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One of the main problems, when choosing between preventive or corrective maintenance for the production and maintenance departments in the eight firms studied, is to attempt to establish the state of a particular production system or individual production line. In order to carry out a cost analysis it is imperative to be able to measure how preventive maintenance will both reduce the deterioration of the state of the object and improve the state of the object at the point in time that the maintenance is carried out. This can be explained by the fact that the departments lack methods for measuring and estimating the effects. The model presented in this paper determines whether to schedule preventive maintenance and the model trades off the capital costs of preventive maintenance and the sum of corrective maintenance and down‐time costs based on the production line’s state.

The purpose of this paper is to explore whether or not a preventive replacement model always gives a solution with a specified preventive effect and looks at the relationship between the preventive effect and cost saving.

The age and block replacement policies with the Weibull failure distribution are considered. Measures of the preventive effect associated with specific maintenance policies are derived.

The sufficient condition to achieve a given preventive effect is represented graphically as a function of the system's aging intensity and the cost ratio of failure and preventive replacements.

The models developed in the paper will help maintenance engineers to know whether a system is aged or not and then they can make a decision on replacement.

The optimal replacement models considered in this paper give a solution with a good preventive effect only if the maintained system is sufficiently aged. The criterion whether or not the system is sufficiently aged is set by the decision‐maker based on specific maintenance situations or maintenance objectives.

The purpose of this paper is to assess the relationship between patient satisfaction and a variety of clinical quality measures in an ambulatory setting to determine if there is significant overlap between patient satisfaction and clinical quality or if they are separate domains of overall physician quality. Assessing this relationship will help to determine whether there is congruence between different types of clinical quality performance and patient satisfaction and therefore provide insight to appropriate financial structures for physicians.

Ordered probit regression analysis is conducted with overall rating of physician from patient satisfaction responses to the Clinician and Groups Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Providers and Systems survey as the dependent variable. Physician clinical quality is measured across five composite groups based on 26 Healthcare Effectiveness Data and Information Set (HEDIS) measures aggregated from patient electronic health records. Physician and patient demographic variables are also included in the model.

Better physician performance on HEDIS measures are correlated with increases in patient satisfaction for three composite measures: antibiotics, generics, and vaccination; it has no relationship for chronic conditions and is correlated with decrease in patient satisfaction for preventative measures, although the negative relationship for preventative measures is not robust in sensitivity analysis. In addition, younger physicians and male physicians have higher satisfaction scores even with the HEDIS quality measures in the regression.

There are four primary limitations to this study. First, the data for the study come from a single hospital provider organization. Second, the survey response rate for the satisfaction measure is low. Third, the physician clinical quality measure is the percent of the physician’s relevant patient population that met the HEDIS measure rather than if the measure was met for the individual patient. Finally, it is not possible to distinguish if the significant coefficient estimates on the physician age and gender variables are capturing systematic differences in physician behavior or capturing patient bias.

The results suggest patient satisfaction and physician clinical quality may be complementary, capturing similar aspects of overall physician quality, across some clinical quality measures but for other measures satisfaction and clinical quality are unrelated or negatively related. Therefore, for some clinical quality metrics, it will be important to separately compensate clinical quality and satisfaction and understand the relationship between metrics. Finally, the strong relationship between the level of patient satisfaction and physician age, physician gender, and patient age are important to consider when designing a physician compensation package based on patient satisfaction; if these differences reflect patient bias they could increase inequality among medical staff if compensation is based on patient satisfaction.

This study is the first to use physician organization data to examine patient satisfaction and physician performance on a variety of HEDIS quality metrics.

This study provides in-depth explanation of Goods and Services Tax (GST) fraud prevention towards sustainability business.

This study applies a qualitative research method, i.e. case study, to address the specific research objective.

The finding revealed a GST prevention model towards sustainable business. The finding shows that it is pertinent for the government to set preventive strategies in order to retain sustainable income for the government. Two essential dimensions emerged in the findings to support preventive strategies, namely macro- and micro-level measures.

The findings of this study provide managers, investors and policymakers with evidence to what extent GST fraud could be minimize in order to safeguard government source of revenue and retain sustainable business in a country. As GST is an important source of revenue for the government, it is thus crucial to prevent fraud from occurring.

Past studies have primarily focused on GST implementation from the perspective of service tax effectiveness and efficiency. However, this study examined the impact of GST fraud to determine measures that could ensure service tax sustainability using preventive strategies, in turn, introducing to the existing literature on indirect tax.

Poverty is a global problem and the phenomenon is alarming in the third world including the Muslim Countries (MCs). This paper analyses Islam's view on poverty based on its ideological norms and values. Poverty has been defined from an Islamic perspective that leads to two poverty levels and hence two poverty lines which are quite different from the conventional of concepts of poverty. The basic Islamic sources suggest that Islam dislikes poverty and it provides a conducive framework for alleviation of poverty. Three broad categories of poverty alleviation measures have been analysed. First, the positive measures which include income growth, functional distribution of income, and equal opportunities to all. Second, the preventive measures which are control of ownership and prevention of malpractices in economics and business that lead to income concentration. Third, corrective measures which include compulsory transfer payments, recommended transfer payments, and state responsibility. The positive measures are expected to lead to high level income and its equitable distribution, the preventive measures are expected to limit concentration of wealth, while the corrective measures are meant for correcting imbalances in the distribution of income and wealth, and to upgrade economic conditions of the worse‐off population in the society. If these measures are applied, the problem of poverty could be solved quite substantially. The paper concludes with some recommendations with respect to poverty alleviation in the context of MCs.

This paper aims to revisit the preventive maintenance scheduling literature. The problem to be solved is the simultaneous scheduling of resource‐constrained preventive maintenance and operations. In particular, the expression that defines the period‐dependent cost function for a preventive maintenance scheduling activity is redefined. A case study is presented from the shipping industry.

In this paper a mathematical theory of differential calculus known as three‐dimensional wave equation is applied. The methodology involves transforming the preventive maintenance cost function that is expressed in terms of several variables into a more precise framework. The motivation for the work is the need to measure the total preventive maintenance scheduling cost more precisely than with the use of the existing linear cost structure.

In this paper the findings from the analysis carried out found evidence that validates the claim of the feasibility of analyzing preventive maintenance cost using the approach proposed.

The paper shows that, in practice, maintenance managers strive to reduce the cost of preventive maintenance activities in order to achieve low cost production of goods. This would encourage a high patronage of customers and prevent decisions being made on wrong data. The approach presented here aims at correcting this weakness by revealing a more precise and reliable method of preventive maintenance scheduling cost computation. This is a scientific tool that should be of immense benefit to maintenance planners, particularly those actively engaged in scheduling functions.

The work in this paper is new, since a novel framework is presented in a way that has not been documented earlier.

The purpose of this paper is to provide an assessment of soft law as a technique for repressive and preventive anti-money laundering control (hereinafter AMLC).

This article focuses heavily on understanding the nature of international anti-money laundering (AML) law-making process. The approach towards this question is interdisciplinary and looks at the treaty and non-treaty AML obligations through a prism of two theoretical lenses (legal positivism and liberal/legal process theory) to explain the role of soft law in the area.

Current international effort to combat money laundering (ML) is fragmented (as evident in the enormous variety of law-making processes), despite the role of soft law. Part of the problem is the divergent nature of domestic criminal legislation, which is reflected in the choice of predicate crime and a lack of procedural rule to identify and enforce the law at the state level. To address the limit of current efforts, the paper will propose a uniform codification of AML law directed by a more representative body or commission of experts offering means of restating, clarifying and revising the law authoritatively and systematically.

The research is focused mainly on the theoretical issues relating to the subject of ML and less on any empirical case study.

The paper will focus on the role of soft law as a technique for repressive and preventive AMLC. Based on current analyses of the role of soft law as an alternative to hard law or as a complement to hard law (leading to greater cooperation), it attempts to outline the possible advantages and disadvantages that soft law could have in the context of AMLC. For example, the use of soft law promotes harmonisation of international AML standards through the Financial Action Task Force, while the role of the FATF remains unclear in international law. This is important for the purpose of responsibility, as the law on state responsibility clearly states when a State is responsible, in the event of a breach, and the consequence in international law.

The implication of the paper is that it contributes to the on-going debate about the increasingly role of soft law-making in international law.

The research perspective to the study of ML is theoretical and focuses on the nature of the law.

This paper aims to contend that the circle of investigation into overruns cannot be complete unless the established critical failure factors are matched against their respective mitigating measures to avert the overruns. Extant literature is replete with factors that engender cost and time overruns within the design and construction phase. The constraint is the lack of a scientific approach in establishing a tackling mechanism to address the root causes and stakeholder responsibilities.

The research is based on nine unique grand factors previously established and reported in literature about the Ghanaian Construction Industry. A focus group discussion convened through a purposive sampling technique led to the establishment of a list of mitigating measures and strategies.

The paper established a checklist of 114 mitigating measures categorised into preventive, predictive and corrective approaches. Additionally, several short to medium term key strategies have been recommended to avert the occurrence of cost and time overruns.

The mitigating measures can be adopted as a checklist of good practice to help practitioners enhance the effectiveness of project budget and schedule control. It is also supposed to serve as a guide to practitioners in averting overruns through predictive, preventive and/or corrective causes. A unique approach in averting the occurrence of cost and time overruns.

The law of catastrophic wildfire prevention and response in the Mediterranean member states of the European Union stands in stark contrast to that of common law nation states such as Australia and the United States. This is due primarily to the higher levels of reciprocal moral and legal obligations between governments and citizens established in various sources of European law. Focusing on the relationship between the EU, Spain, and the Autonomous Community of Catalonia within Spain, this chapter describes these three legal frameworks as they are nested within each other, followed by some case law examples of these laws in action. We compare and contrast the philosophical assumptions underlying the utilitarian cost–benefit approach to regulatory justification used in the United States with the precautionary principle model emblematic of the European Union, the member state of Spain, and its Autonomous Community of Catalonia. Regardless of approach, protection of the public health, safety, and welfare will only be as robust and effective as the government agencies that have that responsibility, and the degree of cooperation with those agencies of the citizens they serve.

A common model in the age‐based replacement policy is based on the cost attribute and assumes that the model parameters are known. In practice, the model parameters are estimated from limited historical data, which brings uncertainty into the model. Moreover, minimizing the cost is not the only goal of the maintenance activity. From the decision maker's point of view, the multi‐attributes and the uncertainty of the age‐based replacement policy are two important aspects to take into consideration in the decision‐making process. The purpose of this paper is to propose an approach for a robust‐optimum multi‐attribute age‐based replacement policy.

The proposed approach is based on a combination of the multi‐attribute age‐based replacement policy and robust design problem philosophy. A case study is provided for illustrating the application of the proposed method.

It is found that the proposed approach can determine the interval time for preventive replacement that provides a robust and optimum solution for a multi‐attribute age‐based replacement policy.

The proposed approach can be used by the decision maker in determining a robust‐optimum interval time for preventive replacement of multi‐attribute age‐based replacement, a time interval which is not only optimum, but also robust.

This paper presents an approach that simultaneously considers the multi‐attributes and the uncertainty in the age‐based replacement policy which is, to date, not available.