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Despite being a low-tech industry, woodwork manufacturing industry that includes furniture and cabinet making, witnessed technological leaps in production technologies due to technical developments in computer numerical control (CNC) machining processes. The managers of this industry have attached high importance to the selection of efficient machines as their decisions directly affect the quality and performance of products produced by the firms. Improper selection process can result in a significant decrease in productivity and flexibility. Therefore, a systematic decision-making procedure is needed to prevent inaccurate investments on machines. The purpose of this paper is to purpose a hesitant fuzzy analytic hierarchy process (HFAHP) based multi-criteria decision making (MCDM) system for CNC router selection in small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in woodwork manufacturing.

The study proposes a hierarchical model consisting of 4 main criteria and 11sub-criteria for woodwork manufacturing. Technical, personnel, economic and vendor aspects constitute the main criteria. Because of the hierarchical structure of the model, HFAHP is utilized to define the importance weights of the criteria, and to select the most appropriate CNC alternative for a manufacturing company under focus. In a selection procedure, the judgments of decision makers may have vagueness to specify the importance of criteria affecting the decision process. In the literature, the fuzzy set theory has been utilized to deal with such uncertainties. However, when the ideas of the managers have high potential to fall into contradiction in pairwise comparisons, a novel approach is needed to overcome the obstacles. HFAHP allows the membership degree having a set of possible values. It is specifically useful in compromised decisions where experts cannot agree on a single value and prefer to come up with an interval of linguistic variables.

It is revealed that for SMEs in woodwork manufacturing, the most important criterion in selecting the CNC routers is the technical aspects. It may seem counter intuitive that they do not refrain finding the technical criteria superior to the economic aspects, even though they have limited budgets compared to large-scale firms. This demonstrates that in current competitive environment, SMEs understand the need for high-quality production strategy. The weights of the remaining two criteria (personnel and vendor aspects) are relatively low because they expect that they can easily overcome the problem of adapting the workers by training, and all vendors have quality standard qualifications so they can offer a satisfactory service and supplementary systems.

The ready-to-use model proposed is specialized for SMEs in woodwork manufacturing. However, to make it an easily adaptable model for every company in the woodwork industry regardless of its size, the calculation process of the priority weights is illustrated in detail with a numerical example. Any company can follow the process using their own preferences to end up with a specific model that will perfectly reflect their own specific priorities. For demonstrating the application of the model, a case study is conducted in a woodwork manufacturing SME to select the best CNC router among three alternatives.

The originality and value of the paper is twofold. First, to the best of our knowledge, this is the first study that proposes a woodworking-specific CNC router selection for SMEs. Second, to handle the high uncertainty in the judgements, and to facilitate consensus among the experts during face to face meetings to develop compromised matrices, a very recently developed method, HFAHP is used.

This paper aims to provide critical insight into the impact of locally embedded, community business-related approaches internationally to health and social care on users’ outcomes, in particular exploring their effectiveness in delivering outcomes for users.

The study used a robust systematic review methodology. It carefully identifies relevant studies that have been conducted on the impact of community business-related approaches, rigorously evaluates how well these studies have been carried out and combines the results from these studies to address that particular topic.

Health and social care-related community businesses deliver on a range of health and well-being outcomes and impacts positively on local residents’ satisfaction with their community/local area. Existing research into community businesses uses mostly qualitative methods, but a few studies have also used quantitative survey and mixed methods and demonstrate the challenges of conducting methodologically rigorous real-world research within local community settings.

The review was limited to papers published in English language and may have missed relevant studies published in other languages which could have influenced the overall findings. Only one reviewer screened the titles and abstracts of the identified papers. Having multiple reviewers would have strengthened the validity of the screening process.

Community businesses offer a positive contribution to health and well-being, and highlight the significance of engaging local communities in promoting health, reducing health inequalities and addressing the wider determinants of health. This paper provides a baseline of evidence about community business’ broad impacts on health and well-being to help inform new and emerging evidence

Insurance — Duty of care placed on insured — Unattended and unlocked van — Contents and van stolen — Whether Insurers liable to indemnify.

The purpose of this paper is to evaluate the effect of different amounts of sodium hydroxide (NaOH) introduced during the resin synthesis on the properties of bark‐phenol‐formaldehyde (BPF) adhesives aims at achieving a balance between storage life and other properties of BPF adhesives.

Based on the best synthetic technologies for the production of BPF adhesives obtained in a previous study, a new synthetic technology is developed for the production of BPF adhesives that involve a three‐step addition of NaOH using different amounts of NaOH in the third charge. Gel permeation chromatography is used to evaluate properties of the phenol‐formaldehyde (PF) and BPF adhesives.

The amount of NaOH in the third charge has an important influence on many BPF adhesive properties. The paper determines that the synthetic technology involving three‐step NaOH additions with only water introduced in the third charge of NaOH produces a BPF adhesive with the longest storage life and best bonding strength.

BPF adhesives are very complex systems with many unknown variables.

The improved storage life of the BPF adhesive prepared with the new synthetic technology is comparable to that of a commercial PF adhesive, which indicates that this new technology shows greater potential for commercial applications.

A new synthetic technology is developed to produce a BPF adhesive that is more comparable to commercial PF adhesives than other BPF adhesives in terms of storage life and other resin properties.

In this paper, two popular multiple-criteria decision-making (MCDM) methods with hesitant fuzzy logic approach; hesitant fuzzy analytic hierarchy process (hesitant F-AHP) and hesitant fuzzy the technique for order preference by similarity to ideal solution (HF-TOPSIS) are integrated as HF-AHP-TOPSIS to evaluating a set of enterprise resource planning (ERP) alternatives and rank them by weight to reach to the ultimate one that satisfies the needs and expectations of a company.

Selecting the best ERP software package among the rising number of the options in market has been a critical problem for most companies for a long time because of the reason that an improper ERP software package might lead to many issues (i.e. time loss, increased costs and a loss of market share). On the other hand, finding the best ERP alternative is a comprehensive MCDM problem in the presence of a set of alternatives and several potentially competing quantitative and qualitative criteria.

In this integrated approach, the hesitant F-AHP is used to determine the criteria weights, as the hesitant F-TOPSIS is utilized to rank ERP package alternatives. The proposed approach was also validated in a numerical example that has five ERP package alternatives and 12 criteria by three decision-makers in order to show its applicability to potential readers and practitioners.

If the number of the alternatives and criteria are dramatically increased beyond reasonable numbers, the reaching to final solution will be so difficult because of the great deal of fuzzy based calculations. Therefore, the number of criteria and alternatives should be at reasonable numbers.

The proposed approach was also validated in a illustrated example with the five ERP package options and 12 criteria by the three decision-makers in order to show its applicability to potential readers and practitioners.

Furthermore, in literature, to the best of our knowledge, the authors did not come cross any work that integrates the HF-AHP with the HF-TOPSIS for ERP software package selection problem.

Most of the building industry has benefitted from new technical developments and by the introduction of specifications and standards. External woodwork is no exception.

The Howard Shuttering Contractors case throws considerable light on the importance which the tribunals attach to warnings before dismissing an employee. In this case the tribunal took great pains to interpret the intention of the parties to the different site agreements, and it came to the conclusion that the agreed procedure was not followed. One other matter, which must be particularly noted by employers, is that where a final warning is required, this final warning must be “a warning”, and not the actual dismissal. So that where, for example, three warnings are to be given, the third must be a “warning”. It is after the employee has misconducted himself thereafter that the employer may dismiss.

Although an important facet of modernist architecture in which function plays a prominent role, building flexibility is not entirely a new concept. Its relevance transcends generations, allowing space and structure to evolve through time. This paper investigates the relationship among main building structures, infill elements, and space by studying examples in ancient Chinese architecture. It reveals the role of building owners, users, and craftsmen from a survey of historical documentation. In studying these examples, it is concluded that craftsmen in ancient China were involved not only during the construction phase but throughout the period of use as well. Thus, in select cases, the relationship between craftsmen and owners or users had been preserved for generations. Finally, this paper suggests potential strategies for the building industry and technology in the move towards sustainable development.

NEW KINDS OF CORROSION. That one door opens and another closes might be looked upon as a ‘law’ of scientific progress. The development of synthetic glues for plywood and other bonded woodwork was a notable stride forward for strength and for reducing the risk of woodworm or beetle infestation. Now, as the latest D.S.I.R. Annual Report (1955–56, H.M.S.O., 1957, p. 29) reveals, vapours from these synthetic glues can cause serious corrosion with metals. Both phenol and formaldehyde vapours have corrosive effects, and these substances are major components of many of the new synthetic glues and adhesives. At relative humidity of 90 per cent. and in the 25 to 30°C. temperature range, formaldehyde vapour is very corrosive to the common constructional or plating metals, e.g., brass, copper, cadmium, zinc, mild steel, lead and solder. Phenol is less aggressive; although its vapour may stain some metals, it attacks only cadmium with severity. However, these vapours are given off quite slowly from wooden packaging units or from modern cabinet work containing metallic parts (e.g., a radio set), and the risk of corrosion is sizeable only in enclosed space conditions such as during storage or long transport. With normal access to air, the vapours would not accumulate to present any significant threat.