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The COVID-19 pandemic has forced manufacturing industries to be efficient in multiple fields. This study examines the effect of raw material management using Material Flow Cost Accounting and waste cost for Non-Product Output cost on implementing cost reduction strategies. Data was gathered by analyzing annual financial reports as well as sustainability reports. The study finds that organizations can reach efficiency by managing the cost of the raw materials using Material Flow Cost Accounting and Non-Product Output costs when implementing a cost reduction strategy. The research contributes to developing the concept of cost reduction through the Environmental Management Accounting approach, which is still rare in this field, in addition to the traditional method of cost accounting that organizations have carried out to achieve cost efficiency.

This study explored the low-carbon operation and control strategy of wastewater treatment plants based on cost reduction and efficiency improvement, with a South China plant as a case study. Factors influencing phosphorus removal, including sludge age, concentration, dissolved oxygen, reflux ratio, and chemical dosing location, were analyzed. Optimal operation parameters such as sludge concentration, air/water ratio, and dissolved oxygen level were established based on influent characteristics across seasons. Implementation of these low-carbon strategies ensures the plant's effluent quality remained within standards, exhibiting a stable and decreasing trend. Meanwhile, chemical consumption for phosphorus removal decreasesd by approximately 41%, the electricity consumption per ton of treated wastewater decreased by 26.5%, resulting in a reduction of indirect carbon emissions by 0.18 kg/t(calculated by CO2,eq), which had achieved energy conservation, emission reduction, and clean production.

The assessment of barriers to the application of cost-reduction techniques in delivering educational buildings in Nigeria is essential in addressing the infrastructural shortage, building performance, delay, cost, time overrun, and abandonment in the delivery of higher educational buildings (HEBs). This study examines barriers to applying cost-reduction techniques in educational buildings in southwestern Nigeria. Using a survey design, the questionnaire was distributed to stakeholders who participated in delivering the government intervention, private donors, and internally generated revenue educational buildings in public tertiary institutions in southwestern Nigeria from 2012 to 2022. A total of 150 copies of the questionnaire were administered, while 133 responses were obtained and analyzed. To begin with, data reliability and validity were examined using Bartlett’s sphericity, Cronbach’s alpha, and Kaiser–Meyer–Olkin (KMO) tests, accordingly, followed by descriptive, Kruskal–Wallis H test, and exploratory factor analysis. The six components obtained from exploratory factor analysis for explaining the barriers to applying cost-reduction techniques in educational buildings were as follows: ambiguity in HEB contracts awards and project executions, lack of control from the HEIs management over HEB project delivery, perceived political influence in HEB procurement, unrealistic contract requirements and change orders, non-prioritization of automation integration in HEB delivery, and deficiencies in contract documents and costing. This study recommends establishing a project-monitoring team involving independent consultants from project inception to reduce excessive errors, practices of assigning contracts to the lowest bidder, and excessive claims for variation orders that escalate the project’s final sum.

Feature selection is a preprocessing step in machine learning that aims to reduce dimensionality and improve performance. The approaches for feature selection are often classified according to the evaluation of a subset of features as filter, wrapper, and embedded approaches. The high performance of wrapper approaches for feature selection is associated at the same time with the disadvantage of high computational cost. Cost-reduction mechanisms for feature selection have been proposed in the literature, where competitive performance is achieved more efficiently. This work applies the simple and effective resource-saving mechanisms of the fixed and incremental sampling fraction strategies with memory to avoid repeated evaluations in multi-objective permutational-based differential evolution for feature selection. The selected multi-objective approach is an extension of the DE-FSPM algorithm with the selection mechanism of the GDE3 algorithm. The results showed high resource savings, especially in computational time and the number of evaluations required for the search process. Nonetheless, it was also detected that the algorithm’s performance was diminished. Therefore, the results reported in the literature on the effectiveness of the strategies for cost reduction in single-objective feature selection were only partially sustained in multi-objective feature selection.

Background:. The University of Sherbrooke's Hospital Center operating room has been affected by the COVID-19 pandemic, prompting surgeons to seek alternative ways to treat acute injuries requiring surgery. In the spring of 2020, we began performing percutaneous pinning of hand fractures in our outpatient clinic. We aimed to estimate the savings in 2021 by transferring these procedures from the operating room to the outpatient clinic. Methods:. We identified all patients with hand injuries who received percutaneous pinning in 2021 using billing codes. Only patients treated in the outpatient clinic were included. We estimated the cost of hand fracture fixation in the operating room by considering the anesthesiologist's fee, the hospital's hourly rate for a 1-hour surgery (including a respiratory therapist, 2 nurses, and equipment) and salary bonuses for unfavorable hours, subtracting the cost difference of outpatient equipment. Results:. We identified 114 patients treated with percutaneous pinning, of whom 93 were included in our study. Our calculations showed a total cost reduction of CAD $55,789 in 2021. Conclusions:. Percutaneous pinning of hand fractures in an outpatient setting resulted in a yearly cost reduction of more than CAD $55,000. Investing in ambulatory care for hand fracture management benefits both patients and institutions.

South Korea, Singapore, Taiwan and Hong Kong are countries that have achieved a spectacular economic growth from the 1960s until present. They are examples of how poor economies, devoid of natural resources, can be transformed into strong, technologically advanced economies with high incomes and a high standard of living. What has happened in these countries is an example of development for other countries if they adopted proper strategies and policies. This paper analyzes how the example of these countries can help Romania (and not only) to achieve sustained economic growth. There were speculations that Romania would soon become an "economic tiger" when it adhered to the European Union and its economy grew rapidly. Can we consider Romania an Eastern European "tiger" capable of catching up with the more developed economically and technologically Western Europe? Or is Romania's high economic growth in recent years determined by temporary factors?

Biological denitrification is a generally economically viable and reliable technology for nitrate (NO3−-N) and nitrite (NO2−-N) removal from wastewater. Nitrate/nitrite reduction requires an electron donor, which can be supplied from influent wastewater organic compounds, added as an external carbon source, or by endogenous respiration. Decisions regarding the selection of an external carbon source should take into consideration its cost, sludge generation quantity, the rate and efficiency of denitrification, and chemical storage safety. The expense of waste management and external carbon sources accounts for up to 50% of the overall cost of wastewater treatment. The carbon source characteristics required for biological denitrification affect the microbial community structure, denitrification rate, and intermediate products. This review is based on a bibliometric analysis and a systematic literature review providing information and insight into the topic of the denitrification process using different carbon sources. In this review, the main focus was on discussing alternative carbon sources vs. traditional carbon sources in terms of the carbon source price, C/N ratio, denitrification efficiency and rate, operational parameters, and advantages and disadvantages, as well as the limitations in the denitrification process. Future perspectives may include the operating parameters influencing the stability of the removal performance; the maintenance and improvement of nitrate removal; a study of the diversity of the microbial community; research on the application of new alternative carbon sources in denitrification; and N2O emission detection and minimisation.

In this paper we conduct economy-wide scenario simulations to investigate whether and how the wider economic stimulus associated with deploying heat pumps in the UK may help mitigate the macroeconomic and distributional impacts of persistently high electricity and gas prices. Our results show that expansionary processes triggered by producing and installing heat pumps can help offset contractionary pressures associated with higher energy prices. However, outcomes depend on the extent of domestic supply chain content in manufacturing heat pumps, on installation costs to households, on how and where government revenues accrue. Moreover, the relative importance of drivers varies over time. For example, higher purchase and installation costs may support a greater initial stimulus via producer and domestic supply chain gains, despite the greater cost burden on households. However, over time, cost reductions are required to deliver the most favourable economy-wide outcomes.

Polylactic acid (PLA) is a biodegradable polymer from renewable resources with mechanical properties comparable to traditional polymers, but with a higher cost. A solution to this issue is the production of bio-based composites to partially replace the PLA matrix with industrial wastes characterized by a zero-cost, e.g., linoleum, to also valorize them in a circular economy perspective. Linoleum heterogeneous nature deriving from the simultaneous presence of lignocellulosic and inorganic fillers and oil/rosin binders, made the evaluation of matrix/filler compatibilization strategies necessary. Two approaches were considered, one from the filler perspective with NaOH and silane treatments, and the other one from the matrix perspective by adding a chain extender (C.E.). The first approach marginally improved tensile stiffness (by 1.6 %) compared to neat PLA but caused a significant decrease of 32.8 % in strength. Considering this, the costs and disposal of the chemicals and the increased environmental impact of the process, this approach was discarded. One the contrary, the introduction of C.E. does not modify the manufacturing process and increases tensile stiffness and elongation at break of 7.2 % and 415.5 % compared to neat PLA with a tolerable reduction in strength, i.e., 16.6 %, thus being a suitable way to exploit linoleum as zero-cost filler.