Search results for "Capacity utilization"
showing 5 items of 5 documents
A data analysis approach to evaluate the impact of the capacity utilization on the energy consumption of wastewater treatment plants
2019
Abstract The reduction of energy consumption in Waste Water Treatment Plants (WWTPs) is a challenge for the scientific community and for the public authorities. A source of excessive energy cost is the mismatching between operational and design inflow (i.e. capacity utilization): this issue is very relevant above all in areas with high demographic seasonality. Consequently, it is really important to have operational decision criteria to evaluate the impact of a low capacity utilization on energy consumption. In order to provide the scientific community and the plant managers with an adequate criterion, we propose a user-friendly methodology to identify critical conditions of capacity utiliz…
The geography of Spanish bank branches
2014
This article analyzes the determinants of bank branch location in Spain taking the role of geography explicitly into account. After a long period of intense territorial expansion, especially by savings banks, many of these firms are now involved in merger processes triggered off by the financial crisis, most of which entail the closing of many branches. However, given the contributions of this type of banks to limit financial exclusion, this process might exacerbate the consequences of the crisis for some disadvantaged social groups. Related problems such as new banking regulation initiatives (Basel III), or the current excess capacity in the sector add further relevance to this problem. We…
The Export Strategy and SMEs Employment Resilience During Slump Periods
2021
Abstract The Spanish economy was the most hit by the Great Recession. It suffered a greater decrease in the gross domestic product (GDP) (affecting especially internal demand). However, it suffered a greater increase in exports (the so-called Spanish “miracle”). Particularly, Spanish SMEs incorporation into exports has been spectacular since 2008. Further, this has coincided with a huge increase in unemployment. Therefore, our main objective is to investigate the moderating role of exports in job destruction associated with recessive contexts of domestic demand using Spanish manufacturing SMEs as a case study. We obtain for SMEs that export participation helps compensate for the decrease in…
Analysis of the road traffic management system in the neural network development perspective
2019
The research goal of the paper is to present the issues connected with road traffic management systems and to illustrate a management system that uses Intelligent Transportation Systems and neural networks. The use of Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS) is a method of improving the conditions of communications, making it independent from the development of communications infrastructure. The attributes of neural networks are focused on solving the problems of optimisation, which involve the development of optimal strategies for traffic management. The proposed road traffic management system that uses ITS and neural networks can be applied in prediction of the conditions of communication…
Pricing Policies of Excess Capacity in Make to Order Production Systems
2014
The research concerns a make to order manufacturing environment and two classes of customers who submit orders. The core customers have a contract with the firm at fixed services level (price and due date). The short-term customers submit the orders based on the price set by the firm. In this paper, it is proposed a pricing policy based on fuzzy logic to set the price for the short-term customers. The fuzzy approach captures the state of the manufacturing systems in terms of congestion in order to set the price. The policy proposed is compared to a fixed price, and to a state-dependent policy based on three levels of price. A discrete event simulation environment is used to test the propose…