A consumer characteristic profile of the snowmobile owners in Utah was compiled and compared to the general population in Utah and the United States. Other statistics were compiled which included user preferences of snowmobiling sites and machine characteristics. Data were collected by a mail survey of snowmobilers during the 1974-75 snowmobiling season. Approximately 315 questionnaires were analyzed. Additional data were collected from the Utah Division of Parks and Recreation. Total economic rent values were estimated for 58 sites in Utah . These values were then separated into location and quality values. This was done by reallocating trips to sites by means of a least cost programming technique. The value attributed to location was subtracted from the total and the residual is attributed to site quality. Ten site characteristics were chosen to analyze site quality. Stepwise regression was used to show this relationship. Increasing site carrying capacity was undertaken in the model to show the effect on site quality. An exposition factor for number nf trips was derived by using the largest use month, the month with the greatest number of trips recorded. Comparisons were then made between the unexpanded data to that and the expanded data.

This thesis studies the influence of horizontal competition on supply chain performance. Unlike most of the existing literature which focuses on horizontal competition between echelon levels, we look at both the supply chain and the individual company??s performance with the presence of supply chain to supply chain competition. Specifically, this thesis is composed of three individual research papers. The first paper deals with chain-to-chain horizontal competition and considers price competition among an arbitrary number of supply chains by comparing two cases. In the first case each supply chain is vertically integrated, while in the second, decentralised, case the manufacturers and retailers act independently. We explore the effect of varying the level of price competition on the profitts of the industry participants and demonstrate the important role played by the spread of underlying market shares. The coefficient of variation of these market shares determines whether decentralised supply chains can outperform integrated supply chains with an appropriate level of competition. The second and third papers focus on in-chain horizontal competition with capacity constraints. In the second paper, we look at a supply chain with one manufacturer and two downstream retailers. Based on total capacity available, the manufacturer needs to find ways to best use the capacity by determining whether or not to release the capacity information to retailers. The third paper looks at competition in a more complicated supply chain structure. A retailer buys three brands of products from two manufacturers. One manufacturer produces both branded and private label products, and the other one manufactures a branded product only. With our model, we are able to determine the profits of each supply chain agent. At the end of the paper, we use data from the Australian milk industry and discuss a problem in which a manufacturer needs to decide how to allocate capacity between the national brand and the private label when there is a capacity shortage.

This research project has explored the issues surrounding East Gippsland Institute of TAFE's (EGTAFE) inability to expand the training in Hospitality and Tourism (H&T). EGTAFE is a small regional public provider of training covering a large area in regional Victoria and it has a pivotal role in the provision of knowledge and skills to assist Gippsland's transition to an innovative economy (www.egtafe.vic.edu.au/corporate/corporate). During this project discussions were held with a variety of stakeholders, namely local business owner/operators in the H&T Industry, researching issues such as industry skills requirements and also employers perception of EGTAFE. Action Research was employed as the methodology of this research project, as the cyclical process of planning, acting, observing and reflecting has facilitated the understanding and development of improvements to practices across the Hospitality and Service Industries (H&SI) team. Interviews, questionnaires and workshops were all part of the data collection method. As a result of this research project the main outcomes that have emerged are 1) a better understanding of the needs of employers and employees; and 2) the development of a strong collaborative partnership with employers. Due to the connections with industry that were made because of this research project, the H&SI team is now in a position not only to deliver industry skills requirements, but also to be a partner in the process.

This paper presents an optimal method and a heuristic approach which aims at maximizing the profit when responding to a set of customer enquiries under limited capacity. The model takes into consideration the quantity of available-to-promise (ATP) which measures the capability to fill customer orders, along with enquiry quantity and product price. The optimal method and the heuristic approach are tested using ATP, product price and enquiry quantity each at their different levels. From the example conducted, it is found that (1) the optimal model can help to make appropriate decision for selecting a subset of enquiries, and (2) the heuristic approach can produce a result within 5% from the optimum achieved by optimal method for most parameter settings. / Singapore-MIT Alliance (SMA)

This article studies the static pricing problem of a network service provider who has a fixed capacity and faces different types of customers (classes). Each type of customers can have its own capacity constraint but it is assumed that all classes have the same resource requirement. The provider must decide a static price for each class. The customer types are characterized by their arrival process, with a price-dependant arrival rate, and the random time they remain in the system. Many real-life situations could fit in this framework, for example an Internet provider or a call center, but originally this problem was thought for a company that sells phone-cards and needs to set the price-per-minute for each destination. Our goal is to characterize the optimal static prices in order to maximize the provider's revenue. We note that the model here presented, with some slight modifications and additional assumptions can be used in those cases when the objective is to maximize social welfare. / Singapore-MIT Alliance (SMA)

Many large-scale random graphs (e.g., the Internet) exhibit complex topology, nonhomogeneous spatial node distribution, and preferential attachment of new nodes. Current topology models for ad-hoc networks mostly consider a uniform spatial distribution of nodes and do not capture the dynamics of evolving, real-world graphs, in which nodes "gravitate" toward popular locations and self-organize into non-uniform clusters. In this thesis, we first investigate two constraints on scalability of ad-hoc networks – network reliability and node capacity. Unlike other studies, we analyze network resilience to node and link failure with an emphasis on the growth (i.e., evolution) dynamics of the entire system. Along the way, we also study important graph-theoretic properties of ad-hoc networks (including the clustering coefficient and the expected path length) and strengthen our generic understanding of these systems. Finally, recognizing that under existing uniform models future ad-hoc networks cannot scale beyond trivial sizes, we argue that ad-hoc networks should be modeled from an evolution standpoint, which takes into account the well-known "clustering" phenomena observed in all real-world graphs. This model is likely to describe how future ad-hoc networks will self-organize since it is well documented that information content distribution among end-users (as well as among spatial locations) is non-uniform (often heavy-tailed). Results show that node capacity in the proposed evolution model scales to larger network sizes than in traditional approaches, which suggest that non-uniformly clustered, self-organizing, very large-scale ad-hoc networks may become feasible in the future.

This thesis presents a methodology for data aggregation for capacity management. It is assumed that there are a very large number of products manufactured in a company and that every product is stored in the database with its standard unit per hour and attributes that uniquely specify each product. The methodology aggregates products into families based on the standard units-per-hour and finds a subset of attributes that unambiguously identifies each family. Data reduction and classification are achieved using well-known multivariate statistical techniques such as cluster analysis, variable selection and discriminant analysis. The experimental results suggest that the efficacy of the proposed methodology is good in terms of data reduction.

Drucker (1994) pointed out that the management of non-profit organization is not driven by profit-making motives, but lead by a mission. Support for the organization is derived from a mission that responds to social needs. In today faced liberal and multifaceted society, the development of non-profit organizations will face competition like ordinary business enterprises. It is an important issue to the non-profit organization of how to gain confidence from the general public. This is also what motivated this study. Therefore, the objectives of the study are: (1) to understand the perspectives of social welfare non-profit organizations on capacity building; (2) to understand how social welfare non-profit organizations build organizational capacity; and (3) to investigate the relationships between capacity building, organizational effectiveness and public confidence in social welfare non-profit organizations. The subject of the study includes non-profit organizations in the city and county of Kaohsiung and Ping-Tung that provide social welfare related services. A mail questionnaire was distributed and the results analyzed by SPSS statistical software. The capacity building and competency model developed by Paul C. Light (2004) was used in explaining the relationship between capacity building and organizational effectiveness. The results of the study show, through capacity building, organizational effectiveness can be improved which further leads to credibility. In fact, the key link to capacity building is not between organizational effectiveness and public confidence, but between organizational capacity and effectiveness. But, through efforts in capacity building, not only does organizational effectiveness becomes improved, the public credibility of the organization is also enhanced, thereby leading to confidence.

The focus of this project is highway construction zones and the impact of lane closures on traffic. By measuring throughput (the number of vehicles that can flow through a work zone in a given amount of time), analysis was performed to determine the factors that affect this value. Successful data collection uncovered a paradox. Often work zones would see no queuing, indicating the lane could have been closed for longer hours. Alternatively sites with forced flow allowed fewer vehicles through the site than expected, indicating that the design value is too high, requiring shorter lane closure hours. A generic model for throughput was developed as well as a better functioning highway specific model. In addition to these models, this project developed a spreadsheet-based form of analysis named SZUDA (Simplified work Zone User Delay Analysis) that determines queue length and approximate costs associated with road user delay.

The focus of this project is highway construction zones and the impact of lane closures on traffic. By measuring throughput (the number of vehicles that can flow through a work zone in a given amount of time), analysis was performed to determine the factors that affect this value. Successful data collection uncovered a paradox. Often work zones would see no queuing, indicating the lane could have been closed for longer hours. Alternatively sites with forced flow allowed fewer vehicles through the site than expected, indicating that the design value is too high, requiring shorter lane closure hours. A generic model for throughput was developed as well as a better functioning highway specific model. In addition to these models, this project developed a spreadsheet-based form of analysis named SZUDA (Simplified work Zone User Delay Analysis) that determines queue length and approximate costs associated with road user delay.