Demob Suits: One Uniform for Another? Burtons and the Leeds Multiple Tailors' Production of Men's Demobilization Tailoring after the Second World War

This article focuses on the key role played by the Leeds multiple tailors in the production of tailoring for British servicemen demobilized after the Second World War. The government provided each man demobilized with a full outfit of clothing, including underwear, shoes, a hat, coat and tailored wool suit – — the latter commonly described as a ‘demob’ suit. The article explores the significance of demob suits and how they were received by the men who had to wear them, highlighting men’s concern about what they wore. The public rhetoric around the provision of demob suits will be considered within the context of the government restrictions on clothing of the 1940s and the way the suits were produced. The article argues that men’s experience of the made-to-measure system of tailoring by the Leeds multiples influenced many servicemen’s expectations about what constituted acceptable tailoring, fashion and standards of dress for their demob suits

Effects of Triclopyr on Variable-Leaf Watermilfoil

The objective of the study described here was to determine the effect on variable-leaf watermilfoil of various combinations of triclopyr concentrations and exposure times using dosage rates that controlled Eurasian watermilfoil under laboratory and field conditions (Netherland and Getsinger 1992, Getsinger et al. 1997, Petty et al. 1998)

Network decomposition techniques for resource-constrained project scheduling

Numerous exact algorithms have been developed for solving the resource-constrained project scheduling problem. Experimental studies have shown that currently even projects with only 60 activities cannot be optimally solved within a reasonable amount of time. Therefore heuristics employing genetic concepts, sampling strategies, simulated annealing or taboo search have been developed. Additionally truncated versions of the branch-and-bound algorithms are studied. By limiting the CPU-time, the total number of node evaluations, or the number of branching alternatives, the solution time is reduced at the expense of the quality of the generated schedules. The purpose of this paper is to study a combination of exact and heuristic elements. The project to be considered is decomposed into subprojects, the related subproblems are optimally solved, and the solutions are concatenated. The solution strategy has been implemented and tested on the benchmark instances provided by ProGen. The numerical results show that the decomposition approach outperforms the truncated version of the branch-and-bound algorithm employed. On average, the quality of the overall solution depends on the size of the subproblems, and the quality of the solutions of the subproblems. Consequently the approach will benefit from the progress made in the development of exact solution procedures

Non-equivalent search strategies for resource-constrained project scheduling

Over the years numerous branch-and-bound procedures for solving the resource-constrained project scheduling problem (RCPSP) have been developed. Enumerating delaying alternatives, extension alternatives, feasible posets, feasible sequences, feasible completion times or feasible subsets, they all aim at finding as fast as possible a makespan minimal schedule among the resource and precedence feasible ones. Some of the enumeration schemes have been modified to solve variants of the so-called resource-constrained project scheduling problem, like the resource-constrained project scheduling problem with multiple modes or with work content defined modes. We compare the enumeration of delaying alternatives and the enumeration of extension alternatives. Roughly considered the concepts that analyze only minimal delaying alternatives and the concept that analyze only maximal extension alternatives seem to be equivalent. Counterexamples will show that - in contrast to claims made in the literature - search tree reduction to minimal delaying alternatives and search tree reduction to maximal extension alternatives are not equivalent. While the former reduction preserves optimality the latter one is neither correct for the RCPSP with single execution modes nor for the RCPSP with work content defined modes

Sales force deployment by genetic concepts

Sales force management decisions belong to the major issues considered in marketing research. Among others, the alignment of sales territories has been one of the main field of work for years. Recent results have reported a strong impact of the alignment of sales territories on profit, and, thus, have directed the focus from the balancing approach to profit maximization. One of the latest models proposed is the so-called sales force deployment problem. Employing a sales response function the sales force deployment problem simultaneously considers several interacting subproblems: (1) Sales force sizing, (2) sales force location, (3) sales territory alignment, and (4) sales effort allocation are the subjects of investigation. We provide a heuristic solution approach that builds on genetic concepts. The approach is evaluated on a set of benchmark instances with sizes of practical relevance. The approach produces solutions of competitive quality at far less CPU-time than required by the state-of-the-art procedure. Moreover, simple modification of the concepts allow to deal with alternated problem settings as well. First, the per-period fixed cost of setting up a sales center can be considered as a discrete function of the amount of selling time made available. Second, the balancing approach can be portrayed. Additionally, the concepts can support man-machine interactions in an online decision support system required to adjust sales territory alignments, e.g., when new products are launched, markets shift or mergers change the portfolio of the company. As such, the operations can be employed by a decision maker in a step-by-step approach to manipulate given territory alignments

Instrumente zur operativen Entscheidung über Eigenfertigung und Fremdbezug

In der vorliegenden Untersuchung wird die operative Entscheidung über Eigenfertigung und Fremdbezug betrachtet. Exemplarisch wird dargelegt, dass klassische Entscheidungshilfen unwirtschaftliche Ergebnisse hervorbringen. Die qualitative und quantitative Fehlspezifikation der Fremdbezugsprodukte und Fremdbezugsmengen ist in der Vernachlässigung fertigungsstrukturspezifischer Information begründet. Die Integration der Information führt zu verbesserten Ergebnissen.The paper considers standard decision models to support short term make-or-buy decisions. Illustrative examples show that the classical decision aids produce only suboptimal solutions. The misspecification of products and quantities to be ordered is a result of disregarding the structure of the production process. The integration of the information improves the results

El desmontaje de creencias bien fundadas: elementos para una sociología de la historieta

We present the basic concepts for a comic book sociology that may dwell upon its history as field. Our theoretical framework, following Pierre Bourdieu, requires that we construct as field the studding of positions and relations that are formed around comics, the habitus of the social agents that occupy such positions, as well as practices that define the configuration of the field, its rules, its functioning across time. To understand the various degrees of autonomydependence in the production, as well as also the competition between the new and the old in the historical processes that can transform the field, it is the key to study the relationships between the field of comics and others fields, especially capitalist business and the professional evolution of the agents involved (publishers, scriptwriters, draftsmen, readers).Presentamos los conceptos básicos para una sociología de la historieta que indague su historia como campo. La perspectiva teórica, orientada por la de Pierre Bourdieu, requiere construir como campo el conjunto de posiciones y relaciones que se traman alrededor de la historieta, los habitus de los agentes sociales que ocupan esas posiciones, como sus prácticas que definen la configuración del campo, sus normas, su funcionamiento, a través del tiempo. Es clave estudiar las relaciones entre el campo de la historieta y otros campos, en particular con el empresarial capitalista, como también las trayectorias de los agentes (editores, guionistas, dibujantes, lectores), para comprender los grados de autonomía-dependencia en la producción, y la competencia entre lo nuevo y lo viejo en los procesos temporales de transformación del campo

Minimal delaying alternatives and semi-active timetabling in resource-constrained project scheduling

Over the years numerous branch-and-bound procedures for solving the resource-constrained project scheduling problem have been developed. Enumerating delaying alternatives, extension alternatives, feasible posets, feasible sequences or feasible subsets, they all aim at finding as fast as possible a makespan minimal schedule among the resource and precedence feasible ones. The enumeration is oftenly reduced to the dominant set of semi-active schedules by checking feasibility of local left-shifts. In this paper we show that combining the concepts of minimal delaying alternatives and local left-shifts, if not properly done, does not, as claimed in the literature, reduce the enumeration to the set of semi-active schedules

SALBLIB: Challenging instances for assembly line balancing

In this paper an improved set of benchmark instances for the simple assembly line balancing problem is presented. The benchmark set currently available consists of instances with 7 to 297 tasks to be executed. Although claims made in the literature state that instances with up to 1000 tasks can be solved to optimality (less than) ten instances of these benchmark sets are still unsolved. The majority of the unsolved instances consists of 297 tasks, and the smallest unsolved instance consists of only 75 tasks. On the one hand the instance set is very heterogenous, and on the other hand, the instances are, at least partly, highly correlated through identical networks and processing times. Consequently, the available set is not suited that well to analyze the performance of heuristic and exact algorithms experimentally. This paper presents a generator that allows the systematic generation of benchmark instances, and thus the systematic evaluation of algorithmic performance. In this paper new systematically generated benchmark instances are presented. The instance generator employs some features of the well-known program package ProGen, which has been developed for the generation of benchmark instances for the resource-constrained project scheduling problem. However, for the simple assembly line balancing problem the generation of the processing times of the tasks is of particular importance. The instances generated consist of 50, 75, and 100 tasks. The computational results obtained by one of the most efficient exact solution procedures are reported. The study reveals that even instances with 50 tasks cannot be solved to optimality within a reasonable amount of time. The instances as well as the lower and the upper bounds can be loaded from our web-server. Moreover, improved solutions can be submitted via e-mail. The solutions are checked and the library is updated accordingly. Depending on the progress made in the development of exact and heuristic solution procedures the library is enhanced and new benchmark instances are added