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Based on ideal absolute errors and relative errors, a new grey model‐GM^p(1,1) model is presented. The existence problem of its solution is also solved based on a few conditions. Then, MGM^p(1,n) model is presented. These optimized models GM^p(1,n) and MGM^p(1,n) have good anti‐noise property to absolute and relative errors. Examples illustrate that they have very good fitting and forecasting results.

To provide a simplified proof for Liu's results concerning the relationship between σ‐entropy and σ‐similarity measure.

First obtains Liu's clear and simple functional expression of σ‐similarity measures based on the structure of σ‐entropy by using expressions of equivalent functions of σ‐entropy. Then, by employing the general expression of equivalent functions of σ‐similarity measure of fuzzy sets, provides a different proof of Liu's results.

Here, the proof is much simpler than the original one provided by Liu. And, on the basis of Shannon's probability entropy as introduced by De Luca and Termini, a σ‐similarity measure is constructed, on which a No answer to an open question as proposed by Liu is provided.

Constructs a new approach to some known results and provides a definite answer to an open question.

The purpose of this paper is to study the relationship between the property of distributivity and Zadeh's operators.

The results are established by studying the relationship between the condition of distributivity and Zadeh's operations.

When the t‐conorm T^* and t‐norm T are Zadeh's “intersection” and “union” operations, respectively, or when the pseudo‐addition ⊕ and pseudo‐multiplication ⊗ are Zadeh's “intersection” and “union” operations, respectively, a series of sufficient and necessary conditions for T^* and T (or ⊕ and ⊗) to satisfy a distributivity property are obtained. These results are readily applied to semirings.

New theoretical results are discovered and are shown to be useful to the study of triangular operators and applications in intelligent systems.

The purpose of this paper is to analyze the mechanism and filter efficacy of accumulation generation operator (AGO)/inverse accumulation generation operator (IAGO) in the frequency domain.

The AGO/IAGO in time domain will be transferred to the frequency domain by the Fourier transform. Based on the consistency of the mathematical expressions of the AGO/IAGO in the gray system and the digital filter in digital signal processing, the equivalent filter model of the AGO/IAGO is established. The unique methods in digital signal processing systems “spectrum analysis” of AGO/IAGO are carried out in the frequency domain.

Through the theoretical study and practical example, benefit of spectrum analysis is explained, and the mechanism and filter efficacy of AGO/IAGO are quantitatively analyzed. The study indicated that the AGO is particularly suitable to act on the system's behavior time series in which the long period parts is the main factor. The acted sequence has good effect of noise immunity.

The AGO/IAGO has a wonderful effect on the processing of some statistical data, e.g. most of the statistical data related to economic growth, crop production, climate and atmospheric changes are mainly affected by long period factors (i.e. low-frequency data), and most of the disturbances are short-period factors (high-frequency data). After processing by the 1-AGO, its high frequency content is suppressed, and its low frequency content is amplified. In terms of information theory, this two-way effect improves the signal-to-noise ratio greatly and reduces the proportion of noise/interference in the new sequence. Based on 1-AGO acting, the information mining and extrapolation prediction will have a good effect.

The authors find that 1-AGO has a wonderful effect on the processing of data sequence. When the 1-AGO acts on a data sequence X, its low-pass filtering effect will benefit the information fluctuations removing and high-frequency noise/interference reduction, so the data shows a clear exponential change trends. However, it is not suitable for excessive use because its equivalent filter has poles at the non-periodic content. But, because of pol effect at zero frequency, the 1-AGO will greatly amplify the low-frequency information parts and suppress the high-frequency parts in the information at the same time.

Work from home has become as regular as the traditional commuting system after the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic. Previous studies have discussed the influence of working at home on the work–family interface. However, there is limited understanding of how diverse workforces manage their work–family issues with various family-friendly policies. This study aims to bridge this research gap by examining the collective influence of work conditions and family-friendly policies on work–family balance.

A survey experiment featuring two working conditions (work from home or commuting) × four family-friendly policies (household subsidy, family-friendly supervisor, financial profit, paid leave vs no policy) was approached based on 703 valid responses in China.

The results indicate that family-friendly policies are more effective under the work-from-home condition than the commuting condition, household subsidies and financial profits are considered more helpful for work–family balance under the work-from-home condition and employees’ policy preferences depend on personal identity and work conditions, which help them maintain work and family issues concurrently.

This study explores the joint impact of work conditions and family-friendly policies from a situational perspective. This study indicated that professional organizations need to perform delicacy management considering policy preferences. Moreover, changing working arrangements help employees facilitate their work–family balance.

This paper aims to improve the tribological performance of grease-lubricated spherical plain bearings (SPBs) under heavy load, dimple-type textures were prepared by laser on the outer surface of the inner ring. The influence of roughness parameters of a textured surface on reducing friction coefficient and temperature rise was also explored.

This study adopts a laser processing method to fabricate dimple-type textures. Three-dimensional roughness parameters were used to characterize the textured surfaces. The friction coefficients of five SPBs with surface texture and one original commercially available SPB without surface texture under different nominal loads were measured on a self-established test rig. The data of temperature rise were obtained by nine embedded thermal couples.

The results indicate that SPBs with textures generally exhibit lower friction coefficients than the original SPB without textures. The dimple depth has a significant influence on improving the tribological performance, which coincides with the analysis by surface roughness parameters. A textured surface with negative Ssk and high Vvc has the minimum temperature rise.

As it is too difficult to arrange sensors into heavy-load SPBs, there are few reports about the temperature characteristics. Through nine embedded thermal couples, the distribution of temperature rise on the inner ring of SPBs was given in this study. The positive effect of surface texture on reducing temperature rise and friction coefficient was verified, which is beneficial for the design of heavy-load SPBs.

The purpose of this paper is to develop a dynamic opportunistic maintenance policy for a continuously monitored multi‐unit series system with integrating imperfect effect into maintenance activities.

Based on the hybrid hazard rate recursion rule, an imperfect maintenance model for a continuously monitored single‐unit system was proposed. Then by introducing the “set‐up cost” concept, a dynamic opportunistic maintenance (OM) policy for multi‐unit‐series‐systems was developed. The optimal maintenance activities were determined by maximizing the short‐term cumulative OM cost saving for the continuously monitored system. A numerical example is given to show how the proposed dynamic OM policy proceeded.

The simulation results imply that the proposed policy is better than the policy to maintain the system units separately and the policy to maintain the system units together.

The proposed dynamic maintenance policy can fulfill the real plant environment that maintenance action is always imperfect and maintenance information is only available over a short term. Under this policy, the maintenance manager can easily and quickly adjust the maintenance schedule at any moment according to the working condition of the system.

The proposed model in this paper integrates the imperfect maintenance effect into condition‐based predictive maintenance, and the system maintenance schedule is dynamically determined based on the short‐term information of the system.

The purpose of this paper is to explore how consumers’ trust is enhanced by e-commerce-based agribusiness companies. It also aims to shed light on the role of social commerce in improving consumers’ trust.

To achieve the research purpose, an in-depth multiple case study is performed. In this study, three cases in short food supply chain (SFSC) in China are selected, and they are all e-commerce agribusiness companies. They adopted common ways to build up, maintain and reinforce consumers’ trust.

It is revealed that the companies innovatively adopted social commerce, both online and offline, to overcome the trust problems usually faced by e-commerce companies. It is also shown that offline contact with potential consumers is an important first step for agribusiness e-commerce entrepreneurs to build up trust with consumers.

By adopting a multiple case study method, the research has limited generalizability to other types of SFSCs. Since the findings are from Chinese agribusiness e-commerce companies, the generalization to other sectors must be done with caution.

Some managerial implications are given as follows: first, offline contact with consumers could be realized through different channels. Taking advantage of existing social network or trying to find consumers in urban communities might be effective ways. Second, trust building with consumers is not an easy task, managers need to emphasize trust building, trust maintaining, as well as trust reinforcing with consumers. In agri-food sector, managers might need to specifically address the importance of food safety and quality so as to not lose consumer trust in one night.

The study has mainly two contributions: first, it has managerial implications for agribusiness e-commerce entrepreneurs, addressing the important role of social presence in building up consumer trust. Second, it contributes to social presence and social relations literature by providing new empirical evidence from e-commerce in agri-food sector and in developing countries.

This paper seeks to fill the literature gap that lacks of exploring negotiation strategy with competing partners under asymmetric production-cost information. The purpose of this paper is to examine firms’ optimal contract negotiation strategies in buyer–supplier–supplier triads where there are concurrent negotiations between the retailer and two competing manufacturers.

The authors consider a two-echelon supply chain, in which the retailer has the option of segmented or unified negotiation policy, whereas the two competing manufacturers can withhold or share production cost information in the negotiation. Based on game theory, the authors derive the manufacturers’ optimal wholesale prices and the retailer’s optimal retail prices with eight possible scenarios. Optimal strategic choices and operational decisions are then explored through the comparative analysis of equilibriums of eight possible scenarios.

The authors find that the retailer will adopt different negotiation strategies depending on manufacturers’ decisions on sharing or withholding their production-cost information. When both manufacturers share their production-cost information, the retailer will adopt a unified negotiation policy. The high-efficiency manufacturer should adopt the same information-sharing strategy as the low-efficiency manufacturer in order to gain more profit.

The modelling helps to bring further clarity in supply chain contract negotiation by offering a conceptual framework to enhance our understanding of the effects of information-sharing strategy and negotiation policy in the negotiation process form the perspectives of all engaging parties. Managerial insights derived from the research will enable retailers and manufacturers to make informed and better strategic and operational decisions to improve market competitiveness.

This study aims to investigate the impact of skills and knowledge of employees, economic situations of the company, current IT infrastructure, payment fashion, cloud availability, and cloud privacy and security on the productivity of the human resources in the COVID-19 era.

Over the past few years, the advent of cloud-assisted technologies has dramatically advanced the Information Technology (IT)-based industries by providing everything as a service. Cloud computing is recognized as a growing technology among companies around the world. One of the most critical cloud applications is deploying systems and organizational resources, especially systems whose deployment costs are high. Manpower is one of the basic and vital resources of the organization, and organizations need an efficient workforce to achieve their goals. But, in the COVID-19 era, human resources' productivity can be reduced due to stress, high labor force, reduced organizational performance and profits, unfavorable organizational conditions, inability to manage and lack of training. Therefore, this study tries to investigate the productivity of human resources in the COVID-19 era. Data were collected from the medium-sized companies through a questionnaire. Distributed questionnaires were conducted on the Likert scale. The model is assessed using the structural equation modeling technique to examine its reliability and validity. The study is a library method and literature review. A case study was conducted through a questionnaire and statistical analysis by SPSS 25 and SMART-PLS.

Based on the findings, the skills and knowledge of employees, the economic situations of the company, payment fashion, cloud availability and the current IT infrastructures of the company have a positive impact on human resource efficiency in the COVID-19 era. But cloud privacy and security have a negative effect on the productivity of human resources. The findings can be the basis for companies and organizations in the COVID-19 era.

This study has some restrictions that need to be considered in evaluating the obtained results. First, due to the prevalence of Coronavirus, access to information from the companies under study was limited. Second, this research may have overlooked other variables that affect human resource productivity in the COVID-19 era. Prospective researchers can examine the impact of Customer Relationship Management (CRM) and Supply Chain Management (SCM) on the human resource's productivity in the COVID-19 era.

The results of this research are applicable for all companies, their departments and human resources in the COVID-19 era.

In this paper, human resources' productivity in the COVID-19 era is pointed out. The presented new model provides a complete framework for investigating cloud-based enterprise resource planning systems affect the productivity of human resources in the COVID-19 era.