High-level Services Research Articles

Українські біженці в Італії: діяльність та допомога Карітасу і асоціації «MIST-IL PONTE».

The relevance of the article is due to the need to create comfortable conditions for Ukrainian refugees in their places of temporary residence in Italy. Since the full-scale invasion of the territory of Ukraine by Russian troops, during February-July 2022, 288 refugees arrived in the city of Gubbio, region of Umbria, most of them women aged 30-45 and minor children. The article reveals the role of the cohesion of the local population, the Ukrainian diaspora, the consolidation of the efforts of state bodies and the informal sector. The purpose of the article is to determine the socio-demographic characteristics of Ukrainian refugees who turn to Caritas and the association “MIST-IL PONTE” in Gubbio for help. In the course of the research, general scientific methods were used: face-to-face survey, analysis, synthesis, generalization. The novelty is the opinion of Ukrainian refugees about the activities of Caritas in cooperation with the association “MIST-IL PONTE” determined for the first time, on the basis of a developed questionnaire. The significance of the Italian government’s support for Ukraine and its refugees has been revealed, in particular on the issues of providing Ukrainian refugees with the temporary protected status, a high level of necessary social, educational and medical services. The results of the survey of Ukrainian refugees, which were taken into account by Caritas and the association “MIST-IL PONTE” in their further work, were analyzed. Minor problems encountered by Ukrainian refugees during their stay in Italy and their causes are identified. The priority of creating comfortable living conditions, receiving social, including educational, services is substantiated, since a significant part of refugees are minors of preschool and school age. Focused attention on the fact that the development and implementation of various thematic activities by the “MIST-IL PONTE” association with the participation of Ukrainian refugees, especially children, contributes to the recovery of their psychological state, rapid adaptation to society, learning the Italian language, culture, customs and traditions of the local population and indicates the solidarity of the Italian people in supporting Ukraine in the fight against the Russian aggressor. The reasons why refugees intend to stay in Italy have been established. Some of them plan to return in a couple of months, and others - after the end of the war in Ukraine. In general, most Ukrainians have already returned. The variety of services received, the constant assistance of Caritas and the professionalism of its volunteers are highly rated by Ukrainian refugees. Caritas in Gubbio operates in 8 parishes, where it has its branches. Thanks to the functioning of the national web-platform, a single registration database has been created, which contains general information about persons, their status and needs. This specificity of activity ensures the provision of high-quality and quick assistance to everyone who is registered.

North Carolina, UNC partner on MH hospital for young people

The N.C. Department of Health and Human Services is partnering with UNC Health to open a 54‐bed hospital for children and teens experiencing mental health crises, WUNC 91.5, North Carolina Public Radio, reported Dec. 13. Across the state's hospitals, an average of more than 250 people wait for behavioral health services in emergency departments every day. That includes more than 50 children and adolescents, according to state data. The average waiting time to get out of the ER is 57 hours. “A busy emergency room is no place for anyone, let alone a child or adolescent who is having a behavioral health crisis,” said Dr. Wesley Burks, CEO of UNC Health. Leading research shows that community‐based care is generally better, but the state says it needs these high level services as well. It can take up to three months for a patient to be seen in an outpatient setting, a time lag that may worsen a mental health crisis. “If you were to walk through the psych emergency department at UNC or anywhere else, you would see massive suffering and families literally living in the emergency department,” said Dr. Samantha Meltzer‐Brody, chair of the UNC department of psychiatry. “This is a very critical step forward.” North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services secretary Kody Kinsley said the state is investing in more community‐based care. “But we also have kids today sitting in emergency departments and other places that have nowhere to go, where more at‐home services and more prevention services are not going to make a difference for them today,” he said. “We have got to address the crisis at hand, and we also are committed to investing in resources in the community.” The hospital will be developed at the R.J. Blackley Alcohol and Drug Abuse Treatment Center in Butner. That facility is one of three state operated North Carolina Alcohol and Drug Abuse Treatment Centers specifically designed to provide medically‐monitored detoxification/crisis stabilization. Kinsley says there's enough capacity throughout the system that these treatment and stabilization and services will still be provided to those in need.

Measurement of job satisfaction among healthcare workers during the COVID‑19 pandemic: A cross‑sectional study.

Job satisfaction is one of the most frequently studied subjects for numerous researchers, aiming to investigate the behavior of employees in the workplace. Moreover, it is an important predictor of well-being in the workplace, having a direct association with the productivity of employees and the quality of services provided by each organization. In the field of health, the high level of job satisfaction of healthcare workers translates into a high level of patient care. Therefore, during the period of the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic, efforts to evaluate the level of job satisfaction of healthcare workers represents a cornerstone in the effort to maintain high-level health services. The aim of the present study was to evaluate job satisfaction among healthcare workers in a COVID-19 emergency department during the pandemic and its potential association with the demographic characteristics of the participants. For the present cross-sectional study, which included 89 frontline healthcare workers, the 36-item Job Satisfaction Survey questionnaire was used. The findings concluded that the majority of the participants were not satisfied with their work (120±25.58). Among the nine job satisfaction factors examined, only the co-worker factor received a high job satisfaction score in the entire sample (16.08±4.14). By contrast, the other motivating factors were classified as unsatisfactory, namely pay (10.10±4.63), promotion (11.22±4.38), fringe benefits (10.63±4.09), contingent rewards (11.39±4.13) and communications (14.15±4.21). The control of the association between the socio-demographic data of the participants and the motivating factors of job satisfaction revealed that the age group of 45-55 years and the paramedical staff were more satisfied with the communication factor than the other categories of colleagues. In addition, it appears that the average value of satisfaction with the pay factor was significantly lower in the participating physicians (mean=8.59, P<0.05) compared to the other employee categories. On the whole, the present study demonstrates that the measurement and evaluation of job satisfaction in the workplace of a hospital environment is a cornerstone in the efforts to create a healthy and safe work environment for healthcare staff during the period of the COVID-19 pandemic. Ensuring a high level of job satisfaction for healthcare workers will provide a high level of services to health service users.

Grantseeking, Technology Renovation, and Creative Solutions to Support Library Access and Online Teaching and Learning During the Global COVID-19 Outbreak

The sudden global epidemiological outbreak in early spring 2020 challenged the academic libraries’ Access and Resource Sharing (ARS) department and prevented staff from providing the types of essential services that its users expect and require. With the full closure of campus and all courses moving online within a week, ARS staff were put on the front lines of finding ways to continue providing patrons with access to the library’s physical collections while library buildings were closed. This paper details how the ARS community and a large research university library’s ARS department responded and adapted to these rapid changes, acted creatively, and reinvented services through collaboration, creative solutions, grantseeking, and technology renovation. ARS staff continued to test a scan-beside-the-stacks methodology through a grant-funded project to create an Interlibrary Loan (ILL) mobile cart. This mobile cart allowed for a single employee to handle all items to complete the digital conversion of print materials and reduced the risk of coronavirus transfer between library staff members during the COVID-19 pandemic. An on-demand book digitization program in collaboration with multiple departments opened up access to resources to effectively fulfill patrons’ needs. Through these and other adaptations, ARS staff retained their professional commitment to provide materials and a high level of services to their users.

The POSEIDON Ocean Observing System: Technological Development and Challenges

Advanced marine observation infrastructures are the most significant scientific tool for the study of marine ecosystem trends and shifts. Ocean monitoring technologies, though highly demanding and expensive, are essential for the monitoring and long-term study of oceanic systems. The POSEIDON system for monitoring and forecasting the marine environment is an augmented research infrastructure, unique in the Eastern Mediterranean basin, contributing to the European Ocean Observing System implementation, focusing—among others—on biogeochemical observations and deep-sea ecosystem and geological processes. The technological evolution of the POSEIDON system through a science-coupled strategy supported by engineers and scientists, resulted in a state-of-the-art ocean observing system. There has been a continuous expansion of the infrastructure with new scientific platforms and supporting facilities. Innovative sensing technologies were introduced in the operational data acquisition and new methodologies and tools were developed to improve the system operations and efficiency. As a part of the scientific community of ocean observatories, POSEIDON contributes actively to the improving of the ocean observing. International access to engineering and field demonstrating services, data products and technology testing facilities has been offered to scientists and industry partners. POSEIDON is a widely recognizable international technology testing/demonstrating node specializing in marine technology providing high-level services.

A Reinforcement Learning Method for Multiasset Roadway Improvement Scheduling Considering Traffic Impacts

Maintaining roadway pavements and bridge decks is key to providing high levels of service for road users. However, improvement actions incur downtime. These actions are typically scheduled by asset class, yet implemented on any asset type, they have network-wide impacts on traffic performance. This paper presents a bilevel program wherein the upper level involves a Markov decision process (MDP) through which potential roadway improvement actions across asset classes are prioritized and scheduled. The MDP approach considers uncertainty in component deterioration effects, while incorporating the benefits of implemented improvement actions. The upper level takes as input traffic flow estimates obtained from a lower-level user equilibrium traffic formulation that recognizes changes in capacities determined by decisions taken in the upper level. Because an exact solution of this bilevel, stochastic, dynamic program is formidable, a deep reinforcement learning (DRL) method is developed. The model and solution methodology were tested on a hypothetical problem from the literature. The importance of obtaining optimal activity plans that account for downtime effects, traffic congestion impacts, uncertainty in deterioration processes, and multiasset classes is demonstrated.

Queue Analysis at SPBU Km. 38 And The Impact on Jalan Soekarno Hatta Km. 38

SPBU KM. 38 is a gas station that distributes subsidized fuel, one of which is diesel. The scarcity and limited availability of fuel, especially diesel fuel, causes many heavy vehicles to queue and cause the traffic loading. This loading has an impact on the performance of the road network around the location, that is Jl. Soekarno Hatta KM. 38. The traffic load due to the diesel queue has a direct impact on the performance of the road network around the location. This study aims to evaluate the service performance of the queuing system and facilities for refueling diesel fuel at SPBU KM. 38 and Knowing the performance of the Jl. Soekarno Hatta KM. 38 based on the MKJI 1997, and the effect of queues for SPBU KM. 38 on road performance. This study uses the Quantitative Research method. Where Quantitative Research has a detailed and measurable characteristic. Based on the results of the study, the highest average time spent waiting in the queue to be served was 0.167 hours≈10.02 minutes. This shows that the facility for refueling diesel fuel is not optimal because the standard time for refueling diesel fuel is 2.5 minutes. The value of the road capacity that has narrowed is 3,072 smp/hour, and the normal road capacity is 3,516 smp/hour. The highest level of service on roads with narrowing occurs on Sundays with service level is D, while on normal roads the highest service levels occur on Mondays and Sundays with service level is C. The queue that occurs causes an increase in the level of service. Therefor it can be concluded that the queue affects the level of service at the research location.

Dynamical multi-parameter sizing of DDMRP buffers in finite capacity flow-shops

The DDMRP (Demand Driven Material Requirements Planning) methodology uses buffer stocks to (i) maintain a high level of service, (ii) stop the spread of uncertainty and (iii) adapt to market changes. According to theory, the size of these buffer stocks should be defined regularly. This sizing involves several parameters and policies to update them, but very little information is available on this subject. We aim to help practitioners choose sizing policies, while maximizing the performance of a given workshop. We have developed an experimental design to compare many combinations of flow-shops and bottleneck constraints, taken from industrial use-cases, and using discrete event simulation. The results show that (i) different degrees of dynamism are needed depending on the performance metric chosen by practitioners, (ii) completely dynamic control does not systematically lead to better performance, and (iii) contrary to what the existing literature on DDMRP suggests, varying buffer sizes may be less effective than fixed ones for an important part of use-cases.

Flexible Scheduling Model of Bus Services between Venues of the Beijing Winter Olympic Games

Traditional buses travel on fixed routes and areas, which cannot satisfy the flexible demands of athletes in the context of COVID-19 and the closed-loop traffic management policy during the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympic Games (BWOG). This study predicts the travel demands based on the characteristics of athletes’ daily travel demands and then presents a flexible bus service scheduling model for cross-region scheduling among Beijing, Yanqing, and Zhangjiakou to provide high-level service. The flexible bus service is point-to-point and avoids unnecessary contact, which reduces the risk of spreading COVID-19 and ensures athletes’ safety. In this study, the flexible bus scheduling model is established to optimize scheduling schemes, whose object is to minimize the cost of the system based on some realistic constraints. These constraints consider not only the preferred time windows of athletes’ demand but also the vehicle’s capacity, depot, minimum load factor, total demands, etc. In addition, a genetic-simulated annealing hybrid algorithm (GSAHA) is designed to solve the model based on the characteristics of the genetic algorithm (GA) and simulated annealing. To assess the feasibility and efficiency of the model and algorithm, a case study is conducted in the Beijing-Yanqing area. Furthermore, the travel time of the flexible bus is compared to that of the traditional bus, according to the results of the case study. Moreover, the sensitivity of the model and algorithm are analyzed. The experimental results show that the proposed model and algorithm can dispatch buses with superior flexibility and high-level services during the BWOG.

Dynamic Cooperation of the O2O Supply Chain Based on Time Delays and Bidirectional Free-Riding

Advertising and service investment can enhance brand goodwill to increase the sales of branded goods. However, the impact of advertising and services on brand goodwill is not immediate but delayed. At the same time, due to the different service characteristics provided by various channels, the phenomenon of bidirectional free-riding occurs. Therefore, this paper studies the dynamic cooperation between service and advertising in the O2O (online to offline) supply chain dominated by brand owners and explores the impacts of advertising, service delay and service free-riding among channels on the dynamic cooperation decisions of the O2O supply chain. A differential game model between brands and retailers is constructed by incorporating the delay effect and the bidirectional free-riding phenomenon. The optimal advertising and service strategies and performance problems of O2O supply chain enterprises under a centralized decision, brand cost-sharing decision and bilateral cost-sharing decision are compared and analyzed. The influence of delay time, showrooming and webrooming effects on the profit of each firm is investigated by example. The results show that the service strategy, advertising strategy and brand goodwill of the O2O supply chain members are optimal under a centralized decision. Still, the supply chain profit is not necessarily optimal under the delay time, showrooming and webrooming effect coefficients. Bilateral cost-sharing contracts can achieve Pareto improvement of supply chain performance. Appropriate setting of a bilateral cost-sharing ratio can adjust the adverse effects of delay and bidirectional free-riding. The long-term strategies to deal with the delay and bidirectional free-riding phenomena are as follows: the bilateral cost-sharing contract can improve corporate profits. Setting the wholesale price, online direct-selling price and service-sharing ratio by brand owners can effectively promote retailers’ investment in service, achieving a win-win situation. Retailers maintain high pricing and service levels to enhance the brand premium ability of physical stores and achieve long-term development.

Towards a responsive supply chain based on the industry 5.0 dimensions: A novel decision-making method

Recently, managers and researchers have introduced the concept of Industry 5.0 that tried to improve Industry 4.0 by adding some crucial principles such as sustainability, resiliency, and human-centricity. Due to the importance of this concept, the present work develops a decision-making framework to investigate a responsive SC considering the Industry 5.0 dimensions named responsive Supply Chain 5.0 for healthcare systems. To do this, at the outset, the main related indicators and strategies are identified according to the experts and literature. Then, a new version of the best-worst method named stochastic best-worst method is developed to compute the indicators’ weights. Afterwards, by employing the Fuzzy Vlse Kriterijumsk Optimizacija Kompromisno Resenje method, the feasible alternatives are ranked. The outputs indicate that responsiveness, sustainability, resilience, and human-centricity respectively are the most important aspects. On the other side, the high service level, cost reduction, recovery, and safety are the most important criteria in their corresponding aspects. Moreover, the achieved results show that using advanced technologies and collaboration and information sharing are the best alternatives. Also, to show the capability and advantages of the proposed method, we compare this method with the traditional methods (e.g., the analytical hierarchy process and the traditional best-worst method). In terms of the theoretical implications, this work has introduced the responsive supply chain 5.0 and developed a novel method. On the other hand, in terms of the managerial implications, the present work can give a comprehensive perspective to healthcare managers for understanding the concept of Industry 5.0 in the SC problem to improve the responsiveness of their businesses.

A nexus approach to infrastructure resilience planning under uncertainty

Natural disasters pose serious threats to Critical Infrastructure (CI) systems like power and drinking water, sometimes disrupting service for days, weeks, or months. Decision makers can mitigate this risk by hardening CI systems through actions like burying power lines and installing backup generation for water pumping. However, the inherent uncertainty in natural disasters coupled with the high costs of hardening activities make disaster planning a challenging task. We develop a disaster planning framework that recommends asset-specific hardening projects across interdependent power and water networks facing the uncertainty of natural disasters. We demonstrate the utility of our model by applying it to Guayama, Puerto Rico, focusing on the risk posed by hurricanes. Our results show that our proposed optimization approach identifies hardening decisions that maintain a high level of service post-disaster. The results also emphasize power system hardening due to the dependency of the water system on power for water treatment and a higher vulnerability of the power network to hurricane damage. Finally, choosing optimal hardening decisions by hedging with respect to all potential hurricane scenarios and their probabilities produces results that perform better on extreme events and are less variable compared to optimizing for only the average hurricane scenario.

GOSH: Task Scheduling Using Deep Surrogate Models in Fog Computing Environments

Recently, intelligent scheduling approaches using surrogate models have been proposed to efficiently allocate volatile tasks in heterogeneous fog environments. Advances like deterministic surrogate models, deep neural networks (DNN) and gradient-based optimization allow low energy consumption and response times to be reached. However, deterministic surrogate models, which estimate objective values for optimization, do not consider the uncertainties in the distribution of the Quality of Service (QoS) objective function that can lead to high Service Level Agreement (SLA) violation rates. Moreover, the brittle nature of DNN training and the limited exploration with low agility in gradient-based optimization prevent such models from reaching minimal energy or response times. To overcome these difficulties, we present a novel scheduler that we call GOSH for Gradient Based Optimization using Second Order derivatives and Heteroscedastic Deep Surrogate Models. GOSH uses a second-order gradient based optimization approach to obtain better QoS and reduce the number of iterations to converge to a scheduling decision, subsequently lowering the scheduling time. Instead of a vanilla DNN, GOSH uses a Natural Parameter Network (NPN) to approximate objective scores. Further, a Lower Confidence Bound (LCB) optimization approach allows GOSH to find an optimal trade-off between greedy minimization of the mean latency and uncertainty reduction by employing error-based exploration. Thus, GOSH and its co-simulation based extension GOSH*, can adapt quickly and reach better objective scores than baseline methods. We show that GOSH* reaches better objective scores than GOSH, but it is suitable only for high resource availability settings, whereas GOSH is apt for limited resource settings. Real system experiments for both GOSH and GOSH* show significant improvements against the state-of-the-art in terms of energy consumption, response time and SLA violations by up to 18, 27 and 82 percent, respectively.

Achieving High Individual Service Levels Without Safety Stock? Optimal Rationing Policy of Pooled Resources

In “Achieving High Individual Service-Levels without Safety Stock? Optimal Rationing Policy of Pooled Resources,” Jiang, Wang, and Zhang analyze a resource rationing problem with service level constraints. They present a general framework to study the two-stage problem when customers require individual and possibly different service levels: (1) the capacity level of pooled resources in anticipation of random demand of multiple customers and (2) how the capacity should be allocated to fulfill customer demands after demand realization. The modeling framework generalizes and unifies many existing models in the literature and includes second-stage allocation costs. The authors propose a simple randomized rationing policy for any fixed feasible capacity level and show the optimality of this policy for very general service level constraints, including type I and type II constraints and beyond. They also discuss the optimality of index policies.

SISTEM INFORMASI INVENTORY OBAT BERBASIS WEB DENGAN FRAMEWORK CODEIGNITER DI APOTEK PUSPITA FARMA SEMARANG

Technological developments within a company are needed in the execution and evaluation of all existing jobs so that the work becomes fast, precise, and accurate. Puspita Farma Pharmacy is one of the community service businesses engaged in the sale of medicines. The high level of service to the community causes errors in processing and making reports which are still done manually.&#x0D; The process of recording goods report data using two kinds of record books, namely a daily goods order book, a daily goods sales recap book, and a record book for each purchase of goods. The use of this manual system found many obstacles that caused the work process to be ineffective and efficient, including errors in recording incoming and outgoing drug data, resulting in empty or excessive drug supplies and the discovery of expired drugs.&#x0D; As a solution to the problems currently experienced by the Puspita Farma Pharmacy, it is necessary to create a drug inventory information system at the Puspita Farma Pharmacy. This information system was created using the PHP programming language, Mysql for databases and the Codeigniter framework for data processing.

Impacts of Internet Use on Chinese Patients' Trust-Related Primary Healthcare Utilization.

Background: The internet has greatly improved the availability of medical knowledge and may be an important avenue to improve patients’ trust in physicians and promote primary healthcare seeking by reducing information asymmetry. However, very few studies have addressed the interactive impacts of both patients’ internet use and trust on primary healthcare-seeking decisions. Objective: To explore the impact of internet use on the relationship between patients’ trust in physicians and primary healthcare seeking among Chinese adults 18 years of age and older to understand the varieties of effects in different cities. Methods: Generalized linear mixed models were applied to investigate the interactive impacts of internet use and patients’ trust in physicians on primary healthcare seeking using pooled data from the China Family Panel Study of 2014 to 2018. We also compared these effects based on different levels of urbanization, ages, and PHC services. Results: Overall, a higher degree of patients’ trust (p < 0.001) was able to directly predict better primary healthcare seeking, and internet use significantly increased the positive effect of patients’ trust on primary healthcare seeking (p < 0.001). However, the marginal effect analysis showed that this effect was related to the level of patients’ trust and that internet use could reduce the positive effect of patients’ trust on primary healthcare seeking when the individual had a low level of trust (≤ 3 units). Further, the heterogeneity analysis indicated that the benefits from internet use were higher in cities with high urbanization, high aging, and high PHC service levels compared to cities with low levels of these factors. Conclusions: The internet use may enhance patients’ trust-related PHC utilization. However, this impact is effective only if patients’ benchmark trust remains at a relatively high level. Comparatively, the role of internet use is more effective in areas with high urbanization, high aging and high PHC level. Thus, with increasing accessibility to the internet, the internet should be regulated to disseminate correct healthcare information. Moreover, in-depth integration of the internet and PHC should be promoted to provide excellent opportunities for patient participation, and different strategies should be set according to each city’s characteristics.

Three-Party Evolutionary Game of Shared Manufacturing under the Leadership of Core Manufacturing Company

Shared manufacturing provides a new development direction for the transformation and upgrading of the manufacturing industry. This paper took a manufacturing company that masters core technology and has strong knowledge creation and spillover capabilities as the core manufacturing company. The core manufacturing company led two resource-complementary manufacturing companies in participating in shared manufacturing, and the additional benefits of each company participating in shared manufacturing were realized. Due to the bounded rational behavior of the participating companies and the difficulty in maximizing each’s own interests, this paper used the evolutionary game method and MATLAB to analyze the influencing factors of shared manufacturing among manufacturing companies. The goal of this study is to understand the decision-making behavior of manufacturing companies in a shared manufacturing context. The research results show that: The initial willingness to share, default losses, and excess income realized by the core manufacturing company as a result of delivering high service levels all contributed to the companies’ willingness to engage in shared production. The companies’ ability to participate in shared manufacturing was negatively impacted by cost-to-income ratio and speculative income. The allocation of additional income had a significant influence on the non-core enterprises’ decision-making: when the distribution ratio of additional income from non-core companies was low, non-core companies would be less willing to share. Although the additional income distribution ratio of core companies were high at the time, the service level of core companies would also decrease due to the reduction of non-core companies’ willingness to share.

Development of Eurasian economic integration in the field of auditing: The current stage

Subject. This article deals with the issues of integration in the field of audit activities of the EAEU Member States to improve the investment climate and increase the confidence of potential investors in the accounting statements and the results of the activities of enterprises and organizations of the country of possible investment. Objectives. The article aims to analyze the state of organization and regulation of audit activities and assess the legal rules of the introduced common market of audit services in the EAEU Member States, as well as possible areas and problems of their implementation. Methods. For the study, I used the methods of comprehensive, critical, logical, and statistical analyses. Results. The article identifies common approaches and differences in the organization, regulation and standardization of audit activities in the EAEU Member States and assesses the starting conditions before the opening of the common market for audit services on the basis of the Agreement on the Implementation of Audit Activities within the Framework of the Eurasian Economic Union, starting from 2022. The article also draws conclusions about the ways and problems of the possible functioning of the common market of audit services within the framework of the EAEU. Conclusions. The current stage of development of integration in the field of audit within the framework of the EAEU is a very important step towards the free movement of capital between the countries of this Union. The first international legal document has appeared that defines the basic parameters for building such integration. The overall integration base in the field of audit is formed on the basis of the Russian experience and regulations, which will help bring audit activities in other EAEU Member States to a general high level of audit services, and consequently, to a higher quality, transparency and reliability of accounting statements of enterprises and organizations.

Limiting the impact of supply chain disruptions in the face of distributional uncertainty in demand

Service‐level requirements play a crucial role in eliminating stock‐outs in a production pipeline. However, delivering a specific service level can become an unattainable goal given the various uncertainties influencing both the production pipeline and customer demand and causing the manufacturer to adapt the initial strategy in response to disruptions. Such deviations from optimality frequently result in unexpected (and potentially very high) costs and are complex to manage. On the one hand, the manufacturer can use a robust or distributionally robust approach to prepare for the worst‐case disruption, ensuring that the realized cost will be lower than the estimated cost with high probability. On the other hand, this solution may lead to overly conservative production schedules. In this article, we take a different approach and develop a bilevel stochastic optimization model with chance constraints, which allows us to make the production more predictable in the event of disruptions by driving costs and optimal schedules closer to the benchmark for each scenario considered. We introduce doubly probabilistic service‐level requirements to account for two interdependent layers of uncertainty, that is, production disruptions and distributional uncertainties in customer demand. This allows us to make high‐quality production decisions with only a limited understanding of the demand pattern. Approximating the problem for a numerical solution, we guarantee tight optimality gaps for high service levels and propose an efficient solution scheme, combining robust scenario reduction with a customized Benders decomposition procedure. In the managerial section, we use the Omega× Swatch MoonSwatches example to demonstrate that a desirable doubly probabilistic service level can be attained for disruptions with a drop in demand. In the case of disruptions followed by a peak in demand, one can tighten the optimality gaps if the service level is reduced.

Hedonism and Repurchase: Determining Value for Money and Repurchase Intentions in Shopping Malls

This research determines, how the customers intend on buying and how their perceptions of currency values are affecting their shopping experiences in Pakistan To do so, a questionnaire with a sample size of 360 respondents. To achieve the research objectives, a quantitative investigation was conducted. Information was gathered from malls and a few supermarkets in Multan. According to this study, a buyer’s repurchase represents found a key indicator of their status, amusement, idea, and level of satisfaction. The association between the study and the social value of the currency was found negative. However, no correlation was found between exploration and intention of purchase in the proposed study area. Furthermore, the outcome of this study showed that the value of the currency was positively influenced by repurchase objectives. This research presented novel perceptions on the nature of hedonism, repurchase intention, and the emergence of more engaging shopping strategies encouraging consumers to enjoy their goods in depth. Interventions of the study revealed an entertaining shopping mechanism with more valuable and happy footsteps. By providing a large variety of fresh things i.e., a greater selection of products, friendly sales employees, interesting shopping areas, regular access to shopping information, and a high level of service, it is recommended to boost the recreational and practical elements of shopping. The analysis showed the number of customers could steadily rise in future who repurchase the product.