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Supply chain flexibility is crucial for firms to respond to uncertain circumstances caused by environmental factors, such as the diversity of customer demands, problems of product safety, and adjustments of industrial policies. To investigate the approach to enhance supply chain flexibility, the purpose of this paper is to propose that both internal and external information integration contribute to reactive and proactive supply chain flexibilities, which elicit high operational performance.

Using a sample of 84 food companies that have been listed three years in China and content analysis based on their annual reports, evidence was collected to test the hypotheses through hierarchical regressions.

The results reveal that external information integration results in both reactive and proactive flexibilities, which further improve operational performance. Internal information integration positively affects both reactive and proactive flexibilities, but its mediating role was not determined in the study.

The research provides insights into how supply chain flexibility mediates the effect of supply chain information integration on operational performance in the context of the Chinese food industry.

The purpose of this study is that on the basis of the competitive edge theory, source mechanism and evaluation approaches of industrial cluster competitiveness, combined with international trends in the automobile industry and the features of Chinese automobile industrial cluster development, an evaluation index system about cluster competitiveness of auto industry is built with comprehensive consideration of factors such as cluster development environment, external scale effect and internal competitiveness from the perspective of value chain of automobile industry.

An evaluation index system for automobile industrial cluster competitiveness was realized by integrating current strengths and future growth capacities with multidimensional, dynamic and comprehensive characteristics, which included 3 second-level, 10 third-level and 16 fourth-level indices. In the light of evaluation methods, a group intelligence optimization algorithm – (cuckoo search) – and traditional methods of complex decision-making system – analytic hierarchy process (AHP) – were combined to propose the cuckoo-AHP evaluation method. It was applied for the calculation and optimization of weight values in an automobile industrial cluster competitiveness evaluation index for the purpose of obtaining better scientific and more reliable results.

The research might further enrich the evaluation theory of automobile industrial cluster competitiveness and also can be useful for showing how traditional evaluation methods can be combined with intelligent algorithms to carry out better automobile industrial cluster competitiveness evaluations. In addition, studies of channels for kick-starting Chinese auto industrial cluster competitiveness are expected to provide references for how to enhance the cluster competitiveness of the Chinese automobile industry.

Changsha and Liuzhou, the Guangxi automobile industrial clusters as the two empirical analysis objects selected for this paper, are geographically adjacent to each other. The automobile industries of the two cities are local pillar industries with the strong support of the local government. Both clusters have their own advantages and weak points with different characteristics of cluster development, and they enjoy a representative significance amongst China’s numerous auto industrial clusters that are taking shape. Comparative analysis of both clusters serves as a good reference for the objective evaluation of the competitiveness of Chinese automobile clusters in terms of their real and practical developments and in respect of the success of reasonable scientific and industrial cluster policies.

Multidimensional, dynamic, integrated evaluation index systems are constructed around automobile industrial cluster competitiveness, which has taken into account developments in current strengths and future growth capacity. The cuckoo-AHP evaluation method has been formed by combining the traditional decision-making method known as AHP with a new meta-heuristic optimization algorithm called “cuckoo search”. Both have been used in evaluations of automobile industrial cluster competitiveness in Liuzhou and Changsha, which will be beneficial for enriching automobile industrial cluster competitiveness evaluation theory and new evaluation methods that will enable better evaluations of automobile industrial cluster competitiveness.

This paper aims to clarify the transient electromagnetic method used for the nondestructive testing of the corrosion of an in-service buried metal pipeline in trenchless state.

The paper designed corrosion models indoor and infield for testing. A method for calculating the residual wall thickness of metal pipelines was also proposed. The calculation method was verified by the test results. In the test, the receiving probe was improved by the addition of a Mn-Zn ferrite core. The amplitudes of the test results obviously increased, and the calculation accuracy was improved.

The paper states that the transient electromagnetic method can detect the uniform corrosion distribution of a certain section of a pipeline. A multi-channel profile of the induced electromotive force and the calculated values of the residual wall thickness can be used to confirm the position and degree of corrosion defects, respectively.

The transient electromagnetic method is more effective for large-area corrosion than for localized corrosion (pitting).

The paper includes implications for the development of nondestructive testing method of the corrosion of an in-service buried metal pipeline.

This paper proved the feasibility and reliability of using transient electromagnetic method to test the corrosion of a buried metal pipeline based on experimental study.

Automatic interpretation of Nominal Compounds is a crucial issue for many applications, for example, sentence understanding, machine translation, question-answering system and so forth. Many automatic interpretation models of Nominal Compounds use the strategies based on verbs or rules to obtain the interpretation of compounds. However, the performances of these models are still limited. The purpose of this paper is to propose an effective approach for automatic interpretation of Chinese nominal compounds.

The authors propose a top-down and bottom-up model based on rules and large-scale corpus for automatic interpretation of Nominal Compounds.

Experimental results demonstrate that the proposed model outperforms the state-of-the-art automatic interpretation model.

The paper is an up-to-date study of automatic interpretation for Nominal Compounds. It can help people understand the meaning of Nominal Compounds in reading. With a better understanding of Nominal Compounds, we can discover more hidden knowledge in them.

The purpose of this paper is to establish a novel conflict analysis model so that it can well describe and deal with the real conflict problems.

In order to overcome the shortcomings that the agents have only three attitudes with respect to the conflict issues in Pawlak conflict information system, so that it is too stiff to describe and portray the real conflict problems, the thought and methodology of the intuitionistic fuzzy set is employed to soften the agents’ attitudes of the conflict issues, and then a novel conflict analysis model is constructed. This method, to begin with, the intuitionistic fuzzy number is used to express the opposition and support degree with respect to the conflict issues from agents, and then the similarity measure method is utilized to define conflict coefficient; what is more, the conflict degrees between any two agents can be obtained, and then the alliances are determined by setting different threshold values. Finally, an example illustrates the validity and rationality of the proposed method.

The novel conflict analysis model proposed in the paper can well describe and resolve a real-life conflict problems such as the conflict of national territory, employee and employer.

The proposed model can only do with the conflict problems in which there do not exit the correlations among conflict issues, while it does not cope with the conflict problems with the mutually interrelated conflict issues.

The paper succeeds in softening the Pawlak conflict analysis information system, and describing and dealing with the actual conflict problems.

The purpose of this paper is to summarize the progress in grey system research during 2000-2015, so as to present some important new concepts, models, methods and a new framework of grey system theory.

The new thinking, new models and new methods of grey system theory and their applications are presented in this paper. It includes algorithm rules of grey numbers based on the “kernel” and the degree of greyness of grey numbers, the concept of general grey numbers, the synthesis axiom of degree of greyness of grey numbers and their operations; the general form of buffer operators of grey sequence operators; the four basic models of grey model GM(1,1), such as even GM, original difference GM, even difference GM, discrete GM and the suitable sequence type of each basic model, and suitable range of most used grey forecasting models; the similarity degree of grey incidences, the closeness degree of grey incidences and the three-dimensional absolute degree of grey incidence of grey incidence analysis models; the grey cluster model based on center-point and end-point mixed triangular whitenization functions; the multi-attribute intelligent grey target decision model, the two stages decision model with grey synthetic measure of grey decision models; grey game models, grey input-output models of grey combined models; and the problems of robust stability for grey stochastic time-delay systems of neutral type, distributed-delay type and neutral distributed-delay type of grey control, etc. And the new framework of grey system theory is given as well.

The problems which remain for further studying are discussed at the end of each section. The reader could know the general picture of research and developing trend of grey system theory from this paper.

A lot of successful practical applications of the new models to solve various problems have been found in many different areas of natural science, social science and engineering, including spaceflight, civil aviation, information, metallurgy, machinery, petroleum, chemical industry, electrical power, electronics, light industries, energy resources, transportation, medicine, health, agriculture, forestry, geography, hydrology, seismology, meteorology, environment protection, architecture, behavioral science, management science, law, education, military science, etc. These practical applications have brought forward definite and noticeable social and economic benefits. It demonstrates a wide range of applicability of grey system theory, especially in the situation where the available information is incomplete and the collected data are inaccurate.

The reader is given a general picture of grey systems theory as a new model system and a new framework for studying problems where partial information is known; especially for uncertain systems with few data points and poor information. The problems remaining for further studying are identified at the end of each section.

Process mining provides a new means to improve processes in a variety of application domains. The purpose of this paper is to abstract a process model and then use the discovered models from process mining to make useful optimization via predictions.

The paper divides the process model into a combination of “pair-adjacent activities” and “pair-adjacent persons” in the event logs. First, two new handover process models based on adjacency matrix are proposed. Second, by adding the stage, frequency, and time for every activity or person into the matrix, another two new handover prediction process models based on stage adjacency matrix are further proposed. Third, compute the conditional probability from every stage to next stage through the frequency. Finally, use real data to analyze and demonstrate the practicality and effectiveness of the proposed handover optimization process.

The process model can be extended with information to predict what will actually happen, how possible to reach the next activity, who will do this activity, and the corresponding probability if there are several people executing the same activity, etc.

The contribution of this paper is to predict what will actually happen, how possible it is to reach the following activities or persons in the next stage, how soon to reach the following activities or persons by calculating all the possible interval time via different traces, who will do this activity, and the corresponding probability if there are several people executing the same activity, etc.

The purpose of this paper is to construct index system of international cooperation project selection, propose a grey cluster model for project selection and apply propose model for Jiangsu international cooperation key-technology projects selection.

Considering supply of international cooperation project is different with its demand, and regional key cooperation technologies should consider urgency and possibility of project cooperation, the author separately construct index groups for supply and demand. To aggregate assessment information of each cooperation project, whitenization function for each index is constructed and then cluster coefficient of index group could be aggregated by using each index and its weight information. Fixed weight grey cluster model is redefined and applied for selecting international cooperation project. And steps of calculation of model are given out. Real application of Jiangsu international cooperation projects’ selection is used for demonstrating process of the proposed model.

Results show that constructed indexes of international cooperation project selection can be used for selecting regional cooperation projects well. And proposed fixed weight grey cluster model can aggregate all indexes information well. Therefore, proposed indexes and model in this manuscript is effective and also it can be used for solving similar problems.

Jiangsu province is a developed region of China, and its international cooperation is more active than other regions accordingly. Constructed indexes of international cooperation project selection and fixed weight grey cluster model can help government to select needed projects easily.

This manuscript first define a demand as urgency and supply as possibility, and a new index system of international cooperation project selection is constructed with several urgency indexes and several possibility indexes. And a new assessment model, named as fixed weight grey cluster model, is proposed to aggregate indexes’ information.

This paper aims to review the latest management developments across the globe and pinpoint practical implications from cutting-edge research and case studies.

This briefing is prepared by an independent writer who adds their own impartial comments and places the articles in context.

This paper discovered that when digital transformation is used to improve both efficiency and growth it can lead to higher business performance.

The briefing saves busy executives, strategists and researchers hours of reading time by selecting only the very best, most pertinent information and presenting it in a condensed and easy-to-digest format.

Urban parks play a key role in recreational activities, public health, and ecosystem services in urban areas. Using GIS and Fragstats, this study investigated the spatiotemporal dynamics of urban parks in Xi'an, China from 1949 to 2015 and the corresponding driving forces. The results show that the number and area of parks in Xi'an increased constantly during this period, especially from 2000 to 2015. Up to 2015, small green spaces, usually adjacent to streets, occupied the largest proportion among all types of parks. Archaeological parks were the largest in total area, but wetland parks were leading in average size of a single park. The density of parks was negatively correlated with their distance to the Clock Tower at the center of Xi'an. The dynamics of urban parks in highly urbanized areas were significantly different from that of their counterparts in suburban areas. Driving forces such as urban planning, urbanization and green space policies, and milestone events in the city's development jointly had a great effect on the distribution of parks in Xi'an. The research outcomes will support the upcoming Green Space Planning of Xi'an and benefit the pursuit of sustainability and human wellbeing.