Particle Swarm Optimization and Pure Adaptive Search in Finish Goods’ Inventory Management

Abstract

Inventory management deals with a tradeoff between the benefits of keeping stocks of goods that allows fulfillment of the customer’s demand, and the cost of carrying inventory. Inventory control techniques are very important components and the most organizations can substantially reduce their costs associated with the flow of materials. This paper presents new inventory management model based on particle swarm optimization and pure adaptive search global optimization algorithm in production-inventory system. The proposed model is focusing on planned level of demand for finished goods, production and raw materials cost, production capacity as the norm, change of the production cost and inventory capital cost, all of which are typical factors in automobile manufacture industry. The model determines different factors such as the minimizing inventory quantity, minimizing inventory value, and minimizing production cost based on demand for production items. The model is tested with original real-world dataset obtained from the automotive company Lear from US and its factory in Novi Sad, Serbia.     

ITEA—interactive trajectories and events analysis: exploring sequences of spatio-temporal events in movement data

Widespread use of GPS and similar technologies makes it possible to collect extensive amounts of trajectory data. These data sets are essential for reasonable decision making in various application domains. Additional information, such as events taking place along a trajectory, makes data analysis challenging, due to data size and complexity. We present an integrated solution for interactive visual analysis and exploration of events along trajectories data. Our approach supports analysis of event sequences at three different levels of abstraction, namely spatial, temporal, and events themselves. Customized views as well as standard views are combined to form a coordinated multiple views system. In addition to trajectories and events, we include on-the-fly derived data in the analysis. We evaluate our integrated solution using the IEEE VAST 2015 Challenge data set. A successful detection and characterization of malicious activity indicate the usefulness and efficiency of the presented approach.     

Doing a Good Job—the Effect of Primary Task Quality on Well‐Being and Job Satisfaction

This paper investigates whether employees’ assessment of their primary task quality has a significant impact on their well‐being and job satisfaction, respectively. Furthermore, the paper hypothesizes that professional values and norms affect employees’ quality expectations on their work tasks and thus their assessment of primary task quality. The paper proposes a measure for primary task quality and uses it in the analyses of responses from 1,247 preschool teachers and teaching assistants in 94 public daycare centers in Denmark. The results indicate that an important factor for employees is their experience of quality in the job they perform. Moreover, quality expectations can differ between employees performing the same task due to, for example, difference in professional training. This leads us to propose a new research direction for job design theory that addresses employees’ assessment of the quality of their primary task job performance.     

Semantic integration of enterprise information systems using meta-metadata ontology

This paper proposes a non-domain-specific metadata ontology as a core component in a semantic model-based document management system (DMS), a potential contender towards the enterprise information systems of the next generation. What we developed is the core semantic component of an ontology-driven DMS, providing a robust semantic base for describing documents’ metadata. We also enabled semantic services such as automated semantic translation of metadata from one domain to another. The core semantic base consists of three semantic layers, each one serving a different view of documents’ metadata. The core semantic component’s base layer represents a non-domain-specific metadata ontology founded on ebRIM specification. The main purpose of this ontology is to serve as a meta-metadata ontology for other domain-specific metadata ontologies. The base semantic layer provides a generic metadata view. For the sake of enabling domain-specific views of documents’ metadata, we implemented two domain-specific metadata ontologies, semantically layered on top of ebRIM, serving domain-specific views of the metadata. In order to enable semantic translation of metadata from one domain to another, we established model-to-model mappings between these semantic layers by introducing SWRL rules. Having the semantic translation of metadata automated not only allows for effortless switching between different metadata views, but also opens the door for automating the process of documents long-term archiving. For the case study, we chose judicial domain as a promising ground for improving the efficiency of the judiciary by introducing the semantics in this field.     

Antioxidant and antilisterial activity of olive oil,cocoa and rosemary extract polyphenols

Antibacterial and antioxidant activity of polyphenols from olive oil, cocoa, and rosemary extract was tested. Antimicrobial activity against Listeria strains was assessed using broth dilution and time-kill curve methods. The 2,2-diphenyl-2-picrylhydracyl hydrate (DPPH) radical scavenging method, Folin–Ciocalteu method, and high performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) were used for phenolics identification and determination of antioxidants level. Antibacterial and antioxidant activity of main pure phenolic compounds, such as hydroxytyrosol in olive oil, epicatechin in cocoa and carnosic acid in rosemary was each compared with their extracts.     

The distribution of enterotoxin and enterotoxin-like genes in Staphylococcus aureus strains isolated from nasal carriers and food samples

Staphylococcus aureus strains were examined for the presence of 18 enterotoxin (se) and enterotoxin-like (sel) genes by PCR and four classic enterotoxins SEA to SED by reverse passive latex agglutination. We screened three groups of isolates: 53 recovered from food samples collected in years 2004-2005, 18--from food samples collected in the 1960s and 1970s and 30--from nasal carrier samples collected in the years 2000-2002. Eighty percent of all tested strains were se and sel positive, but the frequency of these genes was higher among nasal carrier strains (93%) than among food samples isolates (circa 76%). The enterotoxin genes cluster (egc) was the most prevalent among carrier strains (18/30-60%) and the least--among food strains isolated in the 1960s and 1970s (6/18 strains--33%). sea coding enterotoxin A, which was recognised as the major cause of staphylococcal food poisoning so far, was more often found among carrier strains than among the years 2004-2005 food strains (27% versus 11%), but it was the most frequent se/sel gene among food strains isolated in the 1960s and 1970s (10/18 strains). Moreover in our results certain se and sel genes coexisted, which was in accordance with current knowledge about movable genetic elements carrying those genes. The exception was for only one strain, which harboured the sole selr gene on a possibly new genetic element not yet described. As we found both types of egc, as well as seh (especially food samples strains) occurred alone in a majority of positive strains for each of those genes. The analysis of the results obtained by SET-RPLA method for the productivities of classical enterotoxins A-D and the results obtained by PCR for the presence of sea-sed genes revealed the correlation between each other. Only three of all sea-sed positive strains had silent genes--sed.     

Investigation of technological approaches for reduction of methanol formation in plum wines

Methanol is natural ingredient of alcoholic beverages and soft drinks; however, the products of its metabolic transformations (formaldehyde and formic acid) are toxic to humans. The aim of this research was to assess the application of different physico‐chemical treatments of pomace in order to find the most efficient method for reducing the methanol during fermentation with the least effect on the sensory properties of the wine. The following procedures were studied: addition of tannins in pomace, addition of phenolic acids, addition of d ‐galacturonic and pectic acid, use of bentonite and zeolite, heat treatment of pomace, thermosonication and treatment of pomace with microwaves. Fruit wine used in this study was produced from plums (Prunus domestica L.). Applied treatments showed variable efficiency in reduction of methanol formation in plum wine. It may be noted that the procedures that involved some form of thermal treatment were characterized by a significant decrease in the production of methanol (up to 60–70%) but mostly tended to have a negative impact on the sensory properties of the produced wines. However, exposure of pomace to microwaves for a short time, owing to the contribution of mechanisms of non‐thermal nature (kinetic and chemical), allowed for a significant reduction in methanol formation with a negligible impact on the sensory properties. The decrease in methanol formation during fermentation using tannins, pectic acid, bentonite and zeolite was poor, with only a reduction of up to 15%. Obtained results are significant to the fruit wine and spirit industry, considering the common problem related to an increased content of methanol in these beverages. Copyright © 2016 The Institute of Brewing & Distilling     

Chemical composition of currant seed extracts and their protective effect on human lymphocytes DNA

On the basis of LC/UV/MS analysis, 35 compounds from the extracts of seeds of black, red, and white currants (2 cultivars of each) were identified. Black currants cultivars contained protocatechuic acid and p-hydroxybenzoic acid, and traces of nitril containing phenolic acids. The presence of synapoyl glucoside was characteristic for cv. Malling Jewel. Sesquiterpenoid glycosides and carboxymethylindol glycosides were present mainly in white and red currant cultivars. Blackcurrant seeds contained higher amounts of flavonoids, especially rutin, isoquercetin, and taxifolin. The currant seed extracts were tested for in vitro protective effect on chromosome aberrations in peripheral human lymphocytes using cytochalasin-B blocked micronucleus (CBMN) assay. The frequency of MN was scored in binucleated cells, and the cultivars of black currants showed the best antioxidant potential. At a concentration of only 0.17 mg/mL, extract of the seed cv. Malling Jewel effected a decrease in the frequency of MN of 60% compared with control cell cultures. PRACTICAL APPLICATION: Our results provide evidence of protective effects of currant seed extracts and isolated pure compounds on cytogenetic damages in human lymphocytes. Thus, currant seed extracts could exert beneficial effects in quite a few diseases, for many of the biological actions have been attributed to their antioxidant properties.     

Nodes on ropes: a comprehensive data and control flow for steering ensemble simulations

Flood disasters are the most common natural risk and tremendous efforts are spent to improve their simulation and management. However, simulation-based investigation of actions that can be taken in case of flood emergencies is rarely done. This is in part due to the lack of a comprehensive framework which integrates and facilitates these efforts. In this paper, we tackle several problems which are related to steering a flood simulation. One issue is related to uncertainty. We need to account for uncertain knowledge about the environment, such as levee-breach locations. Furthermore, the steering process has to reveal how these uncertainties in the boundary conditions affect the confidence in the simulation outcome. Another important problem is that the simulation setup is often hidden in a black-box. We expose system internals and show that simulation steering can be comprehensible at the same time. This is important because the domain expert needs to be able to modify the simulation setup in order to include local knowledge and experience. In the proposed solution, users steer parameter studies through the World Lines interface to account for input uncertainties. The transport of steering information to the underlying data-flow components is handled by a novel meta-flow. The meta-flow is an extension to a standard data-flow network, comprising additional nodes and ropes to abstract parameter control. The meta-flow has a visual representation to inform the user about which control operations happen. Finally, we present the idea to use the data-flow diagram itself for visualizing steering information and simulation results. We discuss a case-study in collaboration with a domain expert who proposes different actions to protect a virtual city from imminent flooding. The key to choosing the best response strategy is the ability to compare different regions of the parameter space while retaining an understanding of what is happening inside the data-flow system.     

Adsorption–desorption noise in plasmonic chemical/biological sensors for multiple analyte environment

We investigated intrinsic noise in plasmonic sensors caused by adsorption and desorption of gaseous analytes on the sensor surface. We analyzed a general situation when there is a larger number of different analyte species. We applied our model to calculate various analyte mixtures, including some environmental pollutants, toxic and dangerous substances. The spectral density of mean square refractive index fluctuations follows a dependence similar to that of generation-recombination noise in photodetectors, flat at lower frequencies and sharply decreasing at higher. Some of the calculated noise levels are well within the detection range of conventional surface plasmon resonance sensors. An AD noise peak is observed in temperature dependence of mean square refractive index fluctuations, thus sensor operating temperature may be optimized to obtain larger signal to noise ratio. A significant property of AD noise is its rise with the decreasing plasmon sensor area, which means that it will be even more pronounced in modern nanoplasmonic devices. Our consideration is valid both for conventional surface plasmon resonance devices and for general nanoplasmonic devices.