Applying Cross-Decking and Activity-Based Costing to Military Distribution Centers: A Proposed Framework

Current events and fiscal constraints have focused DoD planners\u27 attention on reducing logistics costs and improving efficiency while maintaining effective combat operations support. Military leaders are seeking private industry best practices that may help the DoD achieve these goals. Two commercially successful business practices that may help the DoD achieve its goals are cross-docking and Activity-Based Costing (ABC). Cross-docking is a commercially proven approach to material distribution through a distribution center that can help reduce inventories, speed material flows, and cut related logistics activity costs. However, the DoD is faced with the challenge of costing current and potential logistics processes with an antiquated costing structure. Military planners may be able to use ABC to answer this costing challenge and help them decide whether or not to invest in cross-docking technologies. This thesis is a proposed framework for constructing a tool that may provide managers performance and cost measurements of current military distribution center operations, and estimate expected performance and cost changes as a result ofincorporating high technology cross-docking methodologies. The tool incorporates computer simulation modeling to measure the time performance, and a proposed ABC model to measure available versus used capacities, and costs, of existing and potential distribution processes and activities. The use of simulation for costing of activities and product costs is an unexplored area of ABC literature. Furthermore, ABC and simulation have not been used in conjunction to simulate and cost specific activities in a DoD distribution center. The implication for this research is to provide DoD managers a decision support tool for contemporary logistics decisions

Forage Crop Research: Evaluating Forage Species in Iowa for Productivity during Drought Conditions—Quality

The objective of this research is to evaluate the forage quality of forage species for their seasonal productivity differences and their ability to withstand droughty environmental conditions in Iowa

Forage Crop Research: Evaluating Forage Species in Iowa for Productivity during Drought Conditions

Drought often results in greater agricultural damage in southern, western, and northeastern Iowa than in the rest of the state. Slight to severe slopes are prone to erosion, and soils high in clay content are slow to drain excess moisture during wet periods and have low amounts of available moisture during periods of drought. The land is predominantly used for livestock production because of factors that limit level of productivity in row-crop production

Basic transformations on virtual hexagonal structure

Hexagonal structure is different from the traditional square structure for image representation. The geometrical arrangement of pixels on hexagonal structure can be described in terms of a hexagonal grid. Hexagonal structure provides an easy way for image translation and rotation transformations. However, all the existing hardware for capturing image and for displaying image are produced based on square architecture. It has become a serious problem affecting the advanced research based on hexagonal structure. In this paper, we introduce a new virtual hexagonal structure. Based on this virtual structure, a more flexible and powerful image translation and rotation are performed. The virtual hexagonal structure retains image resolution during the process of image transformations, and does not introduce distortion. Furthermore, images can be smoothly and easily transferred between the traditional square structure and the hexagonal structure. © 2006 IEEE

Uniformly partitioning images on virtual hexagonal structure

Hexagonal structure is different from the traditionnal square structure for image representation. The geometrical arrangement of pixels on hexagonal structure can be described in terms of a hexagonal grid. Uniformly separating image into seven similar copies with a smaller scale has commonly been used for parallel and accurate image processing on hexagonal structure. However, all the existing hardware for capturing image and for displaying image are produced based on square architecture. It has become a serious problem affecting the advanced research based on hexagonal structure. Furthermore, the current techniques used for uniform separation of images on hexagonal structure do not coincide with the rectangular shape of images. This has been an obstacle in the use of hexagonal structure for image processing. In this paper, we briefly review a newly developed virtual hexagonal structure that is scalable. Based on this virtual structure, algorithms for uniform image separation are presented. The virtual hexagonal structure retains image resolution during the process of image separation, and does not introduce distortion. Furthermore, images can be smoothly and easily transferred between the traditional square structure and the hexagonal structure while the image shape is kept in rectangle. © 2006 IEEE