Amir H. Abdekhodaee

• Swinburne University of Technology

Technology is recognised as playing a part in the changing landscape in higher education; altering delivery modes and providing flexible opportunities for learning. Research into the use of wikis has shown that they provide many opportunities for student learning and the development of twenty-first century skills, however, there has been limited su...

Education delivery models and approaches are undergoing radical change. The traditional knowledge exchange model whereby an educator imparts knowledge to students may not be best placed to develop essential skills for the 21st century (Griffin, McGaw, & Care, 2012) and is being challenged by models that encourage knowledge creation by students. Usi...

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to investigate key causal linkages of proactive environmental practices of small and medium enterprises (SMEs). Specifically, this paper studies the ways that the interactions between different stakeholders such as suppliers and customers could intensify the widespread diffusion and implementation of green tec...

We consider the strongly NP-hard problem of scheduling two-operation non-preemptable jobs on two identical parallel machines. A single server, that can handle at most one job at a time, is available to carry out the first (or setup) operation. The second operation, to be carried out on the same machine but without the server, must be executed immed...

In this paper we investigate key causal linkages in proactive environmental practices based on an empirical study of 232 Malaysian Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs). We propose a conceptual framework and test this framework using Structural Equation Modelling (SEM). The key focus of this study is to explore SMEs’ environmental initiatives and the...

Flow meter drift is a serious problem, the financial losses from which can be huge. Flow meters do not usually get much attention and a drift can go unnoticed for a long time. In this research, a novel method is presented for the early detection of flow meter drift. The method is based on statistical process control (SPC). The method can be used wi...

Just–In-Time (JIT), one of the key management concepts in Toyota Production System has been widely discussed as a successful operations management methodology. JIT is based on notions such as minimising in-process inventory, flexibility with customer demands, forced problem solving, empowering employees and consolidating supplier relationship. Whil...

The interest on environmental management has been increased significantly and now is often considered to be a mainstream challenge for organizations. Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) in part can be of particular significance as their total impact towards environmental degradation is huge. Yet this sector still has not incorporated the concept of...

Water has always been the source of growth and dispute between providers and consumers. Nowadays, water conservation and environmentally friendly technologies are becoming more important, especially in areas where access to water is expensive or restricted. Since water has become a limiting resource for economic development, accurate measurement of...

In various manufacturing and computing contexts there may be a certain period in each time interval, during which processing may continue but may not be initiated. We examine the problem of on-line scheduling in the presence of such forbidden zones, whose complements are starting time windows. We show that no on-line algorithm is better than 9 7 -c...

Abstract This paper considers the problem,of scheduling two-operation non-preemptable jobs on two identical semi- automatic machines. A single server is available to carry out the first (or setup) operation. The second operation is executed automatically, without the server. The general problem of makespan minimization is NP-hard in the strong sens...

This paper considers the deterministic problem of scheduling two-operation non-preemptable jobs on two identical semi-automatic machines. A single server is available to carry out the first (or setup) operation. The second operation is executed automatically, without the server. The general problem of makespan minimization is NP-hard in the strong...

We investigate the integration of scheduling for a rail system and some of the operations in a coal terminal system, based on representative data. The rail and terminal systems are tightly-coupled and experience a high service demand from the expensive infrastructure. This makes efficient operations essential. However no central authority is in a p...

This paper considers the problem of scheduling two identical parallel machines with a single server which is required to carry out the job setups. Job processing can then be carried out in parallel. The objective is to minimise maximum completion time, that is makespan. The problem is NP-complete in the strong sense. An integer program formulation...

In this paper, we introduce a three-stage Data Envelopment analysis (DEA) to measure the performance and risk of Australian banks over the period from 2001 to 2007. This study introduces a DuPont method to determine inputs and outputs variables of the DEA model. We break profitability to three main components as follows; risk, efficiency and effect...

Setting an effective learning experience for students is a very complex process and yet, this has become even more challenging as the numbers of students in lectures are increasing. Apart from the usual complexities such as additional administration processes and errors associated with large units, there are other critical issues that need to be ad...

This paper is based on an empirical study of environmental initiatives implementation in the Malaysian Small and Medium Enterprises' (SMEs). The key focus of this study is to explore SMEs' environmental initiatives. Environmental initiatives as defined here can be classified into three major areas: green initiatives within internal organization sys...