In this paper, the authors proposed a new framework for Mobile application adoption by unorganized retailers. Unorganized retail is a renowned retail business in India. Unorganized retail is a so-called low-cost retail format where some of the retail stores are Kirana store, Grocery store, provisional store, ready to eat store, mom & pop store, peddlers, Hawkers, and stationery store. Retailers face stiff competition from omnichannel, multi-channel retailers, and e-tailers. To counter this competition, unorganized retailers adopt some Mobile applications which are relevant to their business. While some of the Mobile Applications are WhatsApp business, Facebook page, telegram, blogs, google maps Mandi app, Udaan app, Katha book app, OK credit, Dukan app, and just dial. This paper explains a deep discussion about unorganized retailers, unorganized retailers' contributions to the economy, the Digital India program, and Mobile Application. A new comprehensive framework has been proposed for mobile application adoption by the unorganized retailer after getting insights from theories like Technology Adoption Model (TAM), Extension of Technology Adoption Model (TAM), Technology, Organization and Environment (TOE), and Diffusion of Innovation (DOI). In this research, the author segments three major clusters which influence mobile technology adoption. The three major clusters are Technology, Organization, and Environment. These clusters had 10 constructs that influence mobile technology adoption. This research elaborately discussed the drivers of technology adoption in an unorganized retail context. We close by concluding that mobile application adoption by the unorganized retailer and reshaped the unorganized retail.

Manual labour in slaughterhouses is hazardous work. Workers suffer from injuries and occupational illnesses resulting from repetitive movements with sharp knives. There is a need for a robotic tool which can perform versatile tasks with a high level of precision. This knife must be able to imitate the same primary cuttings of a professional butcher and produce meat products which are acceptable to the end-market. This paper reports the results of a world-wide assessment of the fresh pork meat cuts as a performance indicator of knives specifically adapted for automated operation. These knives included Victorinox knife, bespoke double bladed Uddeholm knife, vibrating knife and novel smart knife with built-in sensing mechanism that detects in real time the contact with meat and cut depth. Physical appearances of cuts were assessed anonymously by independent responders with different backgrounds. All knives were deemed acceptable in terms of cutting quality. There was also no discernible difference of opinion between manual and robot cuts. This indicates that the new knife for robot-assisted cutting is acceptable by market.

This study aims to analyse the total quality management tools for improving service quality and client satisfaction in healthcare settings through a systematic qualitative review. Data was collected through the web of sciences (WOS), Scopus, EBSCO, PubMed, and Medline. Initially, we found 573 articles from all the sources, but after eliminating the non-relevant articles, only 24 usable articles were finalized. Furthermore, 12 articles were purely related to TQM, service quality, and client satisfaction. This study concludes that TQM practices and tools improve service quality and client satisfaction in healthcare organizations. This study provides excellent managerial and practical insights. Managers should implement the TQM tools to improve service quality and client satisfaction. This way, customer satisfaction is enhanced, and patient satisfaction is improved, leading to high operational and overall performance. This study also reveals a need for further studies to clarify the role of TQM tools on service quality and patient satisfaction.

The poor maintenance and usage of the equipment and machines of a vegetable oil manufacturing company adversely affect its competitive advantage. These industries are faced with numerous equipment maintenance challenges in the path to increasing their throughput as well as profitability. To address the said maintenance challenges, process data were obtained for the Overall Equipment Effectiveness (OEE) factors after their Total Productive Maintenance (TPM) implementation in the company. Minitab 21 software was used to analyze the data collected, and the results showed that the mean for quality, availability, and performance obtained were 96.929%, 63.35%, and 61.20%, respectively. This shows that the quality of products is the greatest OEE factor that vegetable oil manufacturing companies must consider meticulously to reduce the six big losses in their production processes. Response Surface Method (RSM) with Central Composite design, with the application of Design Expert 13 software, was used to model, analyze, and optimize the Overall Equipment Effectiveness (OEE) using availability, quality, and performance as the input parameters. The analysis of both the actual and coded values, which is the main contribution of the study, showed that quality has the greatest value followed by availability and performance. It was found that, to effectively reduce the six big losses, the quality, performance, and availability should be targeted as 98.3052%, 81.6022%, and 80.103%, respectively.

This study investigated the effect of strategic planning and total quality management practices on organisational productivity. This study employed a quantitative approach using Jamovi software. Sample data were collected from 167 respondents who are in Tanzania Zambia Railway Authority (TAZARA) management using a structured-questionnaire. Model fit and construct validity were checked using confirmatory factor analysis and correlation matrix while mediation analysis was carried out using GLM procedure. The results of study present that strategic planning has a significant effect on productivity. The results also indicate that customer focus and important innovation foster organizational productivity and partially mediate the relationship between strategic planning and productivity. The study also shows that education and training has no significant effect on productivity and does not mediate strategic planning and productivity association.

The study's major purpose is to determine the factors that affect the settlement of land complaints and propose some policy implications to improve the settlement of land complaints. Experts are asked about the factors that may affect and their impact rates on the settlement of land complaints when the State acquires land. The proposed research model has 5 hypothetical latent variables and 17 hypothetical observed variables. As a result of the model being tested by SPSS 20.0 software, all hypothetical latent variables and hypothetical observed variables satisfy the test criteria. The impact rates of the hypothetical latent variables range from 9.19% to 36.15%. The group of implementing complaint settlement factors has the strongest influence, and the group of legal factors has the weakest influence. Policy proposals include improving settlement procedures and land databases, strengthening facilities and personnel, and perfecting the legal provisions for complaint resolution.

The Quadratic Assignment Problem (QAP) is one of the classical combinatorial optimization problems and is known for its diverse applications. The QAP is an NP-hard optimization problem which attracts the use of heuristic or metaheuristic algorithms that can find quality solutions in an acceptable computation time. On the other hand, there is quite a broad spectrum of mathematical programming techniques that were developed for finding the lower bounds for the QAP. This paper presents a fusion of the two approaches whereby the solutions from the computations of the lower bounds are used as the starting points for a metaheuristic, called HC12, which is implemented on a GPU CUDA platform. We perform extensive computational experiments that demonstrate that the use of these lower bounding techniques for the construction of the starting points has a significant impact on the quality of the resulting solutions.

This article presents a novel algorithm based on the cluster first-route second method, which executes a solution through K-means and Optics clustering techniques and Nearest Neighbor and Local Search 2-opt heuristics, for the solution of a vehicle routing problem with time windows (VRPTW). The objective of the problem focuses on reducing distances, supported by the variables of demand, delivery points, capacities, time windows and type of fleet in synergy with the model's taxonomy, based on data referring to deliveries made by a logistics operator in Colombia. As a result, good solutions are generated in minimum time periods after fulfilling the agreed constraints, providing high performance in route generation and solutions for large customer instances. Similarly, the algorithm demonstrates efficiency and competitiveness compared to other methods detailed in the literature, after being benchmarked with the Solomon instance data set, exporting even better results.

Hybrid flowshop scheduling problem (HFSP) is a mixture of two classical scheduling problems as parallel machine scheduling (PMS) and flowshop scheduling (FS). In the HFSP, a series of jobs are processed respectively in a set of stages that at least one of these stages has more than one parallel machine (identical, uniform or unrelated). HFSP is a widespreadly studied subject in the literature and there are various application areas such as transportation, healthcare management, agricultural activities, cloud computing, and the most common manufacturing. Therefore, it will be useful to present a review study including recent papers and developments related to this problem for researchers. For this aim, in this paper, a systematic literature survey has been conducted with respect to HFSPs by means of Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) methodology which enables to realize systematic review and meta-analyses in a specified subject. 172 articles which are published in the 2010-2020 year interval, related to production scheduling and including a mathematical programming model to express scheduling problems have been determined as a result of this methodological review process. These articles have been statistically analyzed according to many features such as year, country, journal, number of stages, type of parallel machines, constraints, objective functions, solution methods, test instances and type of parameters. The results of statistical analyses have been presented through charts so as to provide a visual demonstration to researchers. Furthermore, it has been aimed to answer 14 predetermined research questions by means of analyses realized in the scope of this review study. Consequently, it has revealed the existing literature, recent developments and future research suggestions related to HFSP and therefore it is possible to say that this review paper provides a beneficial road map for researchers studying in this field.

This study evaluates the impact of project procurement strategies on supply chain efficiency in the Jordanian construction industry, with vendor relationship management as a mediating variable. The target population was the 25000 construction industry specialists in Jordan. According to purposeful sampling technique and more specifically, stratified random sampling, 454 subjects were asked to complete questionnaires. Partial least squares structural equation modeling was employed for the analysis of data for the test of the hypotheses. This research also revealed that the project procurement strategies which are Just-In-Time, Multiple Sourcing, and Single Sourcing have positive impacts with a statistical significance to the supply chain efficiency dimensions of Demand Forecasting, Supply Chain Integration and Collaboration and Communication. Vendor relationship management was also a partial mediator to these relations. These implications can be summed up for the construction firms and policymakers in Jordan to understand how strategic procurement approach and proper relations with the vendors can improve the performance of the supply chain. This work aims to benefit the academia as it fills a gap in the existing literature by analysing the relationship between procurement strategies, its actors (vendors), and supply chain performance within a developing country environment. The analysis with the help of PLS-SEM enables us to look at both the direct and the indirect effects in such relationships.