Showing papers by "Chandrasekharan Rajendran published in 2009"
TL;DR: This framework enables hospital managers to understand how patients and their attendants evaluate the quality of healthcare provided in respect of every dimension and would aid them to allocate resources to various aspects of healthcare, with respect to these two customer groups.
Abstract: Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to determine the dimensions of service quality in Indian hospitals, from the perspectives of patients and their family members/friends (referred to as “attendants”).Design/methodology/approach – Based on the existing models and the literature on healthcare services, a framework is proposed to conceptualize and measure hospital service quality.Findings – Two instruments for measuring the dimensions of hospital service quality, one each from the perspective of patients and attendants, are proposed.Practical implications – This framework enables hospital managers to understand how patients and their attendants evaluate the quality of healthcare provided in respect of every dimension. A comparison of perceptions between patients and attendants would aid them to allocate resources to various aspects of healthcare, with respect to these two customer groups. Hospital administrators can use the instruments proposed to obtain feedback on their performance on service quality p...
115 citations
TL;DR: In this article, the authors identify dimensions of service quality and their corresponding measurement variables in the tourism industry by focusing on India, a South Asian destination, and identify the dimensions and the measurement variables have been identified through a detailed review of literature and exploratory research.
Abstract: The purpose of this paper is to identify dimensions of service quality (SQ) and their corresponding measurement variables in the tourism industry by focusing on India, a South Asian destination. The dimensions and the measurement variables have been identified through a detailed review of literature and exploratory research. Service quality in tourism comprises 10 dimensions, namely core-tourism experience, information, hospitality, fairness of price, hygiene, amenities, value for money, logistics, food and security. This study aims to enrich the body of knowledge pertaining to similar work undertaken by researchers in other parts of the world. The growing importance of Asian destinations in the global tourism market in general and emergence of India as a prominent tourist destination in South Asia in particular marks the importance of this study. The proposed framework is expected to equip the tour operators in the western world to better understand the tourism industry in South-Asian destinations. It wo...
55 citations
TL;DR: In this article, simple heuristic algorithms are proposed, and their performances are compared with the existing best method by making use of benchmark problem instances, and the results show that their performance is comparable with the best method.
Abstract: The Fixed-Charge Transportation Problem (FCTP) is an extension of the classical transportation problem. It considers a fixed charge (or a fixed cost) and a transportation cost per unit transported associated with each route. The presence of the fixed cost in the objective function makes the problem difficult to solve, thereby requiring the use of heuristic methods. In this paper, simple heuristic algorithms are proposed, and their performances are compared with the existing best method by making use of benchmark problem instances.
25 citations
01 Jan 2009
TL;DR: An empirical study of the Taiwan National Quality Award causal model was conducted by Chao-Ton Su, Shao-Chang Li, and Chin-Ho Su as discussed by the authors, who used the causal model to evaluate the performance of the Taiwanese National Quality Awards causal model.
Abstract: An empirical study of the Taiwan National Quality Award causal model Chao-Ton Su a , Shao-Chang Li b & Chin-Ho Su c a Department of Industrial Engineering & Management , National Chiao Tung University , Hsinchu, Taiwan b Department of Business Administration , Kao Yuan Institute of Technology , Kaohsiung, Taiwan c Corporate Synergy Development Center , Taipei, Taiwan Published online: 25 Aug 2010.
24 citations
TL;DR: The problem of scheduling in permutation flowshops is considered in this paper with the objectives of minimizing the sum of weighted flowtime/sum of weighted tardiness/sum-of-weighted flowtime and weightedTardiness, and a machine-based lower bound with respect to the weighted earliness of jobs.
Abstract: The problem of scheduling in permutation flowshops is considered in this paper with the objectives of minimizing the sum of weighted flowtime/sum of weighted tardiness/sum of weighted flowtime and weighted tardiness/sum of weighted flowtime, weighted tardiness and weighted earliness of jobs, with each objective considered separately. Lower bounds on the given objective (corresponding to a node generated in the scheduling tree) are developed by solving an assignment problem. Branch-and-bound algorithms are developed to obtain the best permutation sequence in each case. Our algorithm incorporates a job-based lower bound (integrated with machine-based bounds) with respect to the weighted flowtime/weighted tardiness/weighted flowtime and weighted tardiness, and a machine-based lower bound with respect to the weighted earliness of jobs. The proposed algorithms are evaluated by solving many randomly generated problems of different problem sizes. The results of an extensive computational investigation for various problem sizes are presented. In addition, one of the proposed branch-and-bound algorithms is compared with a related existing branch-and-bound algorithm.
23 citations
01 Jan 2009
TL;DR: The work by Minella concluded that the multi-objective simulated annealing algorithm by Varadharajan and Rajendran (2005), called MOSA, is the best performing multi- objective algorithm for permutation flowshop scheduling.
Abstract: The problem of scheduling in permutation flowshops is considered with the objectives of minimizing the makespan and total flowtime of jobs. A multi-objective ant-colony algorithm (MOACA) is proposed. The salient features of the proposed multi-objective ant-colony algorithm include the consideration of two ants (corresponding to the number of objectives considered) that make use of the same pheromone values in a given iteration; use of a compromise objective function that incorporates a heuristic solution’s makespan and total flowtime of jobs as well as an up per bound on the makespan and an upper bound on total flowtime of jobs, coupled with weights that vary uniformly in the range [0, 1]; increase in pheromone intensity of trails by reckoning with the best solution with respect to the compromise objective function; and updating of pheromone trail intensities being done only when the ant-sequence’s compromise objective function value is within a dynamically updated threshold level with respect to the best-known compromise objective function value obtained in the search process. In addition, every generated ant sequence is subjected to a concatenation of improvement schemes that act as local search schemes so that the resultant compromise objective function is improved upon. A sequence generated in the course of the ant-search process is con sidered for updating the set of heuristically non-dominated solutions. We consider the benchmark flowshop scheduling problems proposed by Taillard (1993), and solve them by using twenty variants of the MOACA. These variants of the MOACA are obtained by varying the values of parameters in the MOACA and also by changing the concatenation of improvement schemes. In order to benchmark the proposed MOACA, we rely on two recent research reports: one by Minella et al. (2008) that re ported an extensive computational evaluation of more than twenty existing multi-objective algorithms available up to 2007; and a study by Framinan and Leisten (2007) involving a multi-objective iterated greedy search algorithm, called MOIGS, for flowshop scheduling. The work by Minella concluded that the multi-objective simulated annealing algorithm by Varadharajan and Rajendran (2005), called MOSA, is the best performing multi-objective algorithm for permutation flowshop scheduling. Framinan and Leisten found that their MOIGS performed better than the MOSA in terms of generating more heuristically non-dominated solutions. They also obtained a set of heuristically non-dominated solutions for every benchmark problem instance provided by Taillard (1993) by consolidating the solutions obtained by them and the solutions reported by Varadharajan and Rajendran. This set of heuristically non-dominated solutions (for every problem instance, up to 100 jobs, of Taillard’s benchmark flowshop scheduling problems) forms the reference or benchmark for the present study. By considering this set of heuristically non-dominated solutions with the solutions given by the twenty variants of the MOACA, we form the net heuristically non-dominated solutions. It is found that most of the non-dominated solutions on the net non-dominated front are yielded by the variants of the MOACA, and that in most problem instances (especially in problem instances exceeding 20 jobs), the variants of the MOACA con tribute more solutions to the net non-dominated front than the corresponding solutions evolved as benchmark solutions by Framinan and Leisten, thereby proving the effectiveness of the MOACA. We also pro vide the complete set of heuristically non-dominated solutions for the ninety problem instances of Taillard (by consolidating the solutions obtained by us and the solutions obtained by Framinan and Leisten) so that researchers can use them as benchmarks for such research attempts.
17 citations
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors identify the critical dimensions of SCM and develop conceptual frameworks from the perspective of the four entities in the supply chain, namely, original equipment manufacturers, suppliers, logistics service providers and retailers.
Abstract: Organisations need to tap the principles of Supply Chain Management (SCM) to realise the criterion of serving the right customers, finding the right suppliers, and fostering trust with the right partners. This study supposes that the supply chain partners (entities) should share a common vision and that without tangible benefits accruing to these entities in the supply chain, sustaining a long lasting relationship cannot be possible. This study attempts to identify the critical dimensions of SCM and develop conceptual frameworks from the perspective of the four entities in the supply chain, namely, original equipment manufacturers, suppliers, logistics service providers and retailers.
10 citations
TL;DR: In this paper, the performance of the existing and newly proposed scheduling rules in the static RCMPS environment by considering performance measures involving Mean Tardiness (MT) and the Maximum Tardyiness (MaxT) of projects are analyzed.
Abstract: In the Resource–Constrained Multi–Project Scheduling (RCMPS) literature, studies on scheduling involving the minimisation of the maximum tardiness of multiple projects are rather limited. This paper, therefore, analyses the performance of the existing and newly proposed scheduling rules in the static RCMPS environment by considering performance measures involving Mean Tardiness (MT) and the Maximum Tardiness (MaxT) of projects. The present work evaluates scheduling rules that consider project due–dates, operation/activity duration times, operation/activity due–dates, project slack and activity slack, and presents the results of performance evaluation.
8 citations
TL;DR: This paper proposes a genetic algorithm that makes use of the proposed new lower bound to arrive at the good set of production frequencies of products for ELSP without/with backorders and employs a GA and an ant-colony algorithm.
Abstract: In this paper, economic lot scheduling problem is investigated using time-varying lot sizes approach. The process of finding the best production sequence consists of two-phase implementation of metaheuristics. In the first phase, we propose a genetic algorithm that makes use of the proposed new lower bound to arrive at the good set of production frequencies of products for ELSP without/with backorders. In the second phase, the best sequence of part production is achieved by using the above set of frequencies and employing a GA and an ant-colony algorithm. Computational experiments reveal the effectiveness of the two-phase approach over the conventional single-phase approach.
8 citations