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Over the last few years, distribution developments in non‐food have been considerable. Centralisation and contract distribution have gained favour, and an increasing number of companies are re‐appraising their choice of distribution channels and systems. Just as in food, distribution systems are having to be changed to meet the demands of the consumer.

One of the basic problems hindering effective implementation of the physical distribution management (PDM) concept in many companies today is organisational rigidity. By this is meant the inability and unwillingness of management to respond to the changing demands of new concepts and new techniques inherent in the successful adoption of PDM in existing corporate organisations. This rigidity manifests itself in two related ways: firstly, in the relationships structure within an organisation, and the place of physical distribution relative to other functional areas in management, such as marketing, production, finance, etc., and secondly, in the characteristics of distribution executives and their perceived role within an organisation.

Physical distribution organisations may be defined as organisational units whose duty is to administer economic activities that impact upon the flow of finished goods between points of production and consumption. Physical distribution components occupy a unique role in the organisation. Their mission has been defined as “getting the right assortment of materials to the right location in an efficient manner timely to marketing and manufacturing requirements”. To accomplish this mission there must be continual interaction between suppliers of materials and receivers of materials. Material suppliers can be thought of as the rest of the organisation of which the physical distribution component is a part, primarily the production or manufacturing component. Receivers of materials are the organisation's customers or distribution points. The physical distribution organisation, by virtue of the activities it performs, must deal with both the internal suppliers and the external receivers.

The physical distribution function of a firm is a complex process. It consists of all the activities involved in the flow of goods from the raw material supplier to the final consumer and incorporates the major activity centres of purchasing, warehousing, transportation, order processing, and inventory control. The goal of a firm's distribution operation is to insure that established customer service levels are achieved at a minimum total cost.

This study aims to estimate the firm size distributions that belong to the service sector and manufacturing sector in Korea.

When estimating the firm size distribution, the author considers the following two major factors. First, the firm size distribution can have a gamma distribution rather than traditional accepted distributions such as Pareto distribution or log-normal distribution. In particular, industry-specific enterprises can have different size distributions of the type of gamma distribution. Second, the firm size distribution that is applied to this study’s data set should reflect a number of factors. For example, estimating mixture gamma distribution for firm size distribution should be required and compared, because the total amount of configuration data is composed of small businesses, medium-sized and large companies.

Using 8,230 number of firm data in 2013, the author estimates mixture gamma distribution for the firm size.

From the comparison, empirical results are found for the following characteristics of core firm size distribution: first, the firm size distribution of the manufacturing sector has a longer tail than firm size distribution of the service sector. Second, the manufacturing firm size distribution dominates the entire country firm size distribution. Third, one factor among the three factors that make up the mixed gamma firm size distribution is described for 99 per cent of the firm size distributions. From the estimated firm size distributions of the service sector and manufacturing sector in Korea, the author simply implies the strategy and policy implications for the start-up firm.

The concept of the evolution of the distribution function is used to derive an energy‐scale distribution that is able to describe transport phenomena, including inter‐valley transfer effect, in the scale as small as the energy relaxation time. The energy‐scale distribution is used to study the evolution of electrons in n‐type GaAs under the influence of rapid change in field. Results indicate that, near the peak of strong velocity overshoot or the bottom of pronounced undershoot in the Γ valley caused by the rapid change in field, the energy‐scale distribution can not respond as fast as the distribution function calculated from the Monte Carlo method. The average velocity resulting from the energy‐scale distribution therefore leads to less pronounced overshoot and undershoot than those obtained from the Monte Carlo method. However, since velocity overshoot and undershoot are not pronounced in the L‐valleys, the L‐valley energy‐scale distribution is in excellent agreement with that determined by the Monte carlo simulation.

The lack of a satisfactory theory of personal income distribution is a problem that economists have pondered for most of the twentieth century. In 1912 Irving Fisher wrote:

The purpose of this paper is to propose the group acceptance sampling plans for when the lifetime of the submitted product follows the Pareto distribution.

The single‐point approach (only consumer's risk) is used to find the plan parameter of the proposed plan for specified values of consumer's risk, producer's risk, acceptance number, number of testers and experiment time.

Tables are constructed using the Poisson and the weighted Poisson distribution. Extensive tables are provided for practical use.

The tables in this paper can be used only when the lifetime of a product follows the Pareto distribution of 2nd kind.

The result can be used to test the product to save cost and time of the experiment. The use of the weighted Poisson distribution provides the less group size (sample size) as than the plans in the literature.

By implementing the proposed plan, the experiment cost can be minimized.

The novelty of this paper is that Poisson and the weighted Poisson distributions are used to find the plan parameter of the proposed plan instead of the binomial distribution when the lifetime of submitted product follows the Pareto distribution of 2nd kind.

In the past few years significant changes in computer technology have taken place. The development of the mini and micro computer for business applications has occurred in the past five years. New mass storage devices, faster central processing units and more sophisticated input/output devices have also been developed recently. These technological developments have fostered further use of the computer in the management of physical distribution operations. This paper describes the nature of the changes in distribution operations and in the distributions manager's use of the computer to control distribution activities. The survey reported in this paper explores the changes in the use of the computer to control all distribution management activities. Comparisons are drawn with a similar survey conducted in 1972. The paper also presents more detailed information about the use of the computer as a diagnostic and planning tool than has been presented before.

This research examines recent changes in retail distribution and the implications of such changes on the logistical support to stores in Scotland. As increasing volumes of stock are channelled through warehouses controlled by retailers, stock is being centralised in large regional distribution centres (RDCs) serving wide geographical markets. Scotland is geographically marginal to the mainstream operations of most British retailers; the research therefore focused upon the current pattern of retail distribution facilities in Scotland and the future demand for sites by retailers and third party contractors acting on their behalf. Data were collected by personal interview and postal questionnaire from a total of 63 multiple retailers and 23 distribution companies. Most retail multiples supply their Scottish outlets from RDCs in England, either by a direct trunk haul or via intervening transhipment or demountable points. There has been a tendency for both manufacturers and retailers to withdraw stockholding from Scotland and serve the Scottish market from warehouses in England. Many of these companies, however, continue to require a break‐bulk operation north of the border. While the main phase of RDC development appears to be over, particularly in the grocery trade, it is likely that significant new investment in distribution facilities in Scotland will occur in the near future. Seventeen of the retailers in the survey expected to undertake some form of distribution development by 1995, eight of them anticipated setting up an RDC. In aggregate terms this translates into warehouse demand for around 80,000 square metres and approximately 20‐25 hectares of land. Although this and past investment has created thousands of jobs, job losses have also occurred through various displacement effects, most notably the rationalisation of retailers′ supply systems, the decimation of manufacturers′ depot networks and the closure of contractors′ common user depots.