difficulties in understanding. This study analyzes students’ difficulties in learning the Oracle E-Business Suite ERP system through interviews and qualitative analysis. As a result, this study identifies five categories of problems in the various areas of the Revised Bloom’s Taxonomy. Their relevant educational objectives can guide the redesign of ERP teaching methods and materials. One of the difficulties belongs to the area of Remember Factual Knowledge. The rest of them are in Understand, Remember, Apply, and Analysis of Procedural Knowledge. Lastly, this study provides some implications for teaching ERP.

Hsu and Hsu (2013a) established a closed-form solution for an EOQ model with imperfect quality items, inspection errors, shortage backordering, and sales returns, where the customers who return the defective items will receive full price refunds; i.e., the returned items are not replaced with good items. In this note, we extend Hsu and Hsu & apos; s (2013a) work to consider the case that returned items are replaced with good items. A closed-form solution is developed for the optimal order size and the maximum shortage level. Numerical examples are provided to show the differences in the optimal solutions when returned items are replaced, and when they are not.

The purpose of these comments is to serve as a revision to the article by Khan et al. (2016) [Khan, M., Jaber, M.Y., Zanoni, S., & Zavanella, L. (2016). Vendor managed inventory with consignment stock agreement for a supply chain with defective items. Applied Mathematical Modelling, 40(15–16), 7102–7114.]. This commenting paper suggests that the expected total cost function derived in Khan et al. (2016) was incorrect, and then offers revisions to complement the shortcomings.

In the Information and Communications Technology era, eGovernment projects present a great opportunity for governments to offer better and quicker services to their users from the public. However, the success and the failure of these projects to achieve the expected goals depend heavily on some important aspects; mainly websites usability. This study intends to evaluate usability of current e-government websites in Taiwan. The results indicate that a number of usability problems have been found in the target e-government websites. These findings can help designers identify users’ usability requirements and draw their particular attention to further develop more usable e-government websites.