Re-balancing the excellence frameworks with individualistic logic

The analysis and assessment of business excellence are often associated with the discussion on the design and justification of the excellence measures and their dimensions. This paper re-visits the critical issues in assessing business excellence, and aims to explore the conceptual development on re-balancing the performance dimensions in view of a framework. Based on the synthesising of published literatures and case studies it reveals that all the published excellence frameworks are based on the commonality logic ; and it suggests re-balancing them with the individualistic logic . This concept has then been operationalised by constructing a new excellence framework named world-class diamond model. Based on the surveyed data and by using structural equation modelling the re-balanced diamond model is tested and analysed in order to secure its theoretical validity. With the re-balanced framework, it stresses the critical importance of the individualistic logic in achieving business excellence. It also argues that the managerial implication of the individualistic logic lies in the firm-specific and situation-sensitive practices of business excellence. The original contribution of the research is a conceptually re-balanced perspective of business excellence, suggesting a shift from commonality logic towards individualistic logic

Performance Evaluation for the Sustainable Supply Chain Management

Supply chain SC activities transform natural resources, raw materials, and components into various finished products that are delivered to end customers. A high efficient SC would bring great benefits to an enterprise such as integrated resources, reduced logistics costs, improved logistics efficiency, and high quality of overall level of services. In contrast, an inefficient SC will bring additional transaction costs, information management costs, and resource waste, reduce the production capacity of all enterprises on the chain, and unsatisfactory customer relationships. So the evaluation of a SC is important for an enterprise to survive in a competitive market in a globalized business environment. Therefore, it is important to research the various methods, performance indicator systems, and technology for evaluating, monitoring, predicting, and optimizing the performance of a SC. A typical procedure of the performance evaluation (PE) of a SC is to use the established evaluation performance indicators, employ an analytical method, follow a given procedure, to carry out quantitatively or qualitatively comparative analysis to provide the objective and accurate evaluation of a SC performance in a selected operation period. Various research works have been carried out in proposing the performance indicator systems and methods for SC performance evaluations. But there are no widely accepted indicator systems that can be applied in practical SC performance evaluations due to the fact that the indicators in different systems have been defined without a common understanding of the meanings and the relationships between them, and they are nonlinear and very complicated

Biological System Behaviours and Natural-inspired Methods and Their Applications to Supply Chain Management

People have learnt from biological system behaviours and structures to design and develop a number of different kinds of optimisation algorithms that have been widely used in both theoretical study and practical applications in engineering and business management. An efficient supply chain is very important for companies to survive in global competitive market. An effective SCM (supply chain management) is the key for implement an efficient supply chain. Though there have been considerable amount of study of SCM, there have been very limited publications of applying the findings from the biological system study into SCM. In this paper, through systematic literature review, various SCM issues and requirements are discussed and some typical biological system behaviours and natural-inspired algorithms are evaluated for the purpose of SCM. Then the principle and possibility are presented on how to learn the biological systems' behaviours and natural-inspired algorithms for SCM and a framework is proposed as a guide line for users to apply the knowledge learnt from the biological systems for SCM. In the framework, a number of the procedures have been presented for using XML to represent both SCM requirement and bio-inspiration data. To demonstrate the proposed framework, a case study has been presented for users to find the bio-inspirations for some particular SCM problems in automotive industry

Operation-based Configuration Complexity Measurement for Manufacturing System

open5Configuration not only determines the material flow pattern but also influences the production cost in a manufacturing system. The diversity of the products and growing demands for system flexibility increases the complexity of the configuration. In this paper, an operation-based approach is proposed to measure the configuration complexity of a manufacturing system. The configuration complexity models of the stations are built with single operation, several operations and their parallel types. Subsequently, an operation-based configuration complexity model of the overall system is used to measure the configuration complexity of a manufacturing system using the information entropy. Then, the relationship of the complexity between operations and stations is quantitatively described. An assembly line example is presented to validate the model. The results show that the proposed complexity measurement may evaluate the configuration complexity of a manufacturing system.openGuoliang, Fan*; Aiping, Li; Giovanni, Moroni; Liyun, Xu; Xuemei, LiuFan, Guoliang; Li, Aiping; Moroni, Giovanni; Xu, Liyun; Liu, Xueme

Production Line Layout Planning Based on Complexity Measurement

Mass customization production increases the difficulty of the production line layout planning. The material distribution process for variety of parts is very complex, which greatly increases the cost of material handling and logistics. In response to this problem, this paper presents an approach of production line layout planning based on complexity measurement. Firstly, by analyzing the influencing factors of equipment layout, the complexity model of production line is established by using information entropy theory. Then, the cost of the part logistics is derived considering different variety of parts. Furthermore, the function of optimization including two objectives of the lowest cost, and the least configuration complexity is built. Finally, the validity of the function is verified in a case study. The results show that the proposed approach may find the layout scheme with the lowest logistics cost and the least complexity. Optimized production line layout planning can effectively improve production efficiency and equipment utilization with lowest cost and complexity

Depletion of DNMT3A Suppressed Cell Proliferation and Restored PTEN in Hepatocellular Carcinoma Cell

Promoter hypermethylation mediated by DNA methyltransferases (DNMTs) is the main reason for epigenetic inactivation of tumor suppressor genes (TSGs). Previous studies showed that DNMT1 and DNMT3B play an important role in CpG island methylation in tumorigenesis. Little is known about the role of DNMT3A in this process, especially in hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC). In the present study, increased DNMT3A expression in 3 out of 6 HCC cell lines and 16/25 (64%) HCC tissues implied that DNMT3A is involved in hepatocellular carcinogenesis. Depletion of DNMT3A in HCC cell line SMMC-7721 inhibited cell proliferation and decreased the colony formation (about 65%). Microarray data revealed that 153 genes were upregulated in DNMT3A knockdown cells and that almost 71% (109/153) of them contain CpG islands in their 5′ region. 13 of them including PTEN, a crucial tumor suppressor gene in HCC, are genes involved in cell cycle and cell proliferation. Demethylation of PTEN promoter was observed in DNMT3A-depleted cells implying that DNMT3A silenced PTEN via DNA methylation. These results provide insights into the mechanisms of DNMT3A to regulate TSGs by an epigenetic approach in HCC

C-Silicon-based metasurfaces for aperture-robust spectrometer/imaging with angle integration

Compared with conventional grating-based spectrometers, reconstructive spectrometers based on spectrally engineered filtering have the advantage of miniaturization because of the less demand for dispersive optics and free propagation space. However, available reconstructive spectrometers fail to balance the performance on operational bandwidth, spectral diversity and angular stability. In this work, we proposed a compact silicon metasurfaces based spectrometer/camera. After angle integration, the spectral response of the system is robust to angle/aperture within a wide working bandwidth from 400nm to 800nm. It is experimentally demonstrated that the proposed method could maintain the spectral consistency from F/1.8 to F/4 (The corresponding angle of incident light ranges from 7{\deg} to 16{\deg}) and the incident hyperspectral signal could be accurately reconstructed with a fidelity exceeding 99%. Additionally, a spectral imaging system with 400x400 pixels is also established in this work. The accurate reconstructed hyperspectral image indicates that the proposed aperture-robust spectrometer has the potential to be extended as a high-resolution broadband hyperspectral camera

A Single Microorganism Epitope Attenuates the Development of Murine Autoimmune Arthritis: Regulation of Dendritic Cells via the Mannose Receptor

A single epitope of Leishmania analog of the receptors for activated C kinase (LACK) from Leishmania major, the polypeptide LACK156–173, is recognized by Vβ4+/Vα8+ T cells, and activate these cells that drives the subsequent T helper (Th)2 response. This study was undertaken to investigate the therapeutic potential of the LACK156–173 epitope in murine autoimmune arthritis models. To explore the influence of the LACK156–173 epitope on murine collagen antibody-induced arthritis, as well as its immunological mechanism, we vaccinated or treated mice with a LACK156–173 epitope expression plasmid or polypeptide. The effect of LACK156–173 epitope was then evaluated by clinical scores, histopathology, and quantitative real-time polymerase chain reaction (qRT-PCR) analysis. Using flow cytometry, we measured the subsets and maturity of CD11c+ dendritic cells (DCs), as well as T cell polarization, in co-culture experiments. We also measured cytokine gene expression and production. The murine macrophage-like cell line RAW264.7 was used to identify the receptor for the epitope. Vaccination or treatment of the mice with the LACK156–173 epitope expression plasmid or polypeptide ameliorated the severity of arthritis. qRT-PCR analysis revealed that the LACK156–173 epitope improved the balance of effector T cells in synovial tissue compared to that in untreated arthritis controls. Toll-like receptor (TLR) 4 expression was diminished by LACK156–173. The epitope also influenced T cell polarization by regulating the differentiation, maturation, and functions of CD11c+ DCs and upregulating Jagged1 ligand expression. Blocking the mannose receptor (MR) significantly attenuated LACK156–173 epitope-induced macrophage activation. Our data indicate that vaccination or treatment with a single microorganism epitope, LACK156–173, is a highly efficient therapy for murine autoimmune arthritis. The therapeutic effects are mediated by the regulation of the differentiation, maturation, and functions of DCs via MR, resulting in the upregulation of Jagged1 expression and Th2 cell polarization. Our results demonstrate the therapeutic potential of the LACK156–173 epitope in rheumatoid arthritis

Screening of functional antidotes of RNA aptamers against bovine thrombin

AbstractA specific RNA aptamer (T705) against bovine thrombin had been obtained after seven rounds of SELEX (systematic evolution of ligands by exponential enrichment) selection from a random RNA library previously. In order to further investigate the relationship between the structure and function of this aptamer, three truncated RNA aptamers, T705a, T705b and T705c, were designed according to the secondary structure of T705 RNA. Our results showed that T705c keeping the precise stem–loop structure but lacking most of the stem region sequence of T705 could inhibit clot formation in vitro in the same way as its parental form. We also report here that single-stranded DNA (ssDNA) antisense oligonucleotides, c′ and c′-22, which were complementary to different portions of T705c could act as efficient antidotes reversing the inhibitory activity of T705. It is demonstrated for the first time that ssDNA antisense oligonucleotides are potential antidotes of RNA aptamers and this may be an effective, rapid strategy to find antidotes of RNA aptamers which would be of important usefulness in basic research and drug screening