Local market development for Shan Yuan Chinese Restaurant

Shan Yuan Chinese Restaurant (SYCR) is a Chinese restaurant located at 228 Victoria Street, Hamilton. As the most sinological Chinese restaurants in Hamilton, SYCR has always tried to provide customers with the best service and food. Despite this, SYCR restaurant is now facing a crisis in the market because of the turbulent New Zealand food industry. The purpose of this report is to enable the investigator to gain experience in finding and solving problems through individual research. The investigator accomplished data collection through observation, interviews and questionnaire. The researcher found that the problems that SYCR was facing were mainly reflected in four aspects: cultural differences, market competition, online marketing strategic, political factors. The researcher provided four different suggestions in each of these aspects, which can be summarised as website operation, university cooperation, social media strategic, and political study

Customer acquisition and engagement in Magic Chinese Health Massage

With the development of massage business, there are more and more massage shops established in Hamilton. Magic Chinese Health Massage is one of them. To achieve a successful development, having appropriate strategies of customer acquisition and engagement is necessary. The aim of this research is to recommend effective and efficient approaches to attract and retain customers for Magic Chinese Health Massage. The research is implemented in the Magic Chinese Health Massage shop through the interview and observation. As a result, the researcher finds the massage shop has a good reputation but it also has some drawbacks of services, advertising and its social media. Therefore, customer services, shop advertising and the social media of Magic Chinese Health Massage should be improved. To achieve the improvement, advertising is recommended to have more detail to attract customers and customer services can be more flexible. Similarly, its social media, such as Facebook, should be updated frequently

Investigate waste management issue in Mexico Restaurant

Reliable data on waste management and controlling waste will be illuminated in an effective way to suggest better waste management practices in the hospitality industry in New Zealand. This research suggests effective steps to regain and minimize the waste produced in Mexico restaurant, which is located in Victoria Street, Hamilton. To obtain the data, interviews and observation were the preliminary methods used in this research to clearly understand the main cause of the problem by the organisation in terms of waste. This research has covered waste management issues faced in SMEs and steps to control food waste in restaurants. All the collected data are compared and analysed under a statistical result and these results are discussed on the basis of the current waste management practices of the business. The key findings recommend a possible method to control waste and implementing new software to monitor the waste. Further research will carry over under the same stream by influencing engineering methods and machines, which will be a positive deliverable for a sustainable environment and society

Location analysis to suggest new warehouse for Best Furniture shop

Best Furniture operates as a retail furniture outlet in Hamilton, established in 2015, selling furniture manufactured in China and distributed to New Zealand through a network operated from Australia. While the business has tremendous opportunities to grow and outlast its competition, it does not have enough retail space to store its inventory to effectively service all the customer requests it receives. This research aims at identifying and recommending a location to situate a new warehouse for the business such that its operational capacities can be fully utilized. Qualitative research in the form of interview of business manager, and observation, were used to identify a new location and also to provide guidelines on warehouse management. Based on the research conducted, it is recommended that the business operates it new warehouse from a location proximal to Auckland port. It is also recommended that the business creates and implements a warehouse management process and policy document and utilizes available warehouse management software for efficient management of inventory and to streamline the supply chain after the centre is established

Investigating the Influences of Ingredients, W/C Ratio and Dispersion Methods for CNT Modified Smart Concrete

Carbon nanotubes (CNT) have excellent electromechanical properties and can be added into cement using appropriate dispersive means to produce CNT-modified cement-based smart materials (CNTCS). This study investigates how the ingredients, W/C ratio and dispersion methods influence the sensing ability of the smart concrete. Three different dispersion methods were investigated: direct mixing, surfactant surface treated with NaDDBS, and the Carboxymethyl cellulose (CMC) surface modification. CMC surface modification method showed consistency for modified cement paste and cement-sand composite material. For CMC surface treatment method, 0.6 w/c ratio was found to be optimal compared to 0.4 and 0.5. Coarse aggregate was added with cement and sand for 0.6 w/c ratio, and consistent piezo electric response was observed under dynamic loading for CMC surface treated smart concrete. However, significant reduction of sensitivity was observed between the CMC surface treated CNT modified smart concrete compared to smart cement-sand composite and the smart cement paste

Robust Appointment Scheduling for Random Service Time Using Min-Max Optimization

Appointment Scheduling is an increasingly challenging problem for service-centers, healthcare, production and transportation sector. Challenges include meeting growing demand and high expectation of service level among the customers and ensuring an efficient service system which reduces the expenditure related to idle times and under-utilization of the system. The problem becomes more complicated in the presence of processing time uncertainties. In this study, a Robust Appointment Scheduling model is developed using Min-max Optimization to provide appointment dates for a system with a single processor. The objective is to minimize the cost of the worst-case scenario under any realization of the processing time of the jobs. The proposed methodology requires less information regarding the uncertain parameters and can provide optimal solution while only considering the extreme bounds of the uncertain parameters. Therefore, it is applicable to any probability distribution of the uncertain parameters. The model is well suited for any general case appointment scheduling problem regardless of the application field. Since the problem is NP-hard, an Iterative Solution Procedure and a Dynamic Programming model are developed for solving larger instances of problem in polynomial time. In addition, propositions that support the robust model are provided along with theoretical proofs. Appointment scheduling of two case studies, a Dentist’s clinic and VIA Rail Canada are performed. Both case studies exhibit high performance of the proposed robust model in terms of cost savings and computational efforts. This work will contribute both to the literature related to uncertainty handling in decision making and to the industries, which aim to achieve an efficient service system

Not Enough: Human Rights in an Unequal World, by Samuel Moyn

Human rights have come to represent some of the highest ideals of humanity. In Samuel Moyn’s Not Enough: Human Rights in an Unequal World, the Professor of History and Law at Yale University traces the history of the origins of human rights and details a comprehensive narrative of their evolution through various sources. Despite their status as a legal ideology, human rights have often been colloquially invoked to describe broader social entitlements. For this reason, Moyn’s work goes far beyond situating rights as legal instruments, and engages with the political philosophies that underpin human rights as an ideology that function as a reflection of their place in history

Self-Disclosure, Gender, and Patient Satisfaction in the Doctor-Patient Relationship

It has been well established that the doctor-patient relationship is integral for providing quality health care and sustaining patient satisfaction. Additionally, research has indicated that doctors\u27 self-disclosure is considered as an essential interpersonal component of relational development. In terms of the doctor-patient interaction, previous research has produced numerous studies investigating the relationship between doctors\u27 communication behaviors and patient satisfaction. Scholars have also explored how communication styles are associated with doctors\u27 gender, and patient satisfaction. However, there is still a gap in the existing research concerning the connections between doctors\u27 self-disclosure, gender, and patient satisfaction in doctor-patient interactions. My qualitative study sought to examine how doctors\u27 self-disclosure impacts patient satisfaction and how doctors\u27 gendered performances of self-disclosure were perceived by patients. I conducted an in-depth focus group interview with a total of eight volunteer participants (five females, three males). My findings indicated that doctors\u27 self-disclosure positively impacts the patient satisfaction regardless of their gender. Additionally, participants indicated that self-disclosure from both male and female doctors was viewed as helpful when it was relevant and not excessive