Supplier assessment based on corporate social responsibility criteria in Indian automotive and textile industry sectors

Mandatory disclosure of corporate social responsibility (CSR) reporting forces supply chain members to consider CSR issues in developed countries. Researchers have viewed CSR content within different themes, such as human (social), ethical and environmental perspectives. So far, in India, very little research has been done to study the impact of human issues in employment (social), ethical issues in business operations and pollution (environmental) issues at both regional and specific sector level. This paper emphasises the perspective view of supplier selection, considering CSR issues as opposed to traditional methods using conventional selection criteria such as cost, quality, delivery and service. It employs six CSR criteria such as discrimination, abuse of human rights, child labour, long working hours, unfair competition and pollution to assess small- and medium-sized suppliers who produce and deliver products to the automotive and textile industry sectors. The results of this study indicate that to prevent discrimination against pay variation, minimise cases of abuse of human rights and incidence of child labour, suppliers must put in place proper policies and procedures regarding employment contract, identification and verification records. Furthermore, to reduce unfair competition, suppliers of both automotive and textile sectors may introduce processes for investigating reports of unethical conducts and take severe disciplinary action. The suppliers of both automotive and textile sectors believe that the competitive advantage can be achieved through environmental oriented business practices. However, they differ in their approaches in attaining this objective.     

Supplier evaluation and selection for sustainable supply chain management under uncertainty conditions

Abstract

With the global increasing importance of sustainable development, sustainable supply chain has gained value among both researchers and industrialists in the last decade. Nowadays, industries are facing pressure from government legislation and the global competition in addition to the pressure from their clients to carry out environmentally – conscious actions. Thus, organisations are required to implement actions to enhance their level of both environmental and economic performances. Traditionally, organisations use criteria such as cost, quality and on-time delivery to evaluate their suppliers’ performance. Although there have been numerous studies on the common criteria for these assessments, very few studies have taken sustainable criteria into consideration. Thereupon, this study tries to put forward a complete model for selection and evaluation of the suppliers, considering three criteria for sustainability, thus using the fuzzy group graph theory and matrix approach. It is an innovative approach based on fuzzy logic and group decision-making, which aims to treat lack of certainty in selection and evaluation of suppliers. We will also discuss a case study in the industry to demonstrate the effectiveness of our proposed approach.     

SIL评估及HAZOP分析技术在海洋平台安全评估中的应用

针对海洋平台安全仪表系统安全可靠性要求的提高,分析海洋平台安全仪表系统SIL评估及HAZOP分析方法,对SIL评估的必要性、目的和内容、方法与流程进行论述,对SIL等级选择的HAZOP和LOPA分析方法进行介绍,对SIL评估过程中的重要数据问题进行阐述,对SIL等级验证中各参数和失效数据的选取进行说明。通过案例进一步论述SIL评估及HAZOP分析技术的要点和实施步骤,针对该案例提出了提高SIL等级的建议和措施,为海洋平台安全仪表系统的SIL评估提供重要的参考和依据。     

脉冲清灰系统选型的理论估算及试验

脉冲清灰系统是袋式除尘器和电袋除尘器的关键技术之一。通过理论估算的方法确定系统关键参数的初值,并依靠在脉冲喷吹试验平台试验的方法来获得最优的设计参数。     

Carotenoid-dependent coloration of male American kestrels predicts ability to reduce parasitic infections

The signaling function of sexually selected traits, such as carotenoid-dependent avian plumage coloration, has received a great deal of recent attention especially with respect to parasitism and immunocompetence. We argue that parasite-mediated models of sexual selection may have an implicit temporal component that many researchers have ignored. For example, previous studies have demonstrated that carotenoid-dependent traits can signal past parasite exposure, current levels of parasitism, or the ability of individuals to manage parasitic infections in the future. We examined repeated measures of carotenoid-dependent skin color and blood parasitism in American kestrels (Falco sparverius) to distinguish whether coloration might signal current parasitism or the potential to deal with infections in the future. We found no evidence that coloration was related to current levels of parasitism in either sex. However, coloration of males significantly predicted their response to parasitism; males with bright orange coloration during prelaying, when mate choice is occurring, were more likely than dull yellow males to reduce their levels of infection by the time incubation began. Coloration during prelaying may advertise a male’s health later in the breeding season. For kestrels, the ability to predict future health would be highly beneficial given the male’s role in providing food to his mate and offspring. Coloration of females was not a significant predictor of parasitism in the future, and we provide several possible explanations for this result.     

Modeling and analysis of nest-site selection by honeybee swarms: the speed and accuracy trade-off

Nest-site selection in honeybees is a process of social decision making in which the scout bees in a swarm locate several potential nest sites, evaluate them, and select the best one by means of competitive signaling. We develop a model of this process and validate that the model possesses the key features of the bees' decision-making process, as revealed by prior empirical studies. Next, we use the model to study the “design” of the nest-site selection process, with a focus on how certain behavioral parameters have been tuned by natural selection to achieve a balance between speed and accuracy. First, we study the effects of the quorum threshold and the dance decay rate. We show that evolution seems to have settled on values for these two parameters that seek a balance between speed and accuracy of decision making by minimizing the time needed to achieve a consensus and maximizing the probability that the best site is chosen. Second, we study the adaptive tuning of the tendency of bees to explore for vs be recruited to a site. We show that this tendency appears to be tuned to regulate the positive feedback process of recruitment to ensure both a reasonably rapid choice and a low probability of a poor choice. Finally we show that the probability of choosing the best site is proportional to its quality, but that this proportionality depends on its quality relative to other discovered sites.

Direct male-male competition can facilitate invasion of new colour types in Lake Victoria cichlids

The possibility that disruptive sexual selection alone can cause sympatric speciation is currently a subject of much debate. The initial difficulty for new and rare ornament phenotypes to invade a population, and the stabilisation of the resulting polymorphism in trait and preference make this hypothesis problematic. Recent theoretical work indicates that the invasion is facilitated if males with the new phenotype have an initial advantage in male-male competition. We studied a pair of sympatric incipient species of cichlids from Lake Victoria, in which the red (Pundamilia nyererei) and blue males (P. pundamilia) vigorously defend territories. Other studies suggested that red phenotypes may have repeatedly invaded blue populations in independent episodes of speciation. We hypothesised that red coloration confers an advantage in male-male competition, assisting red phenotypes to invade. To test this hypothesis, we staged contests between red and blue males from a population where the phenotypes are interbreeding morphs or incipient species. We staged contests under both white and green light condition. Green light effectively masks the difference between red and blue coloration. Red males dominated blue males under white light, but their competitive advantage was significantly diminished under green light. Contests were shorter when colour differences were visible. Experience of blue males with red males did not affect the outcome of a contest. The advantage of red over blue in combats may assist the red phenotype to invade blue populations. The apparently stable co-existence of red and blue incipient species in many populations of Lake Victoria cichlids is discussed.Communicated by C. St. Mary     

Should We Protect the Strong or the Weak? Risk,Resilience, and the Selection of Marine Protected Areas

Abstract: It is thought that recovery of marine habitats from uncontrollable disturbance may be faster in marine reserves than in unprotected habitats. But which marine habitats should be protected, those areas at greatest risk or those at least risk? We first defined this problem mathematically for 2 alternate conservation objectives. We then analytically solved this problem for both objectives and determined under which conditions each of the different protection strategies was optimal. If the conservation objective was to maximize the chance of having at least 1 healthy site, then the best strategy was protection of the site at lowest risk. On the other hand, if the goal was to maximize the expected number of healthy sites, the optimal strategy was more complex. If protected sites were likely to spend a significant amount of time in a degraded state, then it was best to protect low‐risk sites. Alternatively, if most areas were generally healthy then, counterintuitively, it was best to protect sites at higher risk. We applied these strategies to a situation of cyclone disturbance of coral reefs on Australia's Great Barrier Reef. With regard to the risk of cyclone disturbance, the optimal reef to protect differed dramatically, depending on the expected speed of reef recovery of both protected and unprotected reefs. An adequate consideration of risk is fundamental to all conservation actions and can indicate surprising routes to conservation success.     

Multiple paternity in meadow voles (Microtus pennsylvanicus): investigating the role of the female

Multiple paternity in single litters conceived in the wild was recently demonstrated in meadow voles (Microtuspennsylvanicus). In this study, we used an experimental approach (males tethered and females allowed to mate freely with one or several males) to investigate the role of female meadow voles in multiple paternity. We found that among 29 (of 39) females that copulated during our experiment, 79.3% chose to mate with more than one male. Female behavior in meadow voles thus clearly promotes multiple paternity and their role is an active one. Some of the hypotheses explaining promiscuity in meadow voles should be reconsidered in light of this result. We do not know the primary determinant of female mate choice, but male body mass played a secondary role in driving female preferences. The partial dependence between male body mass and female choice, coupled with the active role played by females, indicates that intersexual selection has the potential for reinforcing the effects of intrasexual selection (male-male dominance relationships) in this species. Finally, we demonstrate that the time period over which tests are conducted is an important part of the design of experiments aimed at understanding the role of females in multiple paternity. Received: 14 April 1998 / Accepted after revision: 12 September 1998     

Solving the probabilistic reserve selection problem

The Reserve Selection Problem consists in selecting certain sites among a set of potential sites for biodiversity protection. In many models of the literature, the species present and able to survive in each site are supposed to be known. Here, for every potential site and for every species considered, only the probability that the species survives in the site is supposed to be known. The problem to select, under a budgetary constraint, a set of sites which maximizes the expected number of species is known in the literature under the name of probabilistic reserve selection problem. In this article, this problem is studied with species weighting to deal differently with common species and rare species. A spatial constraint is also considered preventing to obtain too fragmented reserve networks. As in Polasky et al. (2000), the problem is formulated by a nonlinear mathematical program in Boolean variables. Camm et al. (2002) developed a mixed-integer linear programming approximation that may be solved with standard integer programming software. The method gives tight approximate solutions but does not allow to tell how far these solutions are from the optimum. In this paper, a slightly different approach is proposed to approximate the problem. The interesting aspect of the approach, which also uses only standard mixed-integer programming software, is that it leads, not only to an approximate solution, but also to an upper limit on the true optimal value. In other words, the method gives an approximate solution with a guarantee on its accuracy. The linear reformulation is based on an upper approximation of the logarithmic function by a piecewise-linear function. The approach is very effective on artificial instances that include up to 400 sites and 300 species. Within an average CPU time of about 12 min, near-optimal solutions are obtained with an average relative error, in comparison to the optimum, of less than 0.2%.