Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Chicago, 1997. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 146-158).

No description available.

M.A. / This project examines the phenomenon of subcontracting as it occurs in the gold mining industry in South Africa. The point of departure for the researcher is that subcontracting is not something totally new in the gold mining industry. What seems to be new is the manner in which it is currently used and this could be attributed to variety of factors, which have made reliance on permanent workforce not viable for the employers. Downscaling and large-scale retrenchments have become the order of the day. This happens at a time when there is an unprecedented increase in the number of subcontract workers. This has raised concerns among organised labour who, feel that such form of atypical employment is meant to undermine the gains of the labour movement has gained over the years. Such perception is made even more real by the decline in labour standards. Contractors actively discourage their employees from joining trade unions. Subcontract workers are paid wages as low as R700 a month, while they are forced to work under dangerous conditions. Their terms of contracts are unilaterally changed without any consultation and they can be easily dismissed without any warning, in some cases dismissed for being injured at work. Tensions mount between subcontract and permanent workers as the latter view the former as a threat to their job security. All this makes subcontracting an interesting area of study and this is even made more so by the fact that little has been done to investigate subcontracting in South Africa's gold mines. / Prof. Peter. Alexander

Abstract not available

Cellular Manufacturing Systems (CMS) have provided significant increase in manufacturing productivity over the last two decades. This has been achieved because CMS can overcome the problems due to frequent setups, high in-process inventories, long throughput times and complex planning and coordination commonly associated with a batch-type manufacturing operation. The underlying concept of CMS is the grouping of parts into part families and the machines that process these parts into machine cells in order to achieve manufacturing efficiencies. Creating machine cells which can perform all operations of a part without requiring the part to visit one or more cells other than its own is hard to achieve, if not impossible. Hence, in the design of CMS, one tries to minimize the material handling costs incurred due to the movements of parts to other cells. Duplication of "bottleneck" machines that process parts assigned to other cells into the appropriate cells and subcontracting of "bottleneck" parts that require one or more operation on machines assigned to another cell are two important methods utilized to form disaggregated manufacturing cells in order to minimize the material handling costs. A mathematical model and a solution algorithm is developed to simultaneously deal with the issues of duplicating bottleneck machines and subcontracting bottleneck parts. Because there is a cost associated with the process of duplication and subcontracting, the benefits attained are analyzed for different budgetary constraints encountered by a firm. The algorithm was tested on three different problem structures for a range of budgetary restrictions. The results obtained show that the algorithm could be used by the industry to solve problems encountered in the design of CMS. / Graduation date: 1994

This study is about contract evaluation and selection in an environment where there exist two or more parties, namely a producer and one or more outsourcing companies offering different contract options. The producer faces dynamic deterministic demand, which is known at the beginning of the planning horizon, and has to decide on the quantities of production, outsourcing, inventory carrying, and backorder. Among these decisions, the producer has the opportunity of subcontracting from a set of options offered by the subcontractors with possibly distinct contract terms. The contract options are in terms of length of the contract, fixed and variable costs associated with order placed, delivery lead-time and capacity guaranteed for use. A mathematical model is used for the evaluation of available options and for the selection of the ones in order to minimize cost incurred by the producer. The model provides desired quantities of production, inventory carrying and backorder, and also determines how different contract options will beused through the planning horizon. Extensive experimentation is performed using different factors affecting the optimal solution of the model in specific instances. These results are used in order to come up with a framework where various contracting schemes for subcontracting can be obtained. This framework can assist the producer in the decision of alternative courses of actions to be taken by him as a function of contract terms.

Thesis--Lund. / Added t.p. with thesis statement inserted. Summary in English. Includes bibliographical references (p. 131-145 (2d group)).

Thesis (M.S. in architecture)--Washington State University, May 2010. / Title from PDF title page (viewed on July 21, 2010). "School of Architecture and Construction Management." Includes bibliographical references (p. 94-97).

published_or_final_version / Community Medicine / Master / Master of Public Health

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Melbourne, 1995. / Typescript. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 284-300).