Integrating Activity-Based Costing （ABC） and Theory of Constraint （TOC） for Improved and Sustained Cost Management

Implementing effective cost management approaches has recently gained momentum due to intense competition and increasing customer demands. Moreover, effective cost management approaches have contributed to firms＇ competitive advantage in relation to cost leadership strategy. Consequently, firms have implemented contemporary cost management systems, such as activity-based management, business process re-engineering, life-cycle costing, target costing, and theory of constraint （TOC）, to enable them to become low-cost producers and compete effectively and sustain their performance. Furthermore, focusing on cost management to improve profitability has led to the integration of activity-based costing （ABC） and TOC. Therefore, the aim of this study is to review literature and discuss how integration of ABC and TOC can result in improved and sustained cost management. While these methods have different approaches in addressing cost management, treating them as complementary cost management approaches can result in improved cost management due to improved product costing, improved cost reporting, improved product-mix decisions, and improved cycle-time management. Improvement in cost management will then result in sustained cost management. Sustained cost management is further enhanced with the investment in information customer and shareholder value technology that supports cross-functional decision making to continue creating to remain competitive in the market.

Rheological Behavior for Polymer Melts and Concentrated Solutions——Part Ⅶ: A Quantitative Verification for the Molecular Theory of Non-linear Viscoelasticity with Entanglement Constraints in Polymer Melts

Based on the molecular theory of non-linear viscoelasticity with constrained entanglements in polymer melts, the material functions in simple shear flow were formulated, the theoretical relations between. eta((gamma) over dot), psi (10)((gamma) over dot) and shear rate ((gamma) over dot), and topologically constrained dimension number n ' and a were derived. Linear viscoelastic parameters (eta (0) and G(N)(0)) and topologically constrained dimension number (n ' a and <(<upsilon>)over bar>) as a function of the primary molecular weight (M-n), molecular weight between entanglements (M-C) and the entanglement sites sequence distribution in polymer chain were determined. A new method for determination of viscoelastic parameters (eta (0), psi (10), G(N)(0) and J(e)(0)), topologically constrained dimension number (n ', a and v) and molecular weight (M-n, M-c and M-e) from the shear flow measurements was proposed. It was used to determine those parameters and structures of HDPE, making a good agreement between these values and those obtained by other methods. The agreement affords a quantitative verification for the molecular theory of nonlinear viscoelasticity with constrained entanglement in polymer melts.

Evolutionary Programming for IP/MIP Problems with Linear Constraints

In this paper, we propose a modified evolutionary programming with dynamic domain for solving nonlinear IP/MIP problems with linear constraints, without involving penalty function or any transformation for the problem to a linear model or others. The numerical results show that the new algorithm gives a satisfactory performance in which it works of high speed, and accuracy in IP/MIP problems.

Supply Chain Management Analysis and Design for a Variety of Economic Scenarios, Including Data and System Administration

Due to the rapid progress of information technology, organizations anticipate significant changes in the planning, scheduling, and optimization aspects of operation and supply chain management (SCM) shortly. Two primary types of risk have an impact on supply chain management and design. The first group deals with the difficulties in matching supply and demand, whereas the second group deals with disruptions to regular business operations. The essay offers a theoretical framework that combines the cooperative efforts of risk assessment and mitigation, which are critical for effectively handling potential supply chain interruptions. This content provides insightful viewpoints on the strategic resources and operational structure needed to improve organizational success. We utilized the partial least squares (PLS) method to address the problem of multicollinearity and measurement mistakes in examining cause-and-effect constructs. The statistical method, Least Squares (PLS), used in structural equation modeling, is based on partial variance. The Partial Least Squares (PLS) strategy uses a two-stage estimate procedure to calculate weights, loadings, and route estimations. Initially, several simple and complex regressions were performed with the provided model. The procedure was repeated until a solution was found, resulting in a set of weights used to determine the latent variable scores. In the second step, non-iterative PLS regression yields loadings, path coefficients, mean scores, and location parameters. According to the structural study, implementing Sustainable Supply Chain Management (SSCM) can significantly improve a business’s operational and financial performance. The findings offer a comprehensive understanding of several elements of supply chain management (SSCM), including information systems, organizational configurations, supply chain network architecture (SCND), and supply chain strategy (SCS). The supply chain is essential for effectively moving goods over great distances and encouraging cooperation between parties. Therefore, these connections are established precisely, quickly, and cheaply via a knowledgeable and efficient supply chain. Two key components are necessary for a supply chain (SC) to be successful: efficient collaboration and the smooth integration of information-sharing platforms.

Discussion on Rural Finanical Problems From the Perspective of Theory of Constaint

Inadequate rural financial services and low service efficiency lead to the situation that a large sum of money flows from rural areas to urban areas through commercial banks. The situation goes against the development of rural production and causes the extreme lack of rural capital, the difficuties in loaning and the prevalence of uaurious loan. In view of the problems exsited in rural financial system, the rural financial developmental trend, rural gross production, rural financial scale and rural financial efficiency from 1983 to 2008 are empirically analyzed by using the Pagano model in endogenous growth theory. The research assumes that, rural financial scale has positive relation with rural economic output, that is to say, the expansion of rural fiancial scale can facilitate the development of rural economy; the rural financial efficiency has negative relation with rural economic development. In Chinese rural areas, the economic development still relies on the expansion of rural fianance. However, at the same time of increasing the financial scale, the efficiency of rural finance is deceasing gradually. Thus, the support of rural finance on rural economic growth lies at the low level. Therefore, in view of the basic rerequisite of rural economic development, two solutions are adopted and Japanese and Kereaon experince are used. The measures are as follows. First, conducting organization innovation through promoting new village construction and gathering dispersed farmers to form rural cooperative organization to reduce trasaction cost. Second, transforming financial support from exogeneity to endogenity and marketizing rural finance so as to effectively solve the efficiency of rural finance.

On Detecting and Enforcing the Non-Relational Constraints Associated to Dyadic Relations in MatBase

MatBase is a prototype data and knowledge base management expert intelligent system based on the Relational,Entity-Relationship,and(Elementary)Mathematical Data Models.Dyadic relationships are quite common in data modeling.Besides their relational-type constraints,they often exhibit mathematical properties that are not covered by the Relational Data Model.This paper presents and discusses the MatBase algorithm that assists database designers in discovering all non-relational constraints associated to them,as well as its algorithm for enforcing them,thus providing a significantly higher degree of data quality.

ON THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN THE VACCO MODEL AND CHETAEV MODEL

In this paper, the geometric property and the mechanical property of non-holonomic constraints are studied. Vacco equation is obtained by using the classical Hamilton principle. On the basis of Vacco equation, Chetaev condition is obtained by using mechanics principle of determining the ideal constraint. It is pointed out that the Vacco model is compatible with Chetaev model, so these two kinds of models are unified.

Analyzing the time buffer in the Theory of Constraints based lean operations

This paper uses quantitative methods to estimate the size of the time buffer in lean operations controlled by the Theory of Constraints(TOC).The main focus of the operations system of TOC is the identification and management of constraints.To protect the constraints,they should be buffered with time buffers,which protecting the system’s output from disruptions and fluctuations.Despite the importance of time buffers,the approaches to identifying the size of the time buffer in literature are very empirical.In this paper,a queuing-theory based method is applied to calculate the time buffer sizes.It provides a mathematically exact expression for the coefficient of variation of waiting time for Markov queues.It then applies the concept of isomorphism to approximate the variance of customer waiting time in a general queue.Simulation experiments are conducted to verify the accuracy of approximation.

Study on Principal-agent Mechanism in Chinese Private Enterprises

Based on the principal-agent theory, this paper analyzes the current situation and the developing trends of Chinese private enterprises. It points out the obstacles confronted by Chinese private enterprise in setting up the principal-agent mechanism and proposes the corresponding solutions to these problems.

Simulation Research of the TOC-Based Cost Accounting Impacting on Organizational Performance

After introducing a new management philosophy called Theory of Constraints (TOC), Dr Eli Goldratt applied it to the field of accounting, and formed a new set of measures for cost accounting. These measures are Throughput Contribution, Inventory and Operating Expenses. This paper applied the constraint-based cost accounting to three kinds of strategies decisions including contraction, cost and market, and uses the Gedunken experiment to do a contrastive research between the cost accounting based on TOC and the full-absorption cost accounting. The experiment proves that the cost accounting based on TOC outperforms the traditional cost accounting, and greatly improves organizational performance.

Development of a Theory of Constraints Based Scheduling System for Ship Piping Production

Manufacturing of ship piping system is one of the major production activities in shipbuilding.The schedule of pipe production has an important impact on master schedule of shipbuilding.In this research,the theory of constraints(TOC) concept is introduced to solve the scheduling problems of piping factory,and an intelligent scheduling system is developed.The system integrates a product model,an operation model,a factory model and a knowledge database of piping production and can make the process planning and production scheduling automatically.In the paper,details of above points are discussed.Moreover,an application of the system in a piping factory,which achieves a higher level of performance as measured by tardiness,lead time and inventory,is demonstrated at the end of the paper.

3D reconstruction based on spatial vanishing information

An approach for the three-dimensional (3D) reconstruction of architectural scenes from two un-calibrated images is described in this paper. Prom two views of one architectural structure, three pairs of corresponding vanishing points of three major mutual orthogonal directions can be extracted. The simple but powerful constraints of parallelism and orthogonal lines in architectural scenes can be used to calibrate the cameras and to recover the 3D information of the structure. This approach is applied to the real images of architectural scenes, and a 3D model of a building in virtual reality modelling language (VRML) format is presented which illustrates the method with successful performance.

Interactive Inconsistency Fixing in Feature Modeling

Feature models have been widely adopted to reuse the requirements of a set of similar products in a domain. In feature models＇ construction, one basic task is to ensure the consistency of feature models, which often involves detecting and fixing of inconsistencies in feature models. While many approaches have been proposed, most of them focus on detecting inconsistencies rather than fixing inconsistencies. In this paper, we propose a novel dynamic-priority based approach to interactively fixing inconsistencies in feature models, and report an implementation of a system that not only automatically recommends a solution to fixing inconsistencies but also supports domain analysts to gradually reach the desirable solution by dynamically adjusting priorities of constraints. The key technical contribution is, as far as we are aware, the first application of the constraint hierarchy theory to feature modeling, where the degree of domain analysts＇ confidence on constraints is expressed by using priority and inconsistencies are resolved by deleting one or more lower-priority constraints. Two case studies demonstrate the usability and scalability （efficiency） of our new approach.