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This study investigates the business impacts and managerial insights of an exchange program of reusable assets by appreciate cost distribution schemes. This study constructs a competitive market model, where the member companies make their decisions in joining the platform and providing exchange quantities according to their profitability optimization. In the process of exchange, eco-efficiency is then achieved. The classical Owen core or Shapley core usually consider distribution scheme solely on a single dimension, such as benefit, and may not inhere other properties on fairness. Existing studies on coalition distribution mainly focus on financial utility without referring to environmental contribution. However, retaining the notion of fairness is essential in the design of distribution mechanism. This study derives a novel Fenchel core and overcomes drawbacks of Owen core. We prove that Fenchel core is fair in the second degree. The developed market model allows each member to provide and use assets in the exchange platform. The consequent analysis based on the developed core is suitable for exchange mechanism and conveys abundant managerial insights for operations management. Through our proposed distribution scheme, asset providers and takers can be compensated fairly and therefore the exchange platform can be sustained.

Literature indicates that it causes the growing concern over how the developing countries will manage largely volumes of e-waste (waste electrical and electronic equipment, WEEE) (Hicks et al., 2005). The reason is that e-waste disposal contains both highly valuable materials and toxic/hazardous substances, which may result in not only economical revenues but also negative impacts on human health and the environment when handling WEEE. Nowadays in South Africa, the formal sector, which is complying with international environmental standards, dominates handling WEEE industry. Whereas in some developing countries such as China, informal sector is the main WEEE processing system in which e-waste is treated by dangerous and inappropriate recycling practices (Widmer et al., 2005). Due to the nature of informal sector, the quality of informal processing activities and quantities of e-waste disposal are far than understood. Consequently, the existing situation of WEEE practices in the industrializing countries highlights the informal sector as a crucial and emerging issue, which is needed to be well understood and better governed.

Apart from great convenience derived, computer networks have grown into the best intrusion channel for those who aspire to. This paper exploits a conglomeration of Artificial Immune System and Finite State Machine to build highly robust intrusion detection algorithm in order to reinforce information security. AIS is widely adopted in various disciplines, as it hold the advantage of achieving better diverity inherently than genetic algorithm does. Aiming to better identification in non-consecutive packet attacks and novel anomaly, our immunization algorithm takes inspiration from Wright's island model, gene migration, and heterosis of population genetics, producing effectual outcomes. The results shows that our algorithm is able to capture more novel attack patterns while maintaining low false positive rate.

This paper tries to re-explore the reasons why the prices fluctuate, in microscopic and emergent perspectives, more than expected in an agricultural market, using complex system modeling and agent-based simulation. The model mimic a real world agriculture market by establishing a price determination mechanism. Resorting to the chaotic analysis, averting from accurate price prediction, we find that, even for the simple case where farmers can only choose between two different predictors, with initial equal distribution, smaller entropy, i.e., more aggregative cultivation, usually gives rise to larger price fluctuation.

In this paper, we formulate the multi-facility dispatching problems as a discrete event modular feedback control problem which is based on a thorough mathematical structure. A simulation experiment shows that our proposed real-time state feedback control scheme improves the multi-facility manufacturing system performance in terms a measure of order lateness.

One of the most critical challenges facing the logistics professionals during the 2000s was the need to meet the skill requirements in logistics for the various levels of management. There is an established literature that deals with skill requirements for logisticians. However, existing research rarely take into account a critical variable: measurability. The literature of actual practice in logistics certificates/licenses is rather sparse. This exploratory study utilized the concept mapping methodology to offer an important first step along with the path to more effective logistics licensing/certification. The results suggest that certain components of logistics skills are more important than others depending on the level of management and assessment format preferences also differ at each assessment level. Setting up a well-recognized official certification/licensing system can become the driving force to meeting such career challenge.

An optimization technique is presented for approximating the controllable set by an ellipsoid for a linear time-invariant open-loop unstable system subject to input saturation. A technique and algorithms for maximizing the controllable set are also presented. Instead of starting from a positive definite right-hand side matrix Q of the Lyapunov equation as done in almost all applications of the Lyapunov functions, we start from a positive definite Hessian matrix P for the Lyapunov function so that the resulting Lyapunov function can be convex.