LEAN MANUFACTURING TOOLS AND TECHNIQUES IN THE PROCESS INDUSTRY WITH A FOCUS ON STEEL

This research addresses the application of lean manufacturing concepts to the continuous production/ process sector with a focus on the steel industry. The goal of this research is to investigate how lean manufacturing tools can be adapted from the discrete to the continuous manufacturing environment, and to evaluate their benefits on a specific application instance. Although the process and discrete industry share several common characteristics, there are areas where they are very different. Both manufacturing settings have overlap, but at the extreme, each has its unique characteristics. This research attempts to identify commonalities between discrete and continuous manufacturing where lean techniques from the discrete side are directly applicable. The ideas are tested on a large steel manufacturing company (referred to as ABS). Value stream mapping is used to first map the current state and then used to identify sources of waste and to identify lean tools to try to eliminate this waste. The future state map is then developed for a system with lean tools applied to it. To quantify the benefits gained from using lean tools and techniques in the value stream mapping, a detailed simulation model is developed for ABS and a designed experiment is used to analyze the outputs of the simulation model for different lean configurations. Generalizations of the results are also provided

A continuous model for dynamic pricing under costly price modifications

This paper presents a heuristic method to solve a dynamic pricing problem under costly price modifications. This is a remarkably difficult problem that is solvable only under very few special cases. The method is applied to a more general form of the problem and is numerically tested for a variety of demand functions in the literature. The results show that the method is quite accurate, approximating the optimal profit within usually much less than 1\%. A more important result is that the accuracy tend to be much greater as the number of price changes increases, precisely when the underlying optimization problem becomes much harder, which makes this approach particularly desirable

What the Black Lives Matter Movement Demands of Ethnic Studies Scholars

“Come in. Sit down. Close your eyes. Be silent and listen.” Melody engulfed the room. Our bodies unwittingly swayed softly to rhythms that conjured Ancestral memories. The bald, brown-skinned, goateed, dashiki-wearing man in front of the room exuded both warmth and strength. As a fourteen year-old ninth grader, the constancy of my giggle was interrupted by the sanctity of the space. Squeaks of the crotchety wooden desks that formed a large circle joined the music that hummed from the old record player at the front of the room. Minutes felt like days. Sound transported us through time and space and as the song came to an end, Mr. Navies instructed us, in a voice that prolonged the Spirit of what we had just experienced, “Now, write down your thoughts.” Silently, we scribbled down the ideas, poems, and stories that danced out of our Souls. We were greeted this way every single morning in African American History, Black Gold English, Black Male-Female Relationships, and the dozens of classes that comprised the Black Studies Department curriculum at Berkeley High School. At the close of each week, we would share our writings with the class, inspired by “classical Black musicians” from Charlie Parker, to Thelonius Monk, to Billie Holliday. Dassine, LaRae, Trinice, and Tomorrow would share poems. Ameer, always sat directly to my left and would break up the passionate tear-eliciting prose shared by others, with stories and jokes so hilarious that Mr. Navies would sometimes have to turn his back and hurriedly race across the room to shield his laughter from the class

Women, war and hypocrites: studying the Qur'an [Book Review]

This article reviews the book 'Women, war and hypocrites: studying the Qur'an', by Robert A. Campbell

Yunus Abdullah - Use of Social Media by Businesses: A New opportunity For Consulting Services by Accounting Firms

In the last 10 years, social media has been restructuring business policies and practices creating new business models. These models are shaping the internal and external aspects of businesses, improving efficiency, and hopefully yielding higher profits while reducing costs. At the same time, social media is being implemented in such internal operations as employee training, recruiting, communication within organizations, and building business loyalty. Businesses are becoming more dependent on social media, making social media an inevitable expectation of effective business models. The millennial are the new generation of adults who are taking over the business world. This generation of young adults grew up using such social media networks as Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Google +, and LinkedIn. To sustain good relationship with their clients (millennial), businesses must meet people\u27s expectation of the practices and plan their policies accordingly. This paper will examine how the use of social media by businesses is leading to a new service being offered by accounting firms, social media consulting. Experts in internal controls, accounting firms, will have the resources and capacity to offer services in social media consulting. The large accounting firms such as Deloitte, KPMG, Ernst &Young, and PWC have already entered social media consulting market.https://epublications.marquette.edu/mcnair_2013/1006/thumbnail.jp

Non-Muslims in Muslim majority societies: with focus on the Middle East and Pakistan [Book Review]

This article reviews the book 'Non-Muslims in Muslim majority societies: with focus on the Middle East and Pakistan', edited by Kajsa Ahlstrand and Göran Gunner

The Anthropology of Islam Reader [Book Review]

This article reviews the book, “The Anthropology of Islam Reader”, edited by Jens Kreinath

Red star over Iraq: Iraqi Communism before Saddam [Book Review]

This article reviews the book 'Red star over Iraq: Iraqi Communism before Saddam', by Johan Franzén