Two substitutable perishable product disaster inventory systems

A disaster inventory system is considered in which two substitutable items are stored for disaster management. In the event of disaster management, a particular product may become stock-out and the situation warrants that a demand for the particular product during its stock-out period may be substituted with another available similar product in the inventory. From the utility point of view, continuous review inventory models are quite appro-priate in disaster inventory management. In this paper, a continuous review two substitutable perishable product disaster inventory model is proposed and analyzed. Since the inventory is maintained for disaster management, an adjustable joint reordering policy for replenishment is adopted. There is no lead time and the replenishment is instantaneous. For this model, some measures of system performance are obtained. The stationary behavior of the model is also considered. Numerical examples are also provided to illustrate the results obtained.http://link.springer.com/journal/10479hb2016Industrial and Systems Engineerin

Design of a RFID System for Real-Time Tracking of Laboratory Animals

In this paper, a real-time RFID system capable of tracking laboratory animals for behavior analysis purposes was designed and implemented. Four passive RFID tags based on low frequency (LF) were designed and implemented from first principles. The tags can be read by any RFID reader that operates on the low frequency range 125-134 kHz. The tags were designed through the investigation of various antenna, encoding, modulation, and energy harvesting techniques. The tag receives the electromagnetic signal via the antenna, and converts it to a DC signal that the microcontroller can use to manipulate the electromagnetic signal with the data such that the reader can decode the unique tag identifier. RFID sensors were designed and implemented to collect data from various monitored areas of a semi natural environment. The data is sent to a central data coordinator for pre-processing and middleware for data error checking, display and storage. The data is stored in an online database which is used to produce statistical information about the area within which the RFID system is deployed. The RFID system can successfully detect and store movement data in real time. A read range of 14.5cm was achieved.http://link.springer.com/journal/112772018-08-30hb2017Electrical, Electronic and Computer Engineerin

Improving Visibility of Humanitarian Supply Chains Through Web-Based Collaboration

The study is intended to demonstrate the pathways for humanitarian supply chains following the well-established models of business supply chains. Information sharing is the core to increase visibility in supply chain collaboration. Sharing instant intelligent decisions between the humanitarian organizations improves the quality of humanitarian relief services as well as reduces the operational cost of the public service. With the use of prevalent web portal technology, humanitarian organization can implement web-based collaboration for e-transactions with partners and donor organizations. The benefit of web-based platform is the ability to interact and quickly form a need specific project in a short period of time by collecting a large number of volunteers, donors, and partners over the globe. The visibility of web-based monitoring of supply chain functions not only benefits the aid agencies to maintain appropriate level of stocking but also ensures high level of public services. The illustration of this study is a starting-point to develop models for humanitarian supply chain and establish future research agenda for emergency preparedness planning