Production scheduling is an optimizing problem that can contribute strongly to the competitive capacity of companies producing goods and services. A way to promote the survival and the sustainability of the organizations in this upcoming era of Industry 4.0 (I4.0) is the efficient use of the resources. A complete failure to stage tasks properly can easily lead to a waste of time and resources, which could result in a low level of productivity and high monetary losses. In view of the above, it is essential to analyse and continuously develop new models of production scheduling. This paper intends to present an I4.0 oriented decision support tool to the dynamic scheduling. After a fist solution has been generated, the developed prototype has the ability to create new solutions as tasks leave the system and new ones arrive, in order to minimize a certain measure of performance. Using a single machine environment, the proposed prototype was validated in an in-depth computational study through several instances of dynamic problems with stochastic characteristics. Moreover, a more robust analysis was done, which demonstrated that there is statistical evidence that the proposed prototype performance is better than single method of scheduling and proved the effectiveness of the prototype.
While financial statements are the primary source of information about a firm, they tend to be under earnings management practices, namely to avoid paying tax. Therefore, we aim to examine whether taxes still affect earning persistence in an era of prevalent digital information. For that purpose, we use book–tax differences considering the deductible temporary differences and the taxable temporary differences. In addition, we analyze which of the two earnings components are more affected by taxes, specifically cash flow or accruals. We estimate econometric regressions using panel data to test our hypotheses. Through a sample of 421 small- and medium-sized (SME) Portuguese firms, between 2016 and 2020, we found empirical evidence that earning persistence tends to be lower when deductible temporary differences increase, while taxable temporary differences produce no statically significant effect. Furthermore, our results suggest that cash flow component increases more earning persistence than accruals. Therefore, deductible temporary difference may be an indicator of earnings management activities in these firms. These results are relevant, given the potential negative consequences of earnings management for the efficient decision making of stakeholders and even more because SMEs represent a substantial number of firms in European countries, particularly in Portugal.
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