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This paper seeks to propose a methodology based on Petri nets to evaluate the reliability parameters of a screening system in paper industry. The effects of failures and courses of action on the system performance have also been investigated.

Generalized stochastic Petri nets (GSPN), a class of Petri nets, has been used to model the interactions amongst the active/standby units of the system; and Markovian approach has been used to evaluate the reliability parameters. The data related to equipments' operational behavior were collected, processed and quantified. Using the data, reliability analysis of system in the long run conditions has been carried out. The sensitivity analysis has been performed to study the effect of failure/repair rates of each unit of the system on system performance.

The methodology adopted in this paper provides a better understanding on the behavior of the system through its graphical representation. The reachability graph generated with Petri net model helps to identify the state space evolution of the system.

Reliability analysis of a screening system of the paper industry presented in this paper will help management in deciding upon the maintenance strategy to be adopted with the objective of improving the performance of the system and consequently reducing the operational and maintenance costs.

To evaluate the extent to which a person’s educational attainment moderates the relationship between his or her objective markers of health and self-rated health (SRH).

I use 10 years’ worth of data from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES 1999–2009; N = 30,823) to examine how diagnosed medical conditions, health behaviors, and biomarkers are differentially associated with SRH by educational attainment. I use regression analysis to evaluate these relationships.

Results show that while medical conditions are negatively associated with SRH equally across education levels, behaviors and biomarkers have stronger association with SRH among individuals with greater education. Those with more education are more likely to have had their blood pressure and cholesterol checked in recent months. They are also more likely to correctly identify themselves as overweight when their body mass index exceeds 25.

The chapter’s findings indicate that education may play a role in how people interpret and evaluate their own health. Real differences in how people evaluate their health can impact the conclusions that researchers can draw when comparing SRH between education groups. In addition these results can motivate further research in the causes of health disparities. Self-evaluation of health can potentially influence how people monitor and manage their health. Differences in self-evaluation between levels of educational attainment could contribute to disparities in health and mortality.

This chapter examines the relationship between self-rated health, objective markers of health, and education in a novel framework.

This chapter seeks to understand inclusive education, seen from the perspective of young people who had trouble learning at school. With the indirect approach, an explorative interviewing technique, we seek to find out what they, when looking back, think would have been important in order to learn. In this chapter, we meet three young people from Norway with the experience that their school was not sufficiently inclusive. All three point out that there should have been more room for being different and a greater focus on practical approaches to teaching.

Sustainable Development Goal 4 (SDG 4), based on the principle of leaving no one behind, ensures that equitable and quality education, as well as inclusion, are available to all, promoting opportunities for those who are disadvantaged and vulnerable including persons with disabilities (PWDs). The Indonesian government has demonstrated a commitment to the rights of PWDs in education. In this chapter, the history, the present, and the future of inclusive education will be presented following the master plan for the development of inclusive education. Strategies including accessibility, reasonable accommodation, and collaboration will be discussed as well as the challenges in implementing inclusive education.

The purpose of this paper is to present and test a methodology, extending the concept of hierarchical Petri nets, to discover conflicts in a distribution channel.

The approach involves linking different levels of the supply chain and detecting conflicts occurring when the single entities, each optimized for its own operations, are combined together in a supply chain. Specifically, a methodology is proposed for synthesizing individual Petri Net models combined with matrix equations in order to detect and manage conflicts in a supply chain. These conflicts may stem from differing goals, planning and resources.

The methodology offers the user the ability to investigate the potential for conflicts in the system and manage the system to avoid such conflicts before they occur. The proposed approach holds promise for both the short term and long term for effective supply chain management and design. This would enable the supply chain to put sufficient protection (e.g. buffers) in strategic locations relative to the potential conflict or contingency plans in place to handle the conflict when it occurs.

While the ability to discover and pre‐empt conflicts would be a valuable asset to the management and design of supply chains, there is little insight found, to date, in the research on effective methods to realize detection. The current paper provides a systematic approach through the development of a hierarchical Petri net extension to detect conflicts prior to occurrence in an integrated supply chain system.

The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate the use of Petri nets in a job shop setup for the improvement in the utilization of machines.

The study discusses concepts such as reachable state, token and matrix equations set, and demonstrates the improvements in machines’ utilization in a job shop. It makes use of algorithms to generate reachable markings to obtain utilization. The study not only describes the application of theory, but also extends the body of knowledge on Petri nets and job shops.

In this study, machines’ utilization has been studied in a job shop with six machines and eight products. The study finds that substantial utilization improvement in job shop set up can be obtained through the application of Petri nets. The study also exposes that Petri nets are mostly used for machines, jobs and tools scheduling problems, but its use in machines’ utilization is neglected. The framework and application presented here along with generalizable findings, is the first to report about machine utilization improvement in job shop manufacturing environment.

Job shops are characterized by high unit production cost, low investments, low volume and high variety, complex flows, flexible and skilled work force, general purpose machines, high material handling; resulting in poor utilization of machines. Therefore, the findings of this study can help in reducing such costs through better machine utilization. This can help in increasing the competitiveness of the companies.

The contribution of study lies in investigating and improving stage wise utilization in a job shop setup. It has never been reported before.

After the occurrence of a disaster, emergency supplies should arrive at disaster area in the shortest possible time. Therefore, it is of pivotal importance to speed up the preparation and scheduling process. In other words, only when the preparation process and scheduling process coordinate well, could the emergency supplies arrive at disaster area in time. Consequently, the purpose of this paper is to explore a method that can strengthen the coordination in various kinds of situations.

The paper first elaborates the preparation and scheduling process of emergency supplies in disasters. Then, it establishes a workflow simulation system of the emergency supplies preparation and scheduling based on Petri Net. Afterward, the paper proposes a simplified simulation system of emergency supplies preparation and scheduling which can be employed in actual emergency response. Finally, the paper takes China Lushan Earthquake for a case study.

By employing the simulation system proposed by this paper, decision makers can simulate the whole emergency supplies preparation and scheduling process, which can help them find a method that can optimize the current process. Specifically, by analyzing the simulation results, the government can obtain conclusions as follows. First, whether the preparation and scheduling process of emergency supplies can speed up or not. Second, which part of the process should be improved to realize the acceleration. Third, the workload of the staffs and experts. Fourth, whether it is necessary to add staffs or experts to work in parallel.

This paper proposes a system that can coordinate the preparation process and scheduling process of emergency supplies in disaster. Then, it employs the Petri Net based workflow model to do simulation. The simulation results show that the system designed is reasonable and can be used in practical decision making on the preparation and scheduling of emergency supplies.

Knowledge‐based timed colored object‐oriented Petri net (KTCOPN) is presented as a modelling method for a reconfigurable assembly system (RAS) in this paper. Compared to the conventional flexible assembly systems, the configuration of a RAS will allow flexibility not only in assembling a variety of products, but also in changing the system itself. Combining knowledge and object‐oriented methods into timed colored Petri net, allow the characteristic of RAS to be fully expressed. With object‐oriented methods, the whole system can be decomposed into concrete objects explicitly, and their relationship is constructed according to the system assembly requirements. Finally, a simple assembly system modeled by the KTCOPN is given.