Integrating BOINC with Microsoft Excel: A case study

The convergence of conventional Grid computing with public resource computing (PRC) offers potential benefits in the enterprise setting. For this work we took the popular PRC toolkit BOINC and used it to execute a previously monolithic Microsoft Excel financial model across several commodity computers. Our experience indicates that speedup approaching linear may be realised for certain scenarios, and that this approach offers a viable route to leveraging idle desktop PCs in the enterprise

Order Stability in Supply Chains: Coordination Risk and the Role of Coordination Stock

The bullwhip effect describes the tendency for the variance of orders in supply chains to increase as one moves upstream from consumer demand. We report on a set of laboratory experiments with a serial supply chain that tests behavioral causes of this phenomenon, in particular the possible influence of coordination risk. Coordination risk exists when individuals' decisions contribute to a collective outcome and the decision rules followed by each individual are not known with certainty, for example, where managers cannot be sure how their supply chain partners will behave. We conjecture that the existence of coordination risk may contribute to bullwhip behavior. We test this conjecture by controlling for environmental factors that lead to coordination risk and find these controls lead to a significant reduction in order oscillations and amplification. Next, we investigate a managerial intervention to reduce the bullwhip effect, inspired by our conjecture that coordination risk contributes to bullwhip behavior. Although the intervention, holding additional on-hand inventory, does not change the existence of coordination risk, it reduces order oscillation and amplification by providing a buffer against the endogenous risk of coordination failure. We conclude that the magnitude of the bullwhip can be mitigated, but that its behavioral causes appear robust.National Science Foundation (U.S.) (Grant SES-0214337)Mary Jean and Frank P. Smeal College of Business Administration (Center for Supply Chain Research)Sloan School of Management (Project on Innovation in Markets and Organizations

Towards an Improved Hoarding Procedure in a Mobile Environment

Frequent disconnection has been a critical issue in wireless network communication therefore causing excessive delay in data delivery. In this paper, we formulated a management mechanism based on computational optimization to achieve efficient and fast computation in order to reduce inherent delay during the hoarding process. The simulated result obtained is evaluated based on hoard size and delivery time. Keywords: Hoarding Procedure, Mobile computing Environment and Computational Optimization

Balancing operating revenues and occupied refurbishment costs 1: problems of defining project success factors and selecting site planning methods

In planning the refurbishment of railway stations the spatial needs of the contractor and of the ongoing business stakeholders have to be balanced. A particular concern is the disruptive effect of construction works upon pedestrian movement. RaCMIT (Refurbishment and Customer Movement Integration Tool) was a research project aimed at addressing this problem. The objective of the research was to develop a decision protocol facilitating optimisation of overall project value to the client's business. This paper (the first of two) presents a framework for considering public disruption in occupied refurbishment using two case studies in large railway stations as examples. It briefly describes new tools which (combined with existing techniques) assist decision making in the management of disruption. It links strategic with sitebased decision making and suggests how public disruption may be treated as a variable to be jointly optimised along with traditional criteria such as time, cost and quality. Research observations as well as current literature suggest that for overall decision-making, opportunities may be lost (under current practice) for minimising joint project cost/revenue disruption, and, for spatio-temporal site decision-making, effective and efficient tools now exist to model both sides of the construction site boundary

An Analysis of Hoarding and Squalor Related Incidents and Responses by the Metropolitan Fire and Emergency Services Board

This project is intended to assist the Metropolitan Fire and Emergency Services Board (MFB) of Melbourne, Victoria, Australia by quantifying and analyzing all identifiable hoarding and squalor related incidents that MFB has responded to within the Metropolitan District (MD) from 4 April 2012 to 3 April 2014. The increased rate of reported incidents found in this study confirms the prevalence and severity of hoarding and squalor as ongoing risks for affected individuals and the community. This study recommends MFB and other fire services work in collaboration to develop information for firefighters about hoarding and squalor and to identify, define, and reduce its risks

The demand for euro area currencies: past, present and future

The present paper analyses currency in circulation in the euro area since the beginning of the 1980s. After a comprehensive literature review on this topic we present some stylised facts on currency holdings in the euro area countries as well as at an aggregate euro area level. The next chapter develops a theoretical model, which extends traditional money demand models to also incorporate arguments for the informal economy and foreign demand for specific currencies. In the empirical sections we first estimate the demand for euro legacy currencies in total and for small and large denominations within a cointegration framework. We find significant differences between the determinants of holdings of small and large denominations as well as overall currency demand. While small-value banknotes are mainly driven by domestic transactions, the demand for large-value banknotes depends on a short-term interest rate, the exchange rate of the euro as a proxy for foreign demand and inflation variability. Large-value banknotes seem to be therefore used to an important extent as a store of value domestically and abroad. As monetary policy is mainly interested in getting information on the demand for currency used for domestic transactions we also try several approaches in this direction. All the methods applied result in rather low levels of transaction balances used within the euro area of around 25% to 35% of total currency. After this we deal with possibly changing cost-benefit-considerations of the use of cash due to the introduction of euro notes and coins. Overall, there seems no evidence so far of a substantial decline of the demand for currency in the euro area. JEL Classification: E41, E52, E58cointegration, currency in circulation, purposes of holding currency

A Hoard of Unpaid Invoices: Dissecting Economies & Private Market Forces To Solve B2B Late Payments

The average small-to-medium-size business in the United States keeps just enough of a cash buffer to last 27 days worth of normal operational costs, but in 2016 81% of all B2B invoices were delayed at least 30 days or more past the due date of payment. Furthermore, in 2016, the average SMB held roughly $84,000 in unpaid accounts receivables, with that number also varying across industries. As an example, the average IT SMB held roughly$163k in unpaid accounts receivables, while the average transportation company held roughly $102k in the same. Yet we wonder why 50% of all SMBs close shop in under 5 years of their existence. Late business-to-business (B2B) payments are symbolic of rampant trade credit. The conditions surrounding the need, use, exploitation, and the legal protections to curb trade credit vary significantly across nations and business cultures. However, while cultural practices do have a way of impacting commerce, the various instances of late payments across the world have several other universal factors in common as well. In this paper, we take a look at some global economies and the particularities of practices influencing late payments within their borders. We then dissect their public policies in an effort to gauge the pressure points which they hope to address - as well as any noticeable impact such policies may have had on future payment practices. We then juxtapose our lessons from public policy against the impact of private market solutions and technologies aimed at resolving late payments, and use those contrasting images to better understand the various factors that may have been left unanswered in public policy. Finally, I use my experience dissecting and studying the impact of public legislation to craft and put forth policy proposals of my own - aimed at resolving the most common imbalances and exploits observed during the course of my study

Towards an Understanding of Needs, Capabilities and Alignment Mechanisms in Digital Preservation: Results from an Explorative Case Study

Today digital information is conceived as a firm’s most important asset whose availability cannot be taken for granted. As part of an effort to sustain its availability which is threatened by expeditiously changing technologies associated with the risk of obsolete software and hardware, digital preservation (DP) provides effective means. However, to date little is known about DP in the firm. Our study is the first to fill this gap and seeks to provide a deeper understanding of a firm’s DP needs, capabilities and alignment mechanisms. We use a multiple-case design to analyze three firms and adopt the information processing theory as our theoretical lens. We find lacking decision making procedures and organizational responsibilities hampering the alignment between DP needs and capabilities facilitating a culture of information hoarding. Based on the consolidated results we suggest a set of propositions to explain DP needs, capabilities and alignment mechanisms

Me, not you: the trouble with mainstream feminism

Phipps argues that the mainstream movement against sexual violence embodies a political whiteness which both reflects its demographics and limits its revolutionary potential