Flexible Workflow Management in Agile Supply Chain System

With the vehement development of global competition , Agile Supply Chain (ASC) becomes an effective approach that supports dynamic ent erprise alliance and realizes agile manufacturing, as for the enterprises to cap ture market opportunities rapidly and strengthen their anti-risk ability. As Ag ile Supply Chain System (ASCS) is dynamic and distributed, the realization of it ’s processes needs to be much flexible. Often in Agile Supply Chain System (ASCS ), there are many dynamic tasks, many changes of the processes, and cooperative workflows, which need the workflows able to be adjusted agilely and smoothly, no t much affecting others. This paper will propose a flexible workflow management for achieving the agility and compatibility. At the first of the paper, we will discuss the situation in which Agile Supply C hain System is applied, and then we will elaborate the characteristics of Agile Supply Chain System. So with that, the shortcomings of the process managements t hat are, at present, used in Supply Chain Systems will be displayed clearly. The n, the proposal will be given in the paper, to resolve the problems in the prese nt process management in ASCS. We will see supply chain systems implemented mult i-agent-based technology to adapt to the dynamic environment, however in many systems, coordination of the workflows is executed by the explicit messages comm unicated between the agents. This will lead to a tightly coupled system. To over come it, the paper suggests the workflow management in agent-based ASCS using t he Events-Triggering mechanism, instead of the explicit messages. We create Eve nts-Triggering contents and rules, having push-pull mechanism, event-state se t and triggering-conditions, and store them in the distributed database subject ed to the corresponding agents. Adjusting the Events-Triggering data will be us ed to adapt to the dynamic tasks and the changes of processes. In sum, we will p resent the methods of process modeling, the system structure, and the executing -mechanism of the flexible workflow management we propose in the paper. Also, t he paper outlines several exception-handling policies for the flexible workflow management, in succession. And at the final of the paper, we discuss the realiz ation of the flexible workflow management in Agile Supply Chain System. The flex ible workflow management will be implemented using CORBA services and Java techn ology for the distributed systems. CORBA is chosen as the specification of distr ibuted electronic data exchange, and Java as the construction tool of the system . The framework of the flexible workflow management constructed on them is showe d in the paper.

The application of feedforward control in the nursing emergency management of COVID-19

Objective:To explore the application of feedforward control in the nursing emergency management of COVID-19.Methods:The feedforward control theory was applied to the emergency management of COVID-19 nursing,including grasping the latest epidemic information,preparing for the early stage,formulating nursing workflow,implementing flexible management,standardizing isolation and protection measures,unifying nursing document record format,and implementing humanistic care.Results:During the period of support to Wuhan,the nursing work in the isolated area was orderly,the nursing staff's job satisfaction was high,no nursing errors and hospital infections occurred.Conclusion:Efficient feedforward control in the nursing emergency management that could avoid work blindness to a certain extent and play a guiding role in maintaining the normal operation of treatment and nursing work and protecting the safety of patients and medical staff in the ward during the epidemic period of COVID-19.

Management Agility Depends on Well-Renovated IT Infrastructure

Today management agility as an inter-corporate competitive advantage cannot be realized unless given all of the following quickness： （a） quick recognition of changes in the management environment, （b） quick decision-making on countermeasures against these changes, and （c） quick implementation of the countermeasures chosen. With a focus on （c） and assuming flexibility as a core property that an MIS （Management Information System） should have to make management agile, this study aims to clarify how MIS flexibility could be enhanced. With this aim in mind, the authors will first survey the sources and types of change demands on an MIS and consider in a structured way the flexibility characteristics of an MIS, enhancement of which will conduce to its efficiency in dealing with these change demands. With this groundwork laid, the authors will go on to discuss practical methods to enhance MIS flexibility, and wind up their discussion by presenting the evaluation procedure for this property.

Flexible Optimal Model and Algorithm for Track Utilization in High-speed Railway Stations

Track utilization is the most important technical operation in high-speed railway stations.It is an effective way to take flexible man-agement based on dispatchers’decision preferences into consideration for making track utilization plans to relieve the influence caused by unmeasurable unstructured factors.Thus,based on the flexible management concept and taking the flexible optimal for track utilization in high-speed railway stations as the object,time and space occupation safety trajectories of arrival routes,departure routes and tracks are all analysed.Then,taking the following constraints into consideration-minimum safety time intervals for var-ious routes and tracks occupation,space-time arc occupation and decision-makers’preferences-a flexible optimal model for track utilization in high-speed railway stations is established to maximize its balance and robustness and to minimize its volatility at the same time.Further,a flexible optimal solution based on a simulated annealing algorithm is designed to make a safety track utilization plan in high-speed railway stations integrating the dispatchers’decision preference.The results from the experiments show that the proposed methodology can effectively make satisfied safety track utilization plans based on decision-makers’preferences,which can improve its balance and robustness level significantly.Meanwhile,its volatility can be reduced as much as possible caused by flexible management based on artificial intervention to ensure the relative stability of the plan.

Estimating Risk-aware Flexibility Areas for Electric Vehicle Charging Pools via AC Stochastic Optimal Power Flow

This paper introduces an AC stochastic optimal power flow(SOPF)for the flexibility management of electric vehicle(EV)charging pools in distribution networks under uncertainty.The AC SOPF considers discrete utility functions from charging pools as a compensation mechanism for eventual energy not served to their charging tasks.An application of the AC SOPF is described where a distribution system operator(DSO)requires flexibility to each charging pool in a day-ahead time frame,minimizing the cost for flexibility while guaranteeing technical limits.Flexibility areas are defined for each charging pool and calculated as a function of a risk parameter involving the uncertainty of the solution.Results show that all players can benefit from this approach,i.e.,the DSO obtains a riskaware solution,while charging pools/tasks perceive a reduction in the total energy payment due to flexibility services.