Traditionally, optimal preventive maintenance strategies are derived under deterministic and constant rate demand. Using "option", a powerful financial derivative tool to tackle optimization problem under uncertain environment, this paper presents an analytical, option-based cost model for...

Maintenance operations have a direct influence on production performance in manufacturing systems. Short-term production analysis is imperative to enable manufacturing operations to optimally respond to dynamic changes in the system behavior. However, most of the conventional decision support...

The present study aims at enhancing the wear resistance of Ti–6Al–4V by laser surface nitriding. Laser surface treatment has been carried out by melting of the sand blasted Ti–6Al–4V substrate using a high power continuous wave Diode laser with nitrogen as shrouding environment (at a gas...

Two results in a recent paper by Wang and Cheng [Wang, J-B and TCE Cheng (2007). Asia-Pacific Journal of Operational Research, 24, 245–261] are incorrect because job processing times are variable due to both deteriorating jobs and learning effects, which is not taken into account by the...

In the literature of reliability engineering, reliability of the weighted k-out-of-n system can be calculated using component reliability based on the structure function. The calculation usually assumes that the true component reliability is completely known. However, this is not the case in...

The reduction of the electricity demand during peak periods is considered a main objective of electricity load management. It can relieve the financial pressure of the investment on the capacity expansion for the power grid in the United States. Compared to a great deal of research on commercial...

The growth of healthcare expenditure provokes constant comments and discussions, as countries battle the issues on cost containment and cost effectiveness. Prior to 1978, medical institutions in China were either state‐owned or were collective public hospitals. Since 1978, China has been...

A modified particle swarm optimization algorithm is proposed in this paper to investigate the dynamic of pedestrian evacuation from a fire in a public building—a supermarket with multiple exits and configurations of counters. Two distinctive evacuation behaviours featured by the shortest-path...

Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region is one of the severest desertification areas from wind erosion in North China, and it poses as a potential hazard factor for the slope stability of embankments. As the most common and abundant filler in embankment construction in the desert, Aeolian sandy soil is...