Operations

Apple Inc. is an international technology company found in the United States with its head office at Cupertino (Khan, Alam & Alam, 2015). It is a designer, developer, and distributor of electronics, online services as well as consumer electronics. Apple Inc. has different hardware products, which are inclusive of iPad tablet computer; Apple watches smartwatch, iPhone smartphone, Apple TV digital and the Mac personal computer.  The company also produces software’s which includes iTunes, macOS as well as iOS operating systems, iLife and work suites and other apps like the Logic pro, Xcode and Final Cut Pro (Khan et al. 2015). Ronald Wayne, Steve Jobs, and Steve Wozniak formed the company in April 1976. Apple ranks as the most significant information and Technology Company regarding its revenue and ranks second regarding mobile phone manufacturing. It was named as the first United States Company to be valued at US$700 billion in 2015.

In this article, we have presented a method for finding the approximate center of a linear programming polytope. This method provides a point near the center of a polytope in few simple and easy steps. Geometrical interpretation and some numerical examples have also been presented to demonstrate the proposed approach and comparison of quality of the center obtained by using the new method with existing methods of finding exact and approximate centers. At the end, we also presented computational results on the randomly generated polytopes to compare the quality of the center obtained by using the new method.

... location and scale family of distributions and the properties of non-negative combinations of random variables for ASD and DSD. In Section 5, the stochastic dominance theories for ... [a; b]; b. SDSD, denoted by X º2 Y or F º2 G; if and only if FD 2 (x) ¸ GD 2 (x) for each x in [a; b]; ...

Operating room scheduling is an important operational problem in most hospitals. In this paper, a novel mixed integer programming (MIP) model is presented for minimizing Cmax and operating room idle times in hospitals. Using this model, we can determine the allocation of resources including operating rooms, surgeons, and assistant surgeons to surgeries, moreover the sequence of surgeries within operating rooms and the start time of them. The main features of the model will include the chronologic curriculum plan for training residents and the real-life constraints to be observed in teaching hospitals. The proposed model is evaluated against some real-life problems, by comparing the schedule obtained from the model and the one currently developed by the hospital staff. Numerical results indicate the efficiency of the proposed model compared to the real-life hospital scheduling, and the gap evaluations for the instances show that the results are generally satisfactory.

Social exchange theory is used to gain a better understanding of the relationship between a buyer and a supplier that is characterized by lock-in situations. We begin by reviewing the theoretical foundations of social exchange theory. Next, we use an illustrative multinational business example from a Danish Business Group to demonstrate the complexities of the lock-in situation. Conjectures related to lock-in behaviors are initially developed and then examined by means of a game-theoretic model. The analysis provides a basis for the ...

Consensus building plays an important role in strategy formulation and implementation. Previous researchers have attempted to find a link between goal consensus among top management and organizational performance, mainly in manufacturing settings, with varying results. Few extant studies have examined goal consensus at the functional level. Aims to expand our knowledge of the goal consensus/performance relationship by focusing on the relationship between operations and marketing in the service setting. Attempts to identify the types of co-ordination mechanisms that help achieve functional goal consensus between operations and marketing. Finds a positive relationship between goal consensus of the marketing and operations managers and performance based on return on equity and return on assets. Concludes that consensus is correlated with the use of process and programming co-ordination mechanisms and not correlated with the use of interpersonal co-ordination mechanisms.

In today's highly competitive environment, many companies are going global to acquire market share and take advantage of higher production and sourcing efficiencies. A key determinant of business performance is the role of the logistics function in ensuring the smooth flow of ...

This paper addresses 7th-grade children's mathematical modelling at the end of a 3-year program. The children and their teachers participated in a series of mathematical modelling activities from the 5th grade through to the 7th grade. The problems involve authentic situations that need to be interpreted and described in mathematical ways. We examine the mathematical understandings and mathematisation processes that the children used in constructing their models for the final problem (Summer Reading). We report on the nature of the problem factors that the children chose to consider, the operations they applied, the types of transformations they made through these operations, and the representations they used in documenting their models.