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Kwong Wah Hospital was founded by the charity organization, Tung Wah Group of Hospitals, some 88 years ago, with management transfer to the Hong Kong Hospital Authority in 1991. Capitalizing both from the traditional caring culture of its founder, as well as opportunities in the new management environment, the hospital has scored remarkable successes in service quality, community partnership, organizational effectiveness, and staff development. Underpinning these transformations were structure, process, people, and culture strategies. The learning imperative is heavily mandated for the success of each of these strands of development. Indeed, the embodiment of a learning organization culture provides the impetus in sustaining the change momentum, towards achieving the vision of becoming a “most preferred hospital” in Hong Kong.

The purpose of this research is to develop a holistic approach to maximize the customer service level while minimizing the logistics cost by using an integrated multiple criteria decision making (MCDM) method for the contemporary transshipment problem. Unlike the prevalent optimization techniques, this paper proposes an integrated approach which considers both quantitative and qualitative factors in order to maximize the benefits of service deliverers and customers under uncertain environments.

This paper proposes a fuzzy‐based integer linear programming model, based on the existing literature and validated with an example case. The model integrates the developed fuzzy modification of the analytic hierarchy process (FAHP), and solves the multi‐criteria transshipment problem.

This paper provides several novel insights about how to transform a company from a cost‐based model to a service‐dominated model by using an integrated MCDM method. It suggests that the contemporary customer‐driven supply chain remains and increases its competitiveness from two aspects: optimizing the cost and providing the best service simultaneously.

This research used one illustrative industry case to exemplify the developed method. Considering the generalization of the research findings and the complexity of the transshipment service network, more cases across multiple industries are necessary to further enhance the validity of the research output.

The paper includes implications for the evaluation and selection of transshipment service suppliers, the construction of optimal transshipment network as well as managing the network.

The major advantages of this generic approach are that both quantitative and qualitative factors under fuzzy environment are considered simultaneously and also the viewpoints of service deliverers and customers are focused. Therefore, it is believed that it is useful and applicable for the transshipment service network design.

This paper aims to develop an integrated analytical approach, combining quality function deployment (QFD) and analytic hierarchy process (AHP) approach, to enhance the effectiveness of sourcing decisions.

In the approach, QFD is used to translate the company stakeholder requirements into multiple evaluating factors for supplier selection, which are used to benchmark the suppliers. AHP is used to determine the importance of evaluating factors and preference of each supplier with respect to each selection criterion.

The effectiveness of the proposed approach is demonstrated by applying it to a UK‐based automobile manufacturing company. With QFD, the evaluating factors are related to the strategic intent of the company through the involvement of concerned stakeholders. This ensures successful strategic sourcing. The application of AHP ensures consistent supplier performance measurement using benchmarking approach.

The proposed integrated approach can be principally adopted in other decision‐making scenarios for effective management of the supply chain.

The proposed integrated approach can be used as a group‐based decision support system for supplier selection, in which all relevant stakeholders are involved to identify various quantitative and qualitative evaluating criteria, and their importance.

Various approaches that can deal with multiple and conflicting criteria have been adopted for the supplier selection. However, they fail to consider the impact of business objectives and the requirements of company stakeholders in the identification of evaluating criteria for strategic supplier selection. The proposed integrated approach outranks the conventional approaches to supplier selection and supplier performance measurement because the sourcing strategy and supplier selection are derived from the corporate/business strategy.

The purpose of this paper is to measure the performance of commercial virtual learning environment (VLE) systems, which helps the decision makers to select the appropriate system for their institutions.

This paper develops an integrated multiple criteria decision making approach, which combines the analytic hierarchy process (AHP) and quality function deployment (QFD), to evaluate and select the best system. The evaluating criteria are derived from the requirements of those who use the system. A case study is provided to demonstrate how the integrated approach works.

The major advantage of the integrated approach is that the evaluating criteria are of interest to the stakeholders. This ensures that the selected system will achieve the requirements and satisfy the stakeholders most. Another advantage is that the approach can guarantee the benchmarking to be consistent and reliable. From the case study, it is proved that the performance of a VLE system being used at the university is the best. Therefore, the university should continue to run the system in order to support and facilitate both teaching and learning.

It is believed that there is no study that measures the performance of VLE systems, and thus decision makers may have difficulties in system evaluation and selection for their institutions.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the optimization for a placement machine in printed circuit board (PCB) assembly when family setup strategy is adopted.

A complete mathematical model is developed for the integrated problem to optimize feeder arrangement and component placement sequences so as to minimize the makespan for a set of PCB batches. Owing to the complexity of the problem, a specific genetic algorithm (GA) is proposed.

The established model is able to find the minimal makespan for a set of PCB batches through determining the feeder arrangement and placement sequences. However, exact solutions to the problem are not practical due to the complexity. Experimental tests show that the proposed GA can solve the problem both effectively and efficiently.

When a placement machine is set up for production of a set of PCB batches, the feeder arrangement of the machine together with the component placement sequencing for each PCB type should be solved simultaneously so as to minimize the overall makespan.

The paper investigates the optimization for PCB assembly with family setup strategy, which is adopted by many PCB manufacturers for reducing both setup costs and human errors.

The paper investigates the feeder arrangement and placement sequencing problems when family setup strategy is adopted, which has not been studied in the literature.

Since the early 1990s, the US natural gas sector is characterized by substantial industry restructuring as a result of regulatory requirements following a liberalization objective. Accordingly, firms have chosen different strategies as a reaction of regulatory constraints, such as acquisitions, forming holding companies, or joint venture investment. In order to contribute to the success of business strategies driven by the regulatory framework, the purpose of this paper is to provide first evidence for the impacts of business strategies on a firm's efficiency within the gas transmission business.

The approach taken is a stochastic frontier analysis.

The results highlighted significant effects of acquisitions, holding structures, and joint ventures within the industry on the firms' technical efficiency estimates. The paper finds evidence for efficiency improvements caused by the new shareholder. The results suggested those holdings to be successful which have great experience in the construction and operation of oil pipelines. In the case that firms formed a joint venture to construct and operate a gas transportation pipeline, the empirical analysis showed a negative impact of such a joint venture on technical efficiency of the pipeline company.

The paper provides evidence for the missing link between operating performance and the evaluation of different business strategies in terms of efficiency within the natural gas interstate pipeline industry.

The purpose of this paper is to review the literature which focuses on four major higher education decision problems. These are: resource allocation; performance measurement; budgeting; and scheduling.

Related articles appearing in the international journals from 1996 to 2005 are gathered and analyzed so that the following three questions can be answered: “What kind of decision problems were paid most attention to?”; “Were the multiple criteria decision‐making techniques prevalently adopted?”; and “What are the inadequacies of these approaches?”

Based on the inadequacies, some improvements and possible future work are recommended, and a comprehensive resource allocation model is developed taking account of these factors. Finally, a new knowledge‐based goal programming technique which integrates some operations of analytic hierarchy process is proposed to tackle the model intelligently.

Higher education has faced the problem of budget cuts or constrained budgets for the past 30 years. Managing the process of the higher education system is, therefore, a crucial and urgent task for the decision makers of universities in order to improve their performance or competitiveness.

A binary integer programming model for the simple assembly line balancing problem (SALBP), which is well known as SALBP‐1, was formulated more than 30 years ago. Since then, a number of researchers have extended the model for the variants of assembly line balancing problem. The model is still prevalent nowadays mainly because of the lower and upper bounds on task assignment. These properties avoid significant increase of decision variables. The purpose of this paper is to use an example to show that the model may lead to a confusing solution.

The paper provides a remedial constraint set for the model to rectify the disordered sequence problem.

The paper presents proof that the assembly line balancing model formulated by Patterson and Albracht may lead to a confusing solution.

No one previously has found that the commonly used model is incorrect.

The purpose of this paper is to assess the performance of Greek fossil fuel‐fired power stations employing a data envelopment analysis (DEA) model combined with bootstrapping.

DEA is used to derive aggregate performance indicators using data on inputs and desirable and undesirable outputs for a sample of fossil fuel‐fired power stations. The statistical significance of the derived aggregate performance indicators is assessed via the bootstrapping approach.

The results suggest that the power stations in the sample are considerably more inefficient than revealed by the initial point estimates of inefficiency. Moreover, the non‐lignite‐fired stations of the sample are on an average more efficient than the lignite‐fired stations.

DEA represents a useful framework for exploring the current state to derive aggregate performance indicators of power stations, and moreover, the statistical properties of these metrics can be assessed via the bootstrapping approach.

The bootstrapping approach in DEA shows its superiority over DEA models that do not address the uncertainty surrounding point estimates. The DEA bootstrapping model used in this study to model environmental performance in the power station electricity production setting provides bias correction and confidence intervals for the point estimates and it is therefore more preferable.

The derivation of aggregate performance indicators of Greek fossil fuel‐fired power stations is an important addition to the existing literature on energy economics. The paper is also innovated in providing the statistical properties of the derived performance metrics.