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At present, there are some problems in Chinese furniture production industry, such as low production efficiency, low accuracy, and lack of innovation for products. To resolve those problems, an AI management system is developed to improve the product quality and production efficiency in furniture enterprises in this paper. The AI management system is an organic body consisted of a data management system and an expert system. The model of information transmission and control for furniture manufacture by AI management is developed. It provides technical solutions for the AI application in furniture manufacture. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Statistical process control techniques, especially control charts, have been popular tools for tracking and analysing the quality improvement process. Control charts make measurements in respect to the central line and the upper and lower control limits of a process and allow corrective action to be taken. It may be not adequate when the quality characteristics include properties requiring the usage of linguistic variables (e.g., very poor, poor, average, good, and very good) rather than identifying them just conforming or nonconforming. The demerit chart is a control chart for attributes that allows the arrangement of the relative exact weight (real number), consistent with the various levels of defects. In this paper, in order to hire linguistic weights, a demerit chart was integrated with fuzzy analytical hierarchy process, mainly through the determination of weights in accordance with the degrees of defects, after which the central line and upper and lower limits were calculated. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Gümüshane Üniversitesi Saglik Bilimleri Dergisi is the property of Gumushane University, Faculty of Health Sciences and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Problems of Economy is the property of Research Centre for Industrial Developmen Problems of Nas and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The goal of the study is to develop a model that focuses on managing logistics costs at all stages of a product's life cycle. The model includes several different cost components and provides a wider coverage of individual processes, as logistics costs are present in different areas of a company's operations. The applicability of the proposed method was tested in a multinational company that manufactures furniture fittings on a randomly selected product. The test results provide a theoretical and practical confirmation of the necessity to manage the logistics costs for an individual product, since other models are focused exclusively on the cost optimisation of individual logistics processes. The model therefore complements the existing knowledge and represents a practical tool for logistics professionals that enables more efficient logistics costs planning at an early stage in the development of a product, which can result in the long-term reduction in the total costs of logistics and improve the quality of business processes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) are very important to national economies. In Brazil, the furniture sector has many SMEs that suffer from international competition, especially from Chinese companies. To reduce this difficulty, this study provides a case study of the partial implementation of lean manufacturing (LM) in a medium-sized furniture industry with the aim of increasing productivity. As a result, the company increased its productivity by 27 per cent in the drilling sector. In addition, the case study shows how to implement LM in a medium-sized furniture industry, demonstrating the need to adapt the system to companies outside the automobile sector. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Manual handling has always been a common task in the Chinese furniture manufacturing industry, which is easy to cause fatigue. In order to improve the man-machine cooperation in the machining of furniture, and to alleviate the fatigue of workers, the optimization of manual handling operations is discussed in this paper from three aspects: planning of working time, improvement of operating posture and optimization of workbench size. In addition, this paper shares the design of a bending-free boards rack, which is based on the purpose of reducing the worker's back muscle load during operating. In this paper, the optimization of manual handling could be used for reference in the manufacturing industries where manual operations are intensive. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Dilemas Contemporáneos: Educación, Política y Valores is the property of Dilemas Contemporaneos: Educacion, Politica y Valores and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

This paper discusses the issue of assessing the condition of three-phase induction motors (which are used as power units for tools on manufacturing lines in the furniture industry) following major repairs. These high-speed motors differ from standard motors in higher frequency power input, more durable bearings and reinforced structure of the terminal part of the rotor shaft. The rotational speed of the rotor is 10,000-18,000 rpm. Such high values of rotational speed trigger a situation in which exceeding the allowable limit of residual unbalance for the rotor unit damages the motor. The damage might necessitate a comprehensive repair. Such cases are frequent. The conducted studies resulted in designing a vibration analysis for assessing the condition of reconditioned high-speed motors (a method for controlling the quality of repairs). Both high- and low-frequency analyses with a signal selection module and the basic general measurements were applied. The analysis provides the possibility of verifying the efficacy of reconditioning in relation to the mechanical validity of the repaired motors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: Main constraints for an assembly line balancing problem (ALBP) are cycle time/number of stations and task precedence relations. However, due to the technological and organizational limitations, several other restrictions can be encountered in real production systems. These restrictions are called as assignment restrictions and can be task assignment, station, resource and distance limitations. The purpose of the study is to evaluate the effects of these restrictions on ALBP using constraint programming (CP) model. Design/methodology/approach: A novel CP model is proposed and compared to mixed-integer programming (MIP) as a benchmark. The objective is to minimize the cycle time for a given number of stations. The authors also provide explicit anthology of the assignment restriction effects on line efficiency, the solution quality and the computation time. Findings: The proposed approach is verified with the literature test instances and a real-life problem from a furniture manufacturing company. Computational experiments show that, despite the fact that additional assignment restrictions are problematic in mathematical solutions, CP is a versatile exact solution alternative in modelling and the solution quality. Practical implications: Assembly line is a popular manufacturing system in the making of standardized high volume products. The problem of assembly line balancing is a crucial challenge in these settings and consists of assigning tasks to the stations by optimizing one or more objectives. Type-2 AR-ALBP is a specific case with the objective function of minimizing the cycle time for a given number of stations. It further assumes assignment restrictions that can be confronted due to the technological limitations or the strategic decisions of the company management. This is especially encountered in rebalancing lines. Originality/value: Several solution approaches such as mathematical modelling, heuristic and meta-heuristic are proposed to solve the ALBP in the literature. In this study, a new approach has been presented using CP. Efficient models are developed for Type-2 ALBP with several assignment restrictions. Previous studies have not considered the problem to the presented extent. Furthermore, to the best of the authors' knowledge, the paper is the first study that solves ALBP with assignment restrictions using CP. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although research on the adoption of lean manufacturing in the furniture industry in emerging economies is slowly progressing, its implementation has been emphasized by researchers and practitioners. Research on this scope is therefore limited, particularly when compared to the vast amount of scholarly studies contributed to successful implementation of lean in the developed countries. To support the narrow body of knowledge on this under-researched scope, this paper presents the current shortfalls of implementing the lean manufacturing in terms of motives, barriers, challenges, and applications. To address these issues, a methodological approach was implemented in two tiers. Firstly, a comprehensive review of state-of-the-art literature on the issues was performed followed by an analytic approach using a survey on 148 companies in Malaysia to finalize the research. Upon validation of the analyses, the results revealed that most of the lean companies agreed that the reasons for lean implementation are to increase efficiency, to clean up and organize the workplace, and to increase utilization of space. Non-lean companies believe that issues related to knowledge are the reasons for not undertaking lean implementation. However, lean companies believe that the obstacles are more about employee-related issues including lack of labor resources, lack of implementation know-how, and employee resistance to change. Lean companies also face challenges in the form of technical knowledge, training, and financial resources during the early phase of lean implementation. In addition, only three applications – 5S, employee training, and quality control – were found to be useable in the Malaysian wood and furniture industry. These findings present a critical view of the current shortfalls of lean implementation in the wood and furniture industry throughout Malaysia and other emerging economies. • Key reasons for lean adoption are improving efficiency, organizing the workplace, and increasing the utilization of space. • Knowledge-related issues have been stressed as the main barriers for both lean and non-lean companies. • Knowledge and resources related issues posed serious challenges to lean practitioners. • 5S, employee training, and quality control have often been applied in the Malaysian context. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Research of Environmental Sciences is the property of Research of Environmental Sciences Editorial Board and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Teamwork in an industrial enterprise is particularly relevant in the context of conditional uncertainty. To improve teamwork compatibility, a team manager needs to coordinate individual and team goals, professional competences and values as well as motivation and internal communication, and to change them in a timely manner when applicable. Improving teamwork compatibility requires internal consistency and interoperability of factors in the management system. To achieve this, a teamwork compatibility improvement model has been developed and tested by means of a study in a furniture manufacturing company. The research involved 189 respondents (45 top managers, 144 executors). It has been established that the greatest teamwork incompatibility between top managers and executors is in terms of internal communication, which increases the incompatibility of goals, professional competences and values, as well as motivation. Our research showed that the compatibility of teamwork in industrial enterprises can be improved when top managers set a positive example, provide support to executors, regularly inform them of teamwork compatibility issues, and promote and maximise the involvement of all team members in improving compatibility. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article displays the practical experience of the vocational school in introducing dual form of education in the field of vocational education and training. It includes both activities and results of the two stages of its implementation - experimental and real. The study covers the period from 2016 to 2018. The approbation was carried out with students from 11th grade, studying “Restoration of Stylish Furniture and Joinery”, together with companies from the wood and furniture industries. The actual period began in 2017 when the school was included in the Bulgarian-Swiss project “DOMINO” (Dual Education for Modern Requirements and Needs of the Society) and continues up to now with students from the specialty “Furniture Manufacturing”. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to establish how small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in water, beverage, soap, detergent, metal fabrication, wood and furniture manufacturing industries can sustain or improve their competitive advantage by integrating specific resources and capabilities. The paper seeks to offer an alternative framework "resource capability-based view (RCBV)" that provides a strategic marketing direction for SMEs regarding how innovative marketing practices and dynamic marketing capabilities integrate to create sustainable market advantage. Design/methodology/approach: This current paper employed a quantitative survey design with a positivist methodological research paradigm. The paper used a multi-stage stratified and simple random sampling technique to collect data from 591 manufacturing SMEs in Ghana. SMEs in water, beverage, soap, detergent, metal fabrication, wood and furniture manufacturing industries were sampled for the study. A structural equation model was employed to test the study hypotheses to arrive at the findings. Findings: The study found that product design and packaging innovations, promotion innovations, retail innovations and pricing innovations provide sustainable market advantage for water, beverage, detergent and metal fabrication SMEs. The paper also found that new product designs and packages are the major drivers of sustainable market advantage followed by innovative retail outlets. The paper further originated that integrating marketing competence (marketing resources and marketing capabilities) and innovative marketing activities provides a marginal improvement in competitive advantage. Physical resources may result in market advantage but integrating physical resources with dynamic marketing capabilities provides sufficient competitive sustainability in a competitive market. Practical implications: SMEs in water, beverage, soap, detergent, metal fabrication, wood and furniture manufacturing industries should prioritise their key marketing resources and capabilities in product designs, promotion, pricing and retailing innovations in order to sustain market advantage. Old products should not be faded from the market but rather SME managers should employ innovative retail strategies, such as eco-friendly advertising, product re-branding and digital platforms (social network sites and websites), which are important to sustaining market performance. Government must develop targeted policies to bridge the information gap between SMEs and research institutions such as universities through regular subsidised entrepreneurial training and creation of semi-annual industry-academic fairs. The main theoretical contribution of this current paper is the development of "RCBV" as a framework which shows how SMEs can integrate specific resources and capabilities to achieve sustainable market advantage. This framework offers an integrative view of conventional resource-based view and dynamic capability theory (DCT) which are independently examined in the literature. Originality/value: This current study has proposed an integrated and elaborative approach to the conventional resource-based view and DCT which does not provide a composite understanding in the literature. SMEs may lack the needed resources and capabilities to introduce new products or extant product lines but this paper has demonstrated that how SME can sustain market advantage of existing product(s) by synchronously using specific marketing resources and capabilities. The proposed framework offers a guide for SMEs to integrate their physical resources and capabilities to sustain their market advantage. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Wood Industry / Drvna Industrija is the property of Drvna Industrija and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Research background: Contemporary research on industry concentrates on the relations between enterprises and their environment. Research on industrial structures conducted throughout the world, including Poland, are not extensive and limited due to the confidentiality of statistics. K. Pavitt (1984) was the first researcher who evaluated the relationship between industry structure and innovation activity. According to Pavitt, innovation dynamics and trajectory depend on the structure of domestic industry and is unique. In Poland T. Rachwal (2010) determined that over the studied years, changes in the indicator defining diversification in industrial divisions were minimal, but at the same time there was an observable fall in the importance of traditional divisions, such as the production of clothing, textiles, and the leather. In contrast, divisions as the production of metal, rubber, and plastic goods increased their share in terms of employees, as did furniture and vehicle manufacturing. Purpose of the article: The purpose of the paper is to identify sectoral patterns of innovation cooperation as revealed by data on about 5209 Polish enterprises. The authors attempt to find the answer to the following three questions: (1) Is the domestic aggregation sufficient for stimulating innovation cooperation in the Polish industry? (2) Is there any sectoral heterogeneity in innovation cooperation? (3) Are enterprises representing high technology industries the most involved in innovation cooperation? The main goal of the study was an attempt to seek out the directions and influence of various industries on the innovation cooperation of enterprises in Poland. Methods: Empirical data that served as the basis for conducting calculations were collected with the help of a questionnaire survey sent to industrial companies throughout Poland. A total of 5,209 properly completed forms were collected. The average rate of return was 11,6%. The collection was held over the years 2008-2013. The methodological part of the study was developed using the logistic regression method based on probability theory of the study. Findings & Value added: The study has shown that the higher the technology, the more often enterprises cooperate in the area of innovation. The research has not only shown the specifics of the domestic industrial system as well its level of technological advancement, but it has also taken into account the significance and input into the analyzed system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Work environment investments are important in order to create a healthy and safe workplace. This article presents findings from a seven-step interventions process aimed at examining and following-up work environment investments in small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), with a particular focus on air contaminants. Three different cases were analyzed and included in the study: (a) an educational center for welding; (b) a paint station in furniture manufacturing; (c) a joinery in furniture manufacturing. The results show that the work environment investments were highly appreciated by the employees and managers, but at the same time the investment could be optimized through markedly decreased exposure levels for the worker. Factors such as follow-ups of the investment, education and training in how to use the equipment, worker involvement in the process and leadership engagement are important in order to optimize work environment investments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Drilling operations are an essential part of furniture from MDF laminated boards required for product assembly. Faults in the process might introduce adverse effects to the furniture. Inspection of the drilling quality can be challenging due to a big variety of board surface textures, dust, or woodchips in the manufacturing process, milling cutouts, and other kinds of defects. Intelligent computer vision methods can be engaged for global contextual analysis with local information attention for automated object detection and segmentation. In this paper, we propose blind and through drilled holes segmentation on textured wooden furniture panel images using the UNet encoder-decoder modifications enhanced with residual connections, atrous spatial pyramid pooling, squeeze and excitation module, and CoordConv layers for better segmentation performance. We show that even a lightweight architecture is capable to perform on a range of complex textures and is able to distinguish the holes drilling operations’ semantical information from the rest of the furniture board and conveyor context. The proposed model configurations yield better results in more complex cases with a not significant or small bump in processing time. Experimental results demonstrate that our best-proposed solution achieves a Dice score of up to 97.89% compared to the baseline U-Net model’s Dice score of 94.50%. Statistical, visual, and computational properties of each convolutional neural network architecture are addressed.

• This study proposes the use of patent data to develop a robust technology tree. • Technological attributes were extracted in terms of key functions. • The relationships between the key functions were analyzed to form a hierarchy. • Clustering analysis, semantic analysis, and association-rule mining were employed. • The proposed approach was then applied to a furniture manufacturing process. A technology tree is used to represent technological attributes, such as the function, purpose, and components of a technology, and has been regarded as a valuable tool for investigating a technology in detail. However, most existing approaches to developing a technology tree considerably rely on experts; thus, the evaluation is subjective and does not reflect rapidly changing technological attributes under the paradigm of convergence. This study proposes the use of patent information to develop a robust technology tree. Subsequently, technological attributes were extracted in terms of key functions, and their relationships were analyzed to form a hierarchy. For the analysis, a series of methods were employed: clustering analysis to group patents into similar content, semantic analysis to identify key technological attributes in each group, and association-rule mining to define the relationships between the technological attributes. The proposed approach was then applied to a furniture manufacturing process to validate its applicability. Providing meaningful information on the technological structure will help improve the understanding of a target technology and further support research and development planning. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The distributed assembly flow shop scheduling (DAFS) problem has received much attention in the last decade, and a variety of metaheuristic algorithms have been developed to achieve the high-quality solution. However, there are still some limitations. On the one hand, these studies usually ignore the machine deterioration, maintenance, transportation as well as the flexibility of flow shops. On the other hand, metaheuristic algorithms are prone to fall into local optimality and are unstable in solving complex combinatorial optimization problems. Therefore, a multi-population memetic algorithm (MPMA) with Q-learning (MPMA-QL) is developed to address a distributed assembly hybrid flow shop scheduling problem with flexible preventive maintenance (DAHFSP-FPM). Specifically, a mixed integer linear programming (MILP) model targeted at the minimal makespan is first established, followed by an effective flexible maintenance strategy to simplify the model. To efficiently solve the model, MPMA is developed and Q-learning is used to achieve an adaptive individual assignment for each subpopulation to improve the performance of MPMA. Finally, two state-of-the-art metaheuristics and their Q-learning-based improvements are selected as rivals of the developed MPMA and MPMA-QL. A series of numerical studies are carried out along with a real-life case of a furniture manufacturing company, to demonstrate that MPMA-QL can provide better solutions on the studied DAHFSP-FPM.. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This research analysed the motivating and demotivating factors amongst employees in two wood processing companies in Croatia. Research was conducted over the year 2014 and 2015, during the economic recovery of the companies and Croatian economy in general. Research was conducted with a survey using a questionnaire containing six questions with multiple choice statements. The questions were closed-ended, and respondents used the Likert four-level scale of importance for each statement. A total of 180 employees were surveyed, and results were statistically processed by using the χ2 - test and cluster analysis. This study established that the motivation factors most important to employees between researched companies are significantly different. Employees were most concerned about social needs. Also, employees consider psychological circumstances of work to be very important. Employees’ overall motivation can be linked to higher efficiency and higher quality production and business results, and such research should be conducted more often.

This research analyzed the motivating and demotivating factors amongst employees in a wood processing and furniture manufacturing company. Research was conducted over the year 2010, during the time of a full economic crisis and before the restructuring of the company was done. Analysis also was conducted in 2014, during the beginning of the economic recovery and after the restructuring of the company. Research was conducted with a survey using a questionnaire containing six questions with multiple choice statements. The questions were closed-ended, and respondents used the Likert four-level scale of importance for each statement. A total of 180 employees were surveyed, and results were statistically processed by using the χ2- test and cluster analysis. This study established that the motivation factors most important to employees in a company are significantly different during the time of an economic crisis, and in the period of economic recovery, i.e. before and after restructuring of the company. Employees were most concerned about physiological needs in the time of a crisis, whereas in the time of an economic recovery, employees consider social needs to be of more importance. Also, employees consider psychological circumstances of work to be more important in the year 2014 than in the year 2010. Employees’ overall motivation can be linked to higher efficiency and higher quality production and business results, and such research should be conducted more often.

The article focuses on the Richard Bachon started manufacturing wood furniture as a hobby in 1994 in South Carolina after retiring from his job as a human resources (HR) director at local company. It mentions that product costs formed the basis for determining selling prices; and also mentions that Edward's goal was to expand Carolina Creations across the Southeast U.S., which required significant resources, and the growth in selling, general costs, and administrative costs.

Abstract The sources, levels and health risks of volatile organic compounds emitted from the entire furniture manufacturing process in workshops were investigated. A probabilistic health assessment model was established to estimate the health risks of workers and managers caused by VOCs (volatile organic compounds) based on the inhalation risk model and the Monte Carlo method. Sensitivity analyses and uncertainty analyses were implemented to screen out the crucial input parameters and to identify the possible influential factors in the evaluation process. The results demonstrate that the highest concentration of VOCs occurs in the topcoating process, followed by the veneering, undercoating, edge bonding, polishing varnish, drying, and paint mixing processes. Overall, a total of 17 VOCs, including aromatic hydrocarbons, alkanes, halogenated alkanes, ketones, and saturated aliphatic esters, exist in 7 VOC emission processes in the wood processing workshop and the painting workshop. For health impacts, workers in the topcoating, undercoating, and veneering positions suffer the greatest carcinogenic risks, with mean values above 1.00E-05, which mainly originate from ethylbenzene, dichloromethane, and benzene. The carcinogenic risks in other positions are relatively lower and are in the sequence of polishing varnish, paint mixing, drying, and edge bonding. Sensitivity analyses indicated that exposure duration had the greatest impact on carcinogenic and non-carcinogenic risk, with an average contribution of 0.78 and 0.93, respectively. These comprehensive evaluations for exposure level and health risk can yield insight into the occupational hazards of VOC emissions and will contribute to informed decision-making related to abatement measures and risk management in furniture manufacturing workplaces. Graphical abstract Image Highlights • The VOCs emission processes were firstly investigated in furniture manufacturing. • A total of 17 VOCs during 7 emission processes were identified and qualified. • Probabilistic risks were estimated by Monte Carlo method and inhalation risk model. • Topcoating shows the greatest risk and ethylbenzene should be prior controlled. • Exposure duration have greatest impact on carcinogenic and non-carcinogenic risk. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The manufacturing industry is considered as one important sector, which has a significant influence on the economic growth of a country. The increase of fierce competition among products requires the company to satisfy their customers by making high-quality products with competitive prices and at on-time deliveries. This study aims to implement lean manufacturing in one of the furniture companies in Indonesia to minimize waste in the production floor. Value Stream Mapping (VSM) will be used as a tool to identify waste by separating value-added activities and non-value added activities in the production process. A future state map is developed with new and improved processes. Future state map makes the improved process more effective and more efficient. The critical waste found on the production floor in motion. Improvements are made using 5W1H techniques and ECRS principles, two simple tools of kaizen. The workload of operator consideration was also done to avoid bottlenecks and decrease the lead time. The result was quietly remarkable as the lead time decreased by around 4.79% and able to balance the workload received by the operator. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Furniture industry represents the most efficient and profitable form of superior capitalization of wood, having the greatest added value in the wood processing industry. In this paper we make a motion for presenting the method of calculating costs per order and its positioning as compared to other methods of managing the costs, as well as applying the method in a big entity in wood industry in Romania. The case study presents entirely the appliance of the method of calculating costs per order and aims to conclude its efficiency in the costs' management process in the Romanian wood industry. We opine that despite the fact that the method of calculating costs per order is a classical one, having certain assumed limits it has a special utility in the sector due to the activity's specifics of furniture manufacturing. By applying the method per order in the wood industry from Romania, a good rundown and integration is made concerning the expenses incurred by manufacturing, as well as their reflection in a trusty way in the managerial accounting. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This work presents a study on Linear Optimization and its application in the stock balancing for annual production planning and control of a furniture manufacture. The proposed problem is mathematically modeled using the so-called Combined Problem, which connects two important optimization problems: lot sizing and stock cutting problems. The case study, developed in this paper, consists in collecting data from a small-scale furniture plant, located in Cornélio Procópio city, in the state of Paraná, Brazil. The main objective is to plan the production of different types of furniture over an annual period, considering stocks of pieces and of final products. Simplex Method and Branch and Bound Algorithm are applied in order to obtain the solutions to the proposed scenarios of production, providing support to the decision make and minimizing the global costs of production. The results indicate that the proposed model, considering stocks balancing, provides the production planning and the minimum production costs in comparison with the production that answer demand by each period. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents a report on former chair factories in Lauterberg and Barbis in Germany. Topics discussed include beginnings of the chair manufacturing in these two places, their bankruptcy, and budding professionals at that time for furniture manufacturing. Also discussed is the on site learning of chair manufacturers.

Highlights • We examine the power constellations of wood furniture actors under FLEGT. • FLEGT entrenches pre-existing inequalities and produces new modes of elite capture. • Legality verification drives new practices of renting out FLEGT licenses by larger producers. • Legality verification produces new opportunities for financial gain for larger firms. • Renting legality creates a new form of control over the market for large firms. Abstract Over the past few decades, transnational and supranational market-based forest governance systems have been developed to address the complex problems associated with deforestation, by improving the legality and sustainability of timber traded in global markets. This is catalysed by the increasing global production and consumption of timber products and increasing sensitivity of interest groups to how timber products are produced. A broad range of actors is involved in global production networks. This paper discusses how hierarchies and networks of power across the timber production network are encountered and negotiated. More specifically, it investigates the power constellations of wood furniture actors in Indonesia, nested within global production networks: who holds the power, how power is gained and maintained, and who wins and loses over time. Using the case of the timber legality assurance system in the context of the European Union Forest Law Enforcement Governance and Trade (FLEGT) initiative, we demonstrate that legality verification in Indonesia is both entrenching pre-existing inequitable power relations while producing new modes of elite capture. Legality verification requires new knowledge and additional costs that are sometimes beyond the capacity of certain (particularly smaller) furniture manufacturers operators. This has driven a new practice of renting out FLEGT licenses by larger producers/manufacturers to smaller ones in the country. Although the practice implies potential risks (e.g. fines), large companies in Indonesia manage risk by drawing from pre-existing patronage relations. They also appear to find the risk worthwhile, as it produces financial gain but moreover, a new form of control over the market. Meanwhile, small operators and artisanal producers that still aspire to global markets face disproportionate challenges to engage in legality and are becoming more vulnerable as a result of new legality measures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The subject of this paper is an analysis of the concepts and application of the augmented reality in e-commerce. The literature in the field suggests a huge potential for improving ecommerce using augmented reality services. The goal of the paper is to provide a new insight into this field through an example of development of an augmented reality service for furniture manufacturing company. The project includes creation of a virtual catalog of products which consists of 3D models of products and their positioning in real space. User interaction with the developed system is performed through mobile devices. The Vuforia and Unity platform were used for the realization of the project. The project was managed using Scrum. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Research of Environmental Sciences is the property of Research of Environmental Sciences Editorial Board and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The aim of this study is to investigate the impact of job crafting on person-job fit. In addition, the Person-Job Fit Scale was adapted to the Turkish language in the research. In this direction, firstly, the conceptual framework of job crafting and person-job fit was established in the research. Then, the data obtained by the questionnaire technique from 140 employees of an enterprise operating in the furniture manufacturing and design sector was analyzed. In the analysis of the data, SPSS and AMOS packaging programs were used. From the findings, it was determined that the scale of person-job fit showed high reliability and validity. In addition, it has been found that job crafting have a positive and significant effect on person-job fit. In other words; it employees are more adapted to their job by increasing their level of job crafting. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Current research progress on the mechanism and influencing factors of formaldehyde emission from wood-based panel is reviewed. The formaldehyde analysis and test methods are summarized, putting forward a new idea to research the relevance of formaldehyde emission and the loading ratio of wood-based panel under the combined action of influencing factors. The quantitative indicators of wood-based panel load in a specific space according to the formaldehyde emission requirements are determined, which provide technical precondition support to improve the interior decoration and furniture design. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Polish Journal of Management Studies is the property of Czestochowa University of Technology, Faculty of Management and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

This paper examines the competitiveness of Polish exports of furniture using data on value added in exports. Based on the OECD/Eurostat TEC and TiVA databases, we assess the propensity and intensity of exporting by different types of Polish furniture producers. Then we examine the domestic and foreign contributions to gross exports and analyse the participation of the Polish furniture industry in global value chains. Our analysis covers the years 2002-2011 and includes comparisons with other CEE countries (Bulgaria, Croatia, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Lithuania, Latvia, Romania, Slovakia and Slovenia) and leading European exporters of furniture (Italy and Germany). The results indicate that the patterns of gross trade in furniture differ from value added trade patterns, and that Polish furniture exports are not as competitive in value added terms as in gross terms. Furthermore, the share of foreign value added in gross exports increases along with the proportion of those exports accounted for by exports of intermediate products. The data indicate that the countries’ backward participation in GVCs increased in the years 2002-2011. This may generate both opportunities and risks, which are discussed in the paper [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Furniture manufacturing micro and small enterprises are confronted with several factors that affect their performance. Some enterprises fail to sustain, some others remain for long period of time without transforming, and most are producing similar and non-standard products. The main aim of this manuscript is on improving the performance and contribution of MSEs by analyzing impact of significant internal and external factors. Data was collected via a questionnaire, group discussion with experts and interviewing process. Randomly selected eight representative main cities of Amhara region with 120 furniture manufacturing enterprises are considered. Data analysis and presentation was made using SPSS tools (correlation, proximity, and T test) and impact-effort analysis matrix tool. The correlation analysis shows that politico-legal with infrastructure, leadership with entrepreneurship skills and finance and credit with marketing factors are those factors, which result in high correlation with Pearson correlation values of r = 0.988, 0.983, and 0.939, respectively. The study investigates that the most critical factors faced by MSEs are work premises, access to finance, infrastructure, entrepreneurship and business managerial problems. The impact of these factors is found to be high and is confirmed by the 50% drop-out rate in 2014/2015. Furthermore, more than 25% work time losses due to power interruption daily and around 65% work premises problems challenged MSEs. Further, an impact-effort matrix was developed to help the MSEs to prioritize the affecting factors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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