Based mainly on surveys of 40 manufacturing enterprises in Mauritius and 41 enterprises in Kenya, examines the relationship between competitiveness, manufacturing capabilities and employment. Proposes a manufacturing capability index and examines the factors affecting it in each country....

Laboratory experiments give researchers a great deal of control, making them useful for testing analytical models. In this monograph I discuss methodological issues in designing and conducting laboratory experiments. I also summarize some of the recent advances in using laboratory experiments in...

In this paper, we propose to discuss profitability conditions of a subcontracting constraint for subcontractor companies. The subcontracting imposes unavailability periods of the production unit in order to periodically perform subcontracting tasks (ST). We study the subcontracting constraint...

In this paper, a framework for assessing the cost effectiveness of lean tools is developed. The framework consists of eight phases within the plan-do-check-act (PDCA) problem solving and continuous improvement cycle. The framework was verified using a case study of a sawmill process at a wood...

A modified median chart with estimated control limits is proposed for monitoring the mean value of a normal process. The estimates for the nominal process parameters used to set up the control limits in Phase I are the average of the sample medians and the average of the sample ranges of m...

This paper chooses a supply chain which involves multiple supply links as the studied object. In each supply link, we consider an integrated scheduling problem in which a set of identical jobs are first processed on a single machine, and then batch delivered to a customer by a transporter. Each...

This research develops a demand management system, incorporating a machine-rate model, a rough-cut capacity planning (RCCP) model, and a demand management model for the fishing-net production industry. The machine-rate model is used to calculate a machine workload for the RCCP model to estimate...

In recent works, we have proposed a graphical model to represent linguistic preferences called LCP-nets. LCP-nets have been implemented and used in a specific use case of industrial engineering. In this paper, we consolidate this contribution in formalising it through a set of notations and...

The article proposes the development of an application methodology, named MARLIN, for logistics and transportation (L%T) scenarios analysis and comparison within the fresh food supply chain (FFSC). The MARLIN application methodology consists of the development of a dedicated simulation-based...

This article presents a straightforward production/inventory model that can capture the trade-offs among average inventory, production capacity and customer service levels in a semi-process industry setting. The model is based on well-known approximations from queuing literature, and it supports...