Why women shop : secrets revealed

This book is dedicated to women who shop. All retailers and the many industries associated with retail will gain useful knowledge from this book. It will also provide enlightenment for women themselves and their partners who are fascinated by the compulsion to shop. Minahan at Deakin Uni, Vic and Beverland at Uni of Melbourne, Vic.

Benchmark generation algorithm for stochastic mixed model assembly shop simulation and optimization

The Operations Research (OR) community have defined many deterministic manufacturing control problems mainly focused on scheduling. Well-defined benchmark problems provide a mechanism for communication of the effectiveness of different optimization algorithms. Manufacturing problems within industry are stochastic and complex. Common features of these problems include: variable demand, machine part specific breakdown patterns, part machine specific process durations, continuous production, Finished Goods Inventory (FGI) buffers, bottleneck machines and limited production capacity. Discrete Event Simulation (DES) is a commonly used tool for studying manufacturing systems of realistic complexity. There are few reports of detail-rich benchmark problems for use within the simulation optimization community that are as complex as those faced by production managers. This work details an algorithm that can be used to create single and multistage production control problems. The reported software implementation of the algorithm generates text files in eXtensible Markup Language (XML) format that are easily edited and understood as well as being cross-platform compatible. The distribution and acceptance of benchmark problems generated with the algorithm would enable researchers working on simulation and optimization of manufacturing problems to effectively communicate results to benefit the field in general.

Design of user interfaces for job shop environment

User-computer interface development has gone through rapid development in recent years. These developments, however, have not yet been fully implemented in management information system (MIS) design for job shop manufacturing situations. Most of the commercially available MISs are operationally inflexible and do not support management in report generation and decision making, particularly in job shops. This paper describes a framework in developing system user interfaces for job shop manufacturing situations to highlight how a generic information system can be made more useful to managerial decision making. Object-oriented programming technology has been used to provide flexible access to information stored by a generic MIS. Twenty interfacing programs have been developed. For illustration, only three of those interface programs relating to generation of strategic level management reports are discussed here.

Press shop machine analysis and trending

Historically downtime data collection and reporting systems in many automotive body panel press shops has been somewhat adhoc. The impetus for this study stems from frustration in respect of how this data is collected, assessed for trends and presented. Ideally this data should be used to identify costly repetitious faults for actioning of maintenance work and for feedback to tool design for consideration when designing new parts.

Presently this data is stored largely in the form of tacit knowledge by press shop operators; the encumbrance of transferring such information being that there is very often only limited channels to quantify it into something more tangible. Findings show that there tend to be two related obstacles to plant data recording. The first is that automation of down time data collection alone cannot determine fault causes as the majority of press shop events are initiated primarily from operator observation. The second is that excessive subjective operator input can often result in confusion and end up taking greater time in recording than remedying the actual fault.

This Paper presents the development of a system that through press mounted touchscreens encourages basic subjective operator input and relates this with basic objective data such as timekeeping. In this way all responses for a given press line become valuable and can be trended and placed in a hierarchy based on their percentage contribution to downtime or statistical importance. This then is capable of statistically alerting maintenance, line flow and/or toolbuild areas as to what issues require their most urgent attention.

Get to know your local games shop

Provides information on the mathematical potential of commercial board games. Mastermind; Snakes and Ladders; Ludo.

Evaluation of a large group method in an educational Institution : the World café versus Large Group facilitation.

This article reports on the use of a large group method, theWorld Café, compared to large group facilitation in an educational institutional setting in Oman. Change is central to many educational institutions as they aspire to ensure quality procedures and processes are implemented and maintained. One of the difficulties of introducing change within this context is the number of stakeholders involved, as well as the inherent hierarchical nature of these settings. Large group methods (LGM) are one such intervention for change that seeks to involve a maximum number of stakeholders and minimise hierarchies, while at the same time encouraging participation and creating engagement. To evaluate LGM within this setting, the study compared two different workshop techniques: one workshop was run using the LGM theWorld Café, while the other was conducted using large group facilitation (LGF). Results indicated that theWorld Café was superior to LGF in terms of increases in participant knowledge and understanding. Participants who took part in the LGM were also significantly more likely to indicate that the technique was beneficial to their learning, compared to those who took part in the LGF. Qualitative data in the form of comments also provide support for LGM. Further research is needed to assess the applicability of the findings in educational settings in other countries. Moreover, more stringent research is required to assess over time, changes in behaviours occurring following LGM, to provide further evidence as to their value in facilitating change in institutional settings.

Surrender to the market : thoughts on anthropology, the body shop, and intellectuals

The direction of anthropology over the last century is tied to the shifts from colonialism to postcolonialism and from modernism to postmodernism. These shifts have seen the thoroughgoing incorporation of the world population into the economic, political and juridical domain established through the last throes of colonialism and the transmutations of capitalism and the State. Anthropology, a discipline whose history shows close and regular links with colonial government, also transforms in association with the world it describes and partly creates. Two dominant trends in contemporary anthropology--applied consultancy and historicist self-reflexivity--are compared for the ways they represent the transmutation, which is characterised, following Fredric Jameson as 'the surrender to the market'. In this way it is asserted that just as the discipline had hitherto revealed its links to colonialism, it now reveals its links to globalisation through a form of commodified self-obsession. To illustrate this quality the paper considers the global chain of cosmetics stores, The Body Shop, as an example of 'late capitalism' and the moral juridical framework of globalisation. Finally, it treats these developments in anthropology as more generally affecting intellectuals and knowledge production through the promotion of intellectual 'silence'.

The analysis of café espresso using two-dimensional reversed phase–reversed phase high performance liquid chromatography with UV-absorbance and chemiluminescence detection

In this study, an activity based screening technique combining two-dimensional liquid chromatography (2DHPLC) with UV-absorbance and chemiluminescence detection was applied to study “Ristretto”, "Decaffeinatto” and “Volluto” espresso coffees. This technique, which coupled the separation power of 2DHPLC with the sensitivity and selectivity of the chemiluminescence detection, offers great potential for screening complex samples for antioxidant compounds. Detailed information regarding the complexity of the sample, and the variation between these three coffees could be obtained using this multidimensional-hyphenated method of analysis.

Pareto archived simulated annealing for single machine job shop scheduling with multiple objectives

In this paper, the single machine job shop scheduling problem is studied with the objectives of minimizing the tardiness and the material cost of jobs. The simultaneous consideration of these objectives is the multi-criteria optimization problem under study. A metaheuristic procedure based on simulated annealing is proposed to find the approximate Pareto optimal (non-dominated) solutions. The two objectives are combined in one composite utility function based on the decision maker’s interest in having a schedule with weighted combination. In view of the unknown nature of the weights for the defined objectives, a priori approach is applied to search for the non-dominated set of solutions based on the Pareto dominance. The obtained solutions set is presented to the decision maker to choose the best solution according to his preferences. The performance of the algorithm is evaluated in terms of the number of non-dominated schedules generated and the proximity of the obtained non-dominated front to the true Pareto front. Results show that the produced solutions do not differ significantly from the optimal solutions.

Solving a multiobjective job shop scheduling problem using Pareto Archived Cuckoo Search

This paper investigates a new approach for solving the multiobjective job shop scheduling problem, namely the Cuckoo Search ( CS) approach. The requirement is to schedule jobs on a single machine so that the total material waste is minimised as well as the total tardiness time. The material waste is quantified in terms of saving factors to show the reduction in material that can be achieved when producing two jobs with the same materials in sequence. The estimated saving factor is used to calculate a cost savings for each job based on its material type. A formulation of multiobjective optimisation problems is adopted to generate the set of schedules that maximise the overall cost savings and minimise the total tardiness time. where all trade-offs are considered for the two conflicting objectives. A Pareto Archived Multiobjective Cuckoo Search (PAMOCS) is developed to find the set ofnondominated Pareto optimal solutions. The solution accuracy of PAMOCS is shown by comparing the closeness of the obtained solutions to the true Pareto front generated by the complete enumeration methad. Results shaw that CS is a very effective and promising technique to solve job shop scheduling problems.

Stores healthy options project in remote indigenous communities (SHOP@RIC): a protocol of a randomised trial promoting healthy food and beverage purchases through price discounts and in-store nutrition education

Background
Indigenous Australians suffer a disproportionate burden of preventable chronic disease compared to their non-Indigenous counterparts – much of it diet-related. Increasing fruit and vegetable intakes and reducing sugar-sweetened soft-drink consumption can reduce the risk of preventable chronic disease. There is evidence from some general population studies that subsidising healthier foods can modify dietary behaviour. There is little such evidence relating specifically to socio-economically disadvantaged populations, even though dietary behaviour in such populations is arguably more likely to be susceptible to such interventions.

This study aims to assess the impact and cost-effectiveness of a price discount intervention with or without an in-store nutrition education intervention on purchases of fruit, vegetables, water and diet soft-drinks among remote Indigenous communities.

Methods/Design
We will utilise a randomised multiple baseline (stepped wedge) design involving 20 communities in remote Indigenous Australia. The study will be conducted in partnership with two store associations and twenty Indigenous store boards. Communities will be randomised to either i) a 20% price discount on fruit, vegetables, water and diet soft-drinks; or ii) a combined price discount and in-store nutrition education strategy. These interventions will be initiated, at one of five possible time-points, spaced two-months apart. Weekly point-of-sale data will be collected from each community store before, during, and for six months after the six-month intervention period to measure impact on purchasing of discounted food and drinks. Data on physical, social and economic factors influencing weekly store sales will be collected in order to identify important covariates. Intervention fidelity and mediators of behaviour change will also be assessed.

Discussion
This study will provide original evidence on the effectiveness and cost-effectiveness of price discounts with or without an in-store nutrition education intervention on food and drink purchasing among a socio-economically disadvantaged population in a real-life setting.

Strategies for Using the Safe Schools Hub: A ‘One-stop Resource Shop’ for Developing Safe and Supportive School Cultures

The Safe Schools Hub is an online portal created by the Australian Government to support the National Safe Schools Framework. It includes extensive resources for leaders, teachers, specialist staff, parents and students. This presentation will highlight a variety of practical strategies based on these resources that schools can use as they continue to develop safe and supportive school cultures. In particular there will be a focus on resource-based approaches that can assist leaders with data collection and change processes, specific resources that can be incorporated into professional development seminars for staff and resources to direct and support strategies for parent education sessions.