Design and Optimization of Capacitated Supply Chain Networks Including Quality Measures

This paper presents (1) a novel capacitated model for supply chain network design which considers manufacturing, distribution, and quality costs (named SCND-COQ model) and (2) five combinatorial optimization methods, based on nonlinear optimization, heuristic, and metaheuristic approaches, which are used to solve realistic instances of practical size. The SCND-COQ model is a mixed-integer nonlinear problem which can be used at a strategic planning level to design a supply chain network that maximizes the total profit subject to meeting an overall quality level of the final product at minimum costs. The SCND-COQ model computes the quality-related costs for the whole supply chain network considering the interdependencies among business entities. The effectiveness of the proposed solution approaches is shown using numerical experiments. These methods allow solving more realistic (capacitated) supply chain network design problems including quality-related costs (inspections, rework, opportunity costs, and others) within a reasonable computational time

Developing clinical leadership: a co-operative inquiry approach to evaluate the benefits of an action learning set with nursing consultants in England.

Background: As three new Consultant nurses joined two established consultants on the staff of one District General Hospital in the south of England, it was believed that an action learning set (ALS) would offer peer support to enable them to succeed. The aim is to evaluate the lessons learned from the ALS focusing on their leadership. Methodology: Co-operative inquiry is a way of researching with rather than on people, of working with those who have similar interests and who wish to collectively understand their world and create new ways of exploring it. This approach helps also to learn how to change and enhance our working practices. With all active subjects fully involved as co-researchers in all research decisions, three cycles were completed of four phases of discussion, reflection, analysis and action. The process is planned to last for 18 months. Data were analysed thematically. Findings: Four themes began to emerge from the data: development of scholarship, responding to changing need, extending networks and empowerment in role. Whilst they had grown considerably in confidence in their leadership role, they did not feel that collectively they fully embraced the four dimensions prescribed by the Department of Health for the role. Nevertheless, the co-operative inquiry helped them realise how much they had gained from their collective learning in the group (ALS) and how, from the group they feel empowered to lead. Their reflections helped them value the importance of the role for the organisation, their credibility within the organisation and were keen to retain their peer support to ensure its sustainability. Conclusion: The outcomes of the co-operative inquiry included an enhanced understanding of the importance of openness and trust of each other and a willingness to share and learn from each other in a respectful and confidential environment with a receptiveness to change. References: Department of Health (1999) Making a Difference. Strengthening the Nursing, Midwifery and Health Visiting Contribution to Health and Healthcare. Department of Health, London. Drennan V. and Goodman C. (2011) Sustaining innovation in the healthcare workforce: A case study of community nurse consultant posts in England. BMC Health Services Research, 11:200 accessed from http://www.biomedcentral.com/1472-6963/11/200 on 23.1.15 Heron J. and Reason P. (2001) The Practice of Co-operative Inquiry: Research ‘with’ rather than ‘on’ People. In: Reason P. & Bradbury H. (2001) (Editors) Handbook of Action Research: Participative Inquiry & Practice. Chapter 16, Sage Publications, London Learning objectives: The learner will be able to : Understand the importance of action learning sets in supporting and empowering self and others in their clinical leadership. Recognise the value of a co-operative inquiry methodology to learn collaboratively from peers as clinical leaders to enhance their practice. Purpose of the presentation; The purpose of the presentation is to share the lessons learned from using a co-operative inquiry methodology to understand collaboratively and more fully the lessons learned from a year’s Action Learning Set focused on the leadership development for five non-medical consultants and nursing professor. Target audience for the presentation: The target audience is anticipated to be educationalists, senior nurses and nurse researchers. Key Words: Nurse leadership, co-operative inquiry, nurse consultant

Clinical leadership: evaluating the benefits of action learning using co-operative inquiry

Background: Developing clinical leadership, to ensure the culture of care is strengthened, is the thrust of the ‘leading with compassion’ campaign by the English National Health Service (NHS) (NHS England, 2014). Senior clinicians are charged with invigorating compassionate leadership yet the roles of nurse and therapist consultants the most senior clinical role in the UK healthcare system, are often solitary ones, in which they are expected to embrace a myriad of responsibilities and where there continues to be ambiguity about their role and scope of practice. In such exposed positions in any healthcare system from a global perspective, consultant nurses and therapists are vulnerable to the vagaries of the demands made upon them and the need to strive ever harder to improve the quality of services and patient care (McIntosh & Tolson 2008). Mentorship can be seen as a way of supporting clinicians, even on a global exchange system but a system (Buckner et al 2015) where the consultants can support themselves through action learning (McGill & Beaty 2001) reinforces their commitment to each other and to the potential benefit of their organisation. The aim is to evaluate the effectiveness of an action learning set (ALS) to enhance clinical leadership and extend their scope and confidence more strategically Methodology: Using an approach advocated by Heron & Reason (2001), co-operative inquiry is a way of researching with rather than on people, of working with those who have similar interests and who wish to collectively understand their world and create new ways of exploring it. This approach helps also to learn how to change and enhance our working practices. With all active subjects fully involved as co-researchers in all research decisions, three cycles have been completed of four phases of discussion of reflection, analysis and action. The process is planned to last for 18 months. Data were analysed thematically. Findings: Four themes began to emerge from the data: development of scholarship, responding to changing need, extending networks and empowerment in role. Whilst the consultants had grown considerably in confidence in their leadership role, they did not feel that collectively they fully embraced the four dimensions prescribed by the Department of Health for the role. Nevertheless, the co-operative inquiry helped them realise how much they had gained from their collective learning in the group (ALS) and how, from the group they feel empowered to lead. The ALS has enabled them to remain focused and reflect critically both personally and within the group. Their reflections helped them value the importance of the role for the organisation, their credibility within the organisation and they have been keen to retain their peer support to ensure its sustainability. Conclusion: Whilst their motivation to ‘make a difference’ remains palpable, the outcomes of the co-operative inquiry included an enhanced understanding of the importance of openness and trust of each other and a willingness to share and learn from each other in a respectful and confidential environment with a receptiveness to change. They believe that they are more aware of their influence on others and feel more able to challenge their medical colleagues with greater conviction and now have a recognised voice within the organisation. Clinical relevance: Time away from their clinical responsibilities to consider improvement of issues challenging these autonomous practitioners has proved invaluable to the improvement of their specialist services and enhanced the confidence of those new to role. Additionally, this collaboration has improved communication across the organisation, enhanced their strategic leadership capability and given confidence to disseminate externally. Key words: leadership, action learning, co-operative inquiry, Words: 569 3 Bullet points as to how your work contributes to knowledge development in the selected theme: • The value of action learning sets for consultant therapists using a co-operative inquiry approach can lead to further empower individuals to address the complex problems in practice and lead to change. • Co-operative inquiry has been a powerful tool to engage these senior consultants in a number of cycles of reflection and evaluation, researching with each other and experiencing first hand the value of the ALS to each of them individually. • Action learning sets can help senior clinicians, early on in their leadership role, take ownership of their complex problems and commit to each other by supporting their development of creative thinking and problem solving. References: Bell M., Coen E., Coyne-Nevin A., Egenton R., Ellis A. and Moran L. (2007) Experience of an action learning set. Practice Development in Health Care 6(4) 232-241. Buckner, E.B., Anderson D.J., Garzon, N., Hafsteinsdottir, T.B., Lai, C. and Roshan, R. (2014) Perspectives on global nursing leadership: international experiences from the field. International Nursing Review, 61, 463-471. Heron, J. & Reason, P. (2001) The Practice of Co-operative Inquiry: Research ‘with’ rather than ‘on’ People. In Reason, P. & Bradbury, H. (editor) Handbook of Action Research: Participative Inquiry & Practice, pp179 -188. Sage, London Jackson C. and Thurgate C. (2011) Action learning: maximising learning in the workplace. British Journal of Healthcare Assistants, 5(9), 454-456. McGill I. And Beaty L. (2001) Action Learning: A Guide for Professional, Management and Educational Development (2nd edition). London, Kogan Page. McIntosh J. and Tolson D. (2008) Leadership as part of the nurse consultant role; banging the drum for patient care. Journal of Clinical Nursing 18, 219-227. NHS England (2014) Building and Strengthening Leadership: Leading with Compassion. NHS England, Accessed at https://www.england.nhs.uk/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/london-nursing-accessible.pdf on 22.1.16 Young S., Nixon E., Hinge D., McFadyen J., Wright V., Lambert P., Pilkington C. and Newsome C. (2009) Action learning: a tool for the development of strategic skills for Nurse Consultants? Journal of Nursing Management, 18, 105-110

A GRASP-Tabu Heuristic Approach to Territory Design for Pickup and Delivery Operations for Large-Scale Instances

Weaddressalogisticsdistrictingproblemfacedbyaparcelcompanywhoseoperationsconsistofpickingupanddeliveringpackages overaserviceregion.Thedistrictingprocessaimstofindapartitionoftheserviceregionintodeliveryandcollectionzonesthat may be served by a single vehicle that departs from a central depot. Criteria to be optimized are to balance workload content among the districts and to create districts of compact shape. A solution approach based on a hybrid procedure that combines elements of GRASP and Tabu Search (TS) is proposed to solve large-scale instances. Numerical experimentation is performed consideringdifferentinstancesizesandtypes.Resultsshowthattheproposedsolutionapproachisabletosolvelarge-scaleinstances inreasonablecomputationaltimeswithgoodqualityofthesolutionsobtained.Todeterminethequalityofthesolutions,resultsare comparedwithCPLEXsolutionsandwiththecurrentrealsolutiontohighlightthebenefitsoftheproposedapproach.Conclusions andrecommendationsforfurtherresearchareprovided

Un algoritmo en línea para el problema de apilamiento de contenedores

El manejo eficiente de carga es un elemento clave para un puerto marítimo pueda competir y proveer adecuados niveles de servicio a sus usuarios. El desempeño de un puerto depende del tiempo de permanencia de la nave, que está condicionado por la eficiencia en las operaciones de carga y descarga de las naves. En el patio, los contenedores son almacenados temporalmente para ser cargados a la nave o despachados a los usuarios externos con un alto impacto en los tiempos de atención de las naves. Este artículo propone una política para stacking de contenedores, considerando las características particulares de un terminal de contenedores en Chile. Para medir el desempeño de este procedimiento, se propone una cota superior para el número de despejes de un contenedor en función de la capacidad de los bloques. Se presentan resultados numéricos en comparación con la cota superior, mostrando un buen desempeño del procedimiento propuesto.Efficient cargo handling is a key element for a maritime port to compete and provide good service levels to its users. The performance of a port is related to ship-turnaround, which is conditioned by the ships loading and unloading operational efficiency. At the yard, containers are temporarily stacked in order to later either load them onto a ship or dispatch them to external users. Stacking has a strong impact on ships’ service times. This paper proposes a container stacking policy, considering the particular characteristics of a container terminal in Chile. In order to measure the performance of the procedure, an upper bound for the number of re-handles of containers is estimated as a function of the block’s capacity. Numerical results are provided in comparison to an upper bound, and a good performance by the proposed procedure is demonstrated

A Stochastic Integer Programming Model for Minimizing Cost in the Use of Rain Water Collectors for Firefighting

In this paper we propose a stochastic integer programming optimization model to determine the optimal location and number of rain water collectors (RWCs) for forest firefighting. The objective is to minimize expected total cost to control forest fires. The model is tested using a real case and several additional realistic scenarios. The impact on the solution of varying the limit on the number of RWCs, the RWC water capacity, the aircraft capacity, the water demands, and the aircraft operating cost is explored. Some observations are that the objective value improves with larger RWCs and with the use of aircraft with greater capacity

Assessing the capacity of local ecosystems to meet industrial demand for ecosystem services

Despite the importance of ecosystems, engineering activities continue to ignore or greatly undervalue their role. Consequently, engineered systems often overshoot nature's capacity to support them, causing ecological degradation. Such systems tend to be inherently unsustainable, and they often fail to benefit from nature's ability to provide essential goods and services. This work explores the idea of including ecosystems in chemical processes, and assesses whether such a techno-ecological synergistic system can operate within ecological constraints. The demand for ecosystem services is quantified by emissions and resources used, while the supply is provided by ecosystems on the manufacturing site. Application to a biodiesel manufacturing site demonstrates that ecosystems can be economically and environmentally superior to conventional technologies for making progress toward zero emissions and net positive impact manufacturing. These results highlight the need for shifting the paradigm of engineering from that of dominating nature to embracing nature and respecting its limits