A heuristic approach for component scheduling on a high-speed PCB assembly machine

The collect-and-place machine is one of the most widely used placement machines for assembling electronic components on the printed circuit boards (PCBs). Nevertheless, the number of researches concerning the optimisation of the machine performance is very few. This motivates us to study the component scheduling problem for this type of machine with the objective of minimising the total assembly time. The component scheduling problem is an integration of the component sequencing problem, that is, the sequencing of component placements; and the feeder arrangement problem, that is, the assignment of component types to feeders. To solve the component scheduling problem efficiently, a hybrid genetic algorithm is developed in this paper. A numerical example is used to compare the performance of the algorithm with different component grouping approaches and different population sizes.

One-stop health centres:What co-location means for pharmacy

This paper examines the potential for the development of patient services that could arise from the co-location of pharmacies with medical practices in the new "one-stop" centres. A review of the pharmacy-specific literature shows limited understanding of influence of location upon service development and highlights a tension between the professional and commercial drives. The aim of the survey of health centre pharmacists was to describe the current patterns of integration in the primary health care team. The study demonstrates that co-location offers opportunities but that there are barriers linked to the loss of traditional commercial activity. © 2003 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.

A biography:fabrications in the life of an ERP package

This paper provides an account of the way Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems change over time. These changes are conceptualized as a biographical accumulation that gives the specific ERP technology its present character, attributes and historicity. The paper presents empirics from the implementation of an ERP package within an Australasian organization. Changes to the ERP take place as a result of imperatives which arise during the implementation. Our research and evidence then extends to a different time and place where the new release of the ERP software was being 'sold' to client firms in the UK. We theorize our research through a lens based on ideas from actor network theory (ANT) and the concept of biography. The paper seeks to contribute an additional theorization for ANT studies that places the focus on the technological object and frees it from the ties of the implementation setting. The research illustrates the opportunistic and contested fabrication of a technological object and emphasizes the stability as well as the fluidity of its technologic. Copyright © 2007 SAGE.

Interviewing strategies in the face of beauty:a psychophysiological investigation into the job negotiation process

After the application form is submitted, the interview is the most important method of human resource allocation. Previous research has shown that the attractiveness of interviewees can significantly bias interview outcome. We have previously shown that female interviewers give attractive male interviewees higher status job packages compared their average looking counterparts. However, it is not known whether male interviewers exhibit such biases. In the present study, participants were asked to take part in a mock job negotiation scenario where they had to allocate either a high- or low-status job package to attractive or average looking ``interviewees.'' Before each decision was made, the participant's anticipatory electrodermal response (EDR) was recorded. The results supported our previous finding in that female participants allocated a greater number of high-status job packages to attractive men. Additionally, male participants uniformly allocated a greater number of low-status job packages to both attractive men and attractive women. Overall, the average looking interviewees incurred a penalty and received a significantly greater number of low-status job packages. In general, the EDR profile for both male and female participants was significantly greater when allocating the low-status packages to the average looking interviewees. However, the male anticipatory EDR profile showed the greatest change when allocating attractive women with low-status job packages. We discuss these findings in terms of the potential biases that may occur at the job interview and place them within an evolutionary psychology framework.

The economics behind the move to 'localism' in England

This paper explores the economic thinking behind the UK Coalition government’s new framework for achieving local growth and the creation of Local Enterprise Partnerships in England. It does so in the light of recent debates about ‘space-neutral’ and ‘place-based’ policymaking. While the British government states its ambition to achieve greater spatial and industrial balance across England (and by implication the UK), we argue that so far at least there is a mismatch between the ‘rhetoric’ and ‘policies’ of local growth and its limitations. These relate to inconsistencies in the way that the different competing economic ideas in circulation within government have been adopted in practice. As a result, the paper highlights six key disconnects and limitations of the economics behind the move in England to local growth.