Nonlinear Programming: A Unified Approach

Fungal spores can account for large proportions of air particulate matter, and they may potentially influence the hydrological cycle and climate as nuclei for water droplets and ice crystals in clouds, fog, and precipitation. Moreover, some fungi are major pathogens and allergens. The diversity of airborne fungi is, however, not well-known. By DNA analysis we found pronounced differences in the relative abundance and seasonal cycles of various groups of fungi in coarse and fine particulate matter, with more plant pathogens in the coarse fraction and more human pathogens and allergens in the respirable fine particle fraction (<3 μm). Moreover, the ratio of Basidiomycota to Ascomycota was found to be much higher than previously assumed, which might also apply to the biosphere.

High Diversity of Fungi in Air Particulate Matter

Despite the numerous observations that dynamic capabilities lie at the source of competitive advantage, we still have limited knowledge as to how access to firm-based resources and changes to these affect the development of dynamic capabilities. In this paper, we examine founder human capital, access to employee human capital, access to technological expertise, access to other specific expertise, and access to two types of tangible resources in a sample of new firms in Sweden. We empirically measure four dynamic capabilities and find that the nature and effect of resources employed in the development of these capabilities vary greatly. For the most part, there are positive effects stemming from access to particular resources. However, for some resources, such as access to employee human capital and access to financial capital, unexpected negative effects also appear. This study therefore provides statistical evidence as to the varying role of resources in capability development. Importantly, we also find that changes in resource bases have more influential roles in the development of dynamic capabilities than the resource stock variables that were measured at an earlier stage of firm development. This provides empirical support for the notion of treating the firm as a dynamic flow of resources as opposed to a static stock. This finding also highlights the importance of longitudinal designs in studies of dynamic capability development. Further recommendations for future empirical studies of dynamic capabilities are presented.

From resource base to dynamic capabilities : an investigation of new firms

Building on the codification and dynamic capabilities literatures, we pursue deeper insight into the underlying mechanisms of deliberate learning in the context of postacquisition integration. We argue that experience codification gives rise to inertial forces that hamper the customization of routines to any given acquisition. We theorize, therefore, that successful acquirers develop higher-order routines-as manifested in two complementary sets of concrete organizational practices-that prevent the generalization of inapplicable ('zero-order') codified routines. After drawing on in-depth qualitative data to help build our theoretical argument, we test it formally with unique survey data on 85 active acquirers.

Manifestations of Higher-Order Routines: The Underlying Mechanisms of Deliberate Learning in the Context of Postacquisition Integration

Manufacturing and service organisations improve their processes on a continuous basis to have better operational performance. They use lean six sigma (LSS) projects for process improvement. Therefo...

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/00207543.2019.1598599

Big data in lean six sigma: a review and further research directions

Engineering economic decision problems encountered in practice are embedded in informationrich environments, where large volumes of data are available from multiple sources. However, the information that is most relevant to solving the problem may be unavailable, inaccessible, inaccurate, or uncertain. In contrast, typical engineering economy textbook problems present only the relevant information in a convenient format. To help bridge the gap between textbook and practice, we engage student teams in a series of ill-structured problems. Teams work in an online Problem Solving Learning Portal (PSLP) that provides access to a variety of information resources containing both relevant and irrelevant information. In one problem instance, some information relevant to the solution must be obtained from an external resource that is not available or mentioned in the PSLP. Student work in the PSLP is organized into successive stages of specifying decision criteria, stating assumptions, expressing their solution in a spreadsheet file and written rationale, and conducting a sensitivity analysis on a single variable they judge to be critical. In addition, they cut and paste information from the resources they see as relevant into a “working memory” repository. We explore different methods for assessing students’ ability to select which information is relevant. Direct measures include simple counts of “hits” and “false alarms” in the working memory that are assessed as part of the grading rubric and analyzed using signal detection theory. Their choice of the parameter(s) on which to conduct the sensitivity analysis can be considered as an indirect measure because the most relevant information is that which provides the best prediction of the most critical parameter (i.e., the parameter that will have the greatest impact on the decision criterion). The online environment also tracks the information resources visited by the student teams and the time of visitation. Data collected from a large engineering economy course are used to evaluate the effectiveness of these assessment methods.

/pdf/student-selection-of-information-relevant-to-solving-ill-1oj8bk11rz.pdf

Student selection of information relevant to solving ill-structured engineering economic decision problems

We consider an $$M/M/1/{\overline{N}}$$
 observable non-customer-intensive service queueing system with unknown service rates consisting of strategic impatient customers who make balking decisions and non-strategic patient customers who do not make any decision. In the queueing game amongst the impatient customers, we show that there exists at least one pure threshold strategy equilibrium in the presence of patient customers. As multiple pure threshold strategy equilibria exist in certain cases, we consider the minimal pure threshold strategy equilibrium in our sensitivity analysis. We find that the likelihood ratio of a fast server to a slow server in an empty queue is monotonically decreasing in the proportion of impatient customers and monotonically increasing in the waiting area capacity. Further, we find that the minimal pure threshold strategy equilibrium is non-increasing in the proportion of impatient customers and non-decreasing in the waiting area capacity. We also show that at least one pure threshold strategy equilibrium exists when the waiting area capacity is infinite.

Equilibrium in a finite capacity M/M/1 queue with unknown service rates consisting of strategic and non-strategic customers

Planning fallacy is the tendency to underestimate the duration of a task due to the optimistic bias of individuals. We design a mechanism from the principal's perspective (an original equipment manufacturer (OEM)) to mitigate the optimistic bias of agents (a contract manufacturer (CM) and a supplier) in a serial supply chain. The OEM determines the deadline of agents by explicitly factoring the agent's planning fallacy in the model through the cost under-estimation factor. Further, we prove that threshold based incentives are better than lump-sum bonus to motivate the supplier and the CM to mitigate procrastination of task.

Mathematical model to mitigate planning fallacy and to determine realistic delivery time

The Government of India has implemented Solar PV based microgrid Decentralized Distributed Generation (DDG) projects in different parts of the country. The monitoring of the performance of DDG projects is a manual process with reliance on the data provided by the system integrators who oversee the DDG projects. With the advent of the Internet of Things (IOT), the monitoring & evaluation can be improved dramatically by making it objective, and also to monitor the performance of the policy progress on a near real-time basis. The characteristics of an LPWAN technology viz., LoRa that makes it an appropriate communication technology for remote monitoring of DDG projects are: Long-range, Low power, Small data requirements, and flexibility to operate in unlicensed spectrum. An open-source Internet of Things (IOT) solution is proposed here to monitor and evaluate the rural electrification projects. The methodology involves the development of a low-cost prototype and an open-source based solution to monitor the performance of a DC-based stand-alone solar photovoltaic system, which was set up in the IIT Madras campus. The integration across the LoRaWAn architecture was demonstrated, and a visualization dashboard was created in the Ubidots IOT platform to monitor basic parameters such as voltage and current. The goal is to monitor the solar DC system in terms of the objectives set in DDG policy.

A LoRaWAN based Open Source IOT Solution for Monitoring Rural Electrification Policy

This research attempts to determine the behaviour of fraudsters in a continuous audit system where the fraudsters have multiple options for committing fraud. The system is modelled as a Continuous Time Markov Chain where the state changes are caused by the fraudster's actions. The model uses a dynamic game with probabilistic transitions to determine the expected behaviour of the fraudster.

Rahul R. Marathe

Papers

Student selection of information relevant to solving ill-structured engineering economic decision problems

Equilibrium in a finite capacity M/M/1 queue with unknown service rates consisting of strategic and non-strategic customers

Mathematical model to mitigate planning fallacy and to determine realistic delivery time

A LoRaWAN based Open Source IOT Solution for Monitoring Rural Electrification Policy

Determining expected behaviour of fraudsters for a continuous audit system