Purpose
– The aim of this study is to investigate the competitiveness of the selected services in Turkey in comparison with the EU and the selected EU countries based on three comparative advantage indices.
Design/methodology/approach
– Three different revealed comparative advantage indices were utilised in a combined way. Import and export figures of six service sectors were taken into account for the period of 2000-2010. The selected services are: transportation, travel, construction, financial services and insurance, communications and IT services, and personal, cultural and recreational services. Consistency of the results was achieved through correlation analyses.
Findings
– Strong comparative advantages exist for Turkey in construction, tourism and transportation sectors. Although Turkish financial and insurance and communication and computer-information sectors appear to be weak compared to EU, there is a substantial potential for improvement.
Originality/value
– A detailed comparative investigation of services' competitiveness for Turkey was provided. The policy decision makers in Turkey and in Europe's selected countries can utilise the findings and recommendations of the study for projection of the investigated sectors.
There is a tough competition in the furniture sector like other sectors. Along with the varying product range, production system should also be renewed on a regular basis and the production costs should be kept under control. In this study, spring mattress manufacturing line of a furniture manufacturing company is analyzed. The company wants to increase its production output with new investments. The objective is to find the bottlenecks in production line in order to balance the semi-finished material flow. These bottlenecks are investigated and several different scenarios are tested to improve the current manufacturing system. The problem with a main theme based on the elimination of the bottleneck is solved using Goldratt and Cox’s theory of constraints with a simulation based heuristic method. Near optimal alternatives are determined by system models built in Arena 13.5 simulation software. Results show that approximately 46 % capacity enhancements with 2 buffer stocks have increased average production by 88.8 %.
Because the alternative process plans have significant contributions to the production efficiency of a manufacturing system, researchers have studied the integration of manufacturing functions, which can be divided into two groups, namely, integrated process planning and scheduling (IPPS) and scheduling with due date assignment (SWDDA). Although IPPS and SWDDA are well-known and solved problems in the literature, there are limited works on integration of process planning, scheduling, and due date assignment (IPPSDDA). In this study, due date assignment function was added to IPPS in a dynamic manufacturing environment. And the studied problem was introduced as dynamic integrated process planning, scheduling, and due date assignment (DIPPSDDA). The objective function of DIPPSDDA is to minimize earliness and tardiness (E/T) and determine due dates for each job. Furthermore, four different pure metaheuristic algorithms which are genetic algorithm (GA), tabu algorithm (TA), simulated annealing (SA), and their hybrid (combination) algorithms GA/SA and GA/TA have been developed to facilitate and optimize DIPPSDDA on the 8 different sized shop floors. The performance comparisons of the algorithms for each shop floor have been given to show the efficiency and effectiveness of the algorithms used. In conclusion, computational results show that the proposed combination algorithms are competitive, give better results than pure metaheuristics, and can effectively generate good solutions for DIPPSDDA problems.
Araştırmalar iş sağlığı ve güvenliğine (İSG) yapılan harcamaların maliyet olarak değil, aksine yatırım olarak düşünülmesi gerektiğini ortaya koymaktadır. İş kazaları ve meslek hastalıklarını önlemek amacıyla yapılan yatırımlar sayesinde firmaların kaza oranları ve iş kazası maliyetlerinde iyileşme sağlayarak rekabet avantajı sağlamaları mümkündür. Türkiye'de imalat sektöründe faaliyet gösteren firmalar üzerinde yapılan bu araştırma iki amaca yönelik yapılmıştır. Birincisi, yasal şartları sağlamak amacıyla yapılan İSG yatırım harcamalarına bağlı olarak kaza oranlarında ve iş kazası maliyetlerinde azalma olup olmadığı, ikincisi İSG'yi sağlamak üzere yapılan yatırım harcamaları için işletme bütçesine kaynak tahsis edilmesinin kaza oranları ve iş kazası maliyetlerinin iyileştirilmesinde bir avantaj teşkil edip etmediğidir. Veri toplama aracı olarak anket yöntemi kullanılmıştır. Türkiye'de 2017 yılı Şubat ve Ağustos döneminde, farklı büyüklükte ve NACE kodundaki 229 imalat firmasından veri toplanmıştır. Veriler tanımlayıcı ve çıkarımsal istatistik yöntemleri kullanılarak analiz edilmiştir. Katılımcı firmaların, İSG yasası ve mevzuatını tam sağlayacak kadar İSG yatırım harcaması yaptıkları, kaza oranlarında ve iş kazası maliyetlerinin her ikisinde de azalma sağladıkları bulunmuştur. İşletme bütçelerine İSG için kaynak tahsis eden firmaların istatistiki manada daha fazla İSG yatırım harcaması yaptıkları ve daha iyi kaza sıklık ve ağırlık oranları ve iş kazası maliyetlerine sahip oldukları bulunmuştur. Ölümcül / uzuv kayıplı iş kazası sayıları bağlamında İSG harcamaları için işletme bütçesine kaynak tahsis edilmesinin, istatistiki manada bir anlam ifade etmediği bulunmuştur. İş sağlığı ve güvenliğine ilişkin planlı ve programlı çalışmalar yapılmasının ve işletme bütçelerine İSG için kaynak tahsis edilmesinin kaza sıklık ve ağırlık oranları ve iş kazası maliyetlerinin iyileştirilmesinde avantaj sağlandığı ampirik olarak ortaya konulmuştur.
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