In this paper, we consider green product design in a supply chain consisting of one manufacturer and two retailers, where retailer 1 aims at monetary profit maximization, and retailer 2 has fairness concern. We consider two kinds of green products: a marginal-intensive green product (MIGP) and a development-intensive green product (DIGP). For the former, the green investment cost depends on the green level and the production quantity; while for the latter, the green investment cost depends on the green level solely. In each case, we investigate the impact of the retailer's fairness concern by comparing the optimal solutions and supply chain performance with those in the basic models in which all the supply chain members aim at profit maximization. We find that retailer 2 will set a higher retailing price and earn a smaller market share. Such inferiority increases as retailer 2's inequity aversion increases or as the substitutability degree of the products offered by the two retailers increases. We also find that retailer 2's fairness concern will always harm the manufacturer. If an equity outcome is achieved, the supply chain may achieve a better performance; however, if an inequity outcome is attained, the supply chain always performs worse.

I n response to highly unpredictable sudden-onset natural disasters, efficient and effective management of disaster relief inventory (DRI) is essential. This study proposes a simple framework based on three fundamental DRI-related decision themes, which are (1) who respond to DRI calling, (2) where to locate DRI, and (3) how to control DRI, aiming at identifying the research gaps between the realities' calling and the literature's consideration with a focus on DRI management. We review relevant literature for each decision theme, summarize the insights provided by the literature, assess the practical needs and procedures and present our detailed perspectives on the research gaps in practice. The chief implication from our observations and arguments is that scaling up a DRI response for catastrophic disasters and events which prepares the whole community for worst-case scenarios has been highlighted in academics and practice but lack operational research in the area of relevant decision-making tactics. Existing research concerning the DRI management issues of various coordination forms of disaster responders, the location-allocation decision-making determinants with DRI prepositioning and the DRI control policy in the face of various disaster uncertainties is still far from being fully understood, appropriately characterized and profoundly discussed. We recommend the potential future research areas with the implications of this review in the last conclusion section, wishing to provide researchers a better understanding of the needs in the real-world.

With the substantial upsurge of container traffic, the container leasing company thrives on the financial benefits and operational flexibility of leasing containers requested by shippers. In practice, container lease pricing problem is different from the consumer product pricing in consideration of the fair value of container, limited customer types and monopolistic supply market. In view of the durability of container and the diversified lease time and quantity, the pricing is a challenging task for the leasing company. This paper examines the monopolist's nonlinear pricing problems in static and dynamic environments. In particular, the leasing company designs and commits a menu of price and hire quantity/time pairs to maximize the expected profit and in turn customers choose hire quantities/time to maximize their surpluses according to their hire preferences. In a static environment, closed-form solutions are obtained for different groups of customers with multiple types subject to capacity constraint. In a dynamic environment, we address two customer types and derive closed-form solutions for the problem of customers with hire time preference. Further, we show that the effect of the capacity constraint increases with time of the planning horizon when customers have the same hire time preference; while in the case with different hire time preferences, the capacity constraint has opposite effects on the low and high type customers. Last, the case of customers with hire quantity preference is discussed. We focus on the lease with alternative given sets of hire time and use dynamic programming to derive the numerical optimal hire time sequence.

In this paper, we consider a container leasing firm that has elementary and premium containers, which are downward substitutable and for use by elementary contract customers (ECCs), premium contract customers (PCCs), as well as walk-in customers (WICs). ECCs can be satisfied by elementary containers or premium ones at discounted prices while PCCs only accept premium containers. WICs can be satisfied by any type of container at different prices. The objective is to maximise the expected total rental revenue by managing its limited capacity. We formulate this problem as a discrete-time Markov Decision Process and show the submodularity and concavity of the value function. Based on this, we show that the optimal policy can be characterised by a series of rationing thresholds, a series of substitution thresholds and a priority threshold, all of which depend on the system states. We further give conditions under which the optimal policy can be simplified. Numerical experiments are conducted to show the impact of the substitution of two items on the revenue, to compare the performance of the optimal policy with those of the commonly used policies and to investigate the influence of arrival rates on the optimal policy. Last, we extend the basic model to consider different rental durations, ECCs’ acceptance behaviour and endogenous prices for WICs. This paper was accepted by Jayashankar Swaminathan, operations management.

In this work, three-dimensional flower-like and petal-like copper hydroxyphosphate Cu(OH)(PO) (CHP) based on the self-assembly of numerous nanosheets has been successfully fabricated on a copper foil by a mild one-pot wet-chemical method without ligand assistance. This research contributes to the development of the method to change the morphology of the CHP active material by varying the degree of substrate oxidation. The two different CHP architectures were used to photocatalytically degrade rhodamine 6G (Rh 6G) under solar light, which can absorb wide-range light wavelength from the UV to the near-infrared region. They all exhibit high photocatalytic activity and good durability, which are potential candidates for high performance and recyclable wide wavelength photocatalysis.

This paper addresses the stochastic lot-sizing problem with quantity discounts. In particular, we examine the uncapacitated finite-period economic lotsizing problem in which the parameters in each period are random and discrete. When an order is placed, a fixed cost is incurred and an all-unit quantity discount is awarded based on the quantity ordered. The lead time is zero and the order is delivered immediately. First we study the case with overstocks by which the excess inventory incurs a holding cost. The objective in this case is to minimize the expected total cost including ordering and holding costs. The stochastic dynamics is modeled with a scenario tree. We characterize properties of the optimal policy and propose a polynomial time algorithm with complexity O(n 3) for single discount level, where n is the number of nodes in the scenario tree. We extend the results to cases allowing stockout and multi-discount levels. Numerical experiments are conducted to evaluate the performance of the algorithm and to gain the management insights.

Linearity is one of the most important static indexes of hemispherical resonator gyro (HRG). Linearity directly affects the measurement error of the HRG in the full range, thus determining the effective range of the HRG. Through finite element analysis of the linearity of the HRG under force-rebalance mode, we can provide a theoretical basis for compensating the linearity by circuit or software, improving the linearity of the gyro combination and increasing the maximum effective range of the gyro combination.

In this paper, we investigate the leakage and diffusion characteristics of natural gas. As results show, when the natural gas leaks from the pipeline, it jet into the atmosphere in the form of positively buoyant jets. As a result, a hazardous area can appear at an altitude of 150m from the ground. Furthermore, the natural gas has a low concentration near the ground, this means the natural gas is less harmful to human body. In addition, the wind should be considered in the transport of leaked natural gas.