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In this study, we propose a tetrahedral mesh generation and adaptive refinement method for multi-chamber, multi-facet, multiscale and surface-solid mesh coupling with extremely thin layers, solving the two challenges of mesh generation and refinement in current electromagnetic simulation models.

Utilizing innovative topology transformation techniques, high-precision intersection judgment algorithms and highly reliable boundary recovery algorithms to reduce the number of Steiner locking points. The feasible space for the reposition of Steiner points is determined by using the linear programming. During mesh refinement, an edge-split method based on geometric center and boundary facets node size is devised. Solving the problem of difficult insertion of nodes in narrow geometric spaces, capable of filtering the longest and boundary edges of tetrahedrons, refining the mesh layer by layer through multiple iterations, and achieving collaborative optimization of surface and tetrahedral mesh. Simultaneously, utilizing a surface-facet preserving mesh topology optimization algorithm to improve the fit degree between the mesh and geometry.

Initial mesh generation for electromagnetic models, compared to commercial software, the method proposed in this paper has a higher pass rate and better mesh quality. For the adaptive refinement performance of high-frequency computing, this method can generate an average of 50% fewer meshes compared to commercial software while meeting simulation accuracy.

This paper proposes a complete set of mesh generation and adaptive refinement theories and methods designed for the structural characteristics of electromagnetic simulation models, which meet the needs of real-world industrial applications.

Exploring the Lean and Green relationship goes back to the beginnings of Lean manufacturing. Most cases established that companies implementing Lean have Green results. However, there are Lean practices with a higher impact on Green, but others with less impact. Therefore, this paper presents research that explores the relationship between Lean and Green in manufacturing companies and aims to determine whether Lean practices have a higher association with Green aspects.

A survey was conducted amongst manufacturing firms to determine their Lean Index (LI). The internally related elements of the Lean construct determined each firm’s LI, whilst Cronbach alpha determined internal LI consistency. The survey also identified firms developing six Green aspects: International Organisation for Standardisation (ISO) 14001, ISO 50001, general Green aspects and the specific aspects of materials, energy and water. An individual sample t-test shows different LI levels of association for each Green aspect. Binomial logistic regression shows the LI element association for each Green aspect.

LI is higher at firms reporting the inclusion of Green aspects. More than half of LI components have a statistically relevant association with the six Green aspects. In general, Ishikawa diagrams had the highest association with Green aspects whilst the lowest was seen in workers as improvement initiators. By grouping the LI elements into their categories, the Lean practices related to controlling processes have a higher association, whilst the involvement of employees has the lowest.

Further research found in this paper identifies the possibilities for investigating the specificities of each Lean tool to develop Green aspects in companies.

Practitioners learn that Lean and Green are not separate issues in business. This article provides evidence that Lean practices in place at companies are already associated with Green aspects, so integration may already be happening.

This paper provides specifics on the relationship between each Lean practice and developing Green aspects. Thus, this paper specifies the Lean practices that contribute most to Green efficiency to support the joint development of both themes.

This paper explores Lean Six Sigma principles and the DMAIC (define, measure, analyze, improve, control) methodology to propose a new Lean Six Sigma 4.0 (LSS 4.0) framework for employee occupational exams and address the real-world issue of high-variability exams that may arise.

This study uses mixed methods, combining qualitative and quantitative data collection. A detailed case study assesses the impact of LSS interventions on the exam management process and tests the applicability of the proposed LSS 4.0 framework for employee occupational exams.

The results reveal that changing the health service supplier in the explored organization caused a substantial raise in occupational exams, leading to increased costs. By using syntactic interoperability, lean, six sigma and DMAIC approaches, improvements were identified, addressing process deviations and information requirements. Implementing corrective actions improved the exam process, reducing the number of exams and associated expenses.

It is important to acknowledge certain limitations, such as the specific context of the case study and the exclusion of certain exam categories.

The practical implications of this research are substantial, providing organizations with valuable managerial insights into improving efficiency, reducing costs and ensuring regulatory compliance while managing occupational exams.

This study fills a research gap by applying LSS 4.0 to occupational exam management, offering a practical framework for organizations. It contributes to the existing knowledge base by addressing a relatively novel context and providing a detailed roadmap for process optimization.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the association between company reputation and dividend policy.

In this study, sample of 98,809 firm-year observations from 22 countries covering 2005–2016 were used.

Firm reputation concerns are associated with higher propensities to pay dividends and payout ratios. Further, this positive effect is more pronounced for firms with high free cash flows, high information asymmetry and low institutional monitoring. The results are robust to an instrumental variable approach, propensity score matching and the Heckman two-stage correction approach while addressing endogeneity concerns.

These findings have significant implications for various stakeholders, such as existing and potential investors, managers, policymakers and regulators, by providing insights into the relationship between corporate reputation and firm dividend payout decisions. Corporate reputation is highlighted as crucial for accessing finance, emphasizing the role of national regulators and policymakers in facilitating firms' efforts to improve their reputation. The study highlights the dynamics of corporate reputation and dividend payout, calling for proactive engagement from regulators and policymakers. Crafting policies conducive to reputation-building can enhance firms' financial prospects, indicating the need for strategic interventions at managerial, regulatory and policy levels. Understanding the influence of economic context is crucial for firms to tailor reputation management strategies and optimize funding opportunities in different economic environments.

Overall, results suggest that reputation serves as a disciplining mechanism, where firms will pay dividends to maintain their reputations.

Despite the deployment of state-of-the-art methodologies for project management, employee turnover in projects remains high. Such turnover has significant costs in terms of replacing personnel, potential deadline overruns and financial expenditure. Employee turnover in project contexts may stem from time-related issues associated with multiple parallel projects and short deadlines. Using person–environment fit and time congruence theories, this research examines the relationship between employee turnover intentions and individual–organizational (I–O) polychronicity fit, which captures the degree of match between individuals’ and organizational preferences for focusing on multiple tasks simultaneously.

Survey data were collected from 309 software project employees in Pakistan. Hypotheses were tested using polynomial regressions and response surface modeling.

I–O polychronicity fit is related to turnover intentions. Turnover intentions are lower when I–O polychronicity fit occurs on the lower end of the polychronicity continuum, whereas turnover intentions are higher when fit is observed on the higher end of the polychronicity continuum. The relationship between I–O polychronicity fit and turnover intentions is significantly explained by exhaustion and perceptions of work overload.

The study’s insights provide recommendations for organizations to optimally manage multitasking to help retain project employees.

These findings extend our understanding of the underlying mechanisms between I–O polychronicity fit and turnover intentions. Furthermore, this research expounds on how employee exhaustion and perceptions of work overload explain the relationship between I–O polychronicity fit and turnover intentions.

Community-generated digital content (CGDC) is one of the UK’s prime cultural assets. However, CGDC is currently “critically endangered” (Digital Preservation Coalition, 2021) due to technological and organisational barriers and has proven resistant to traditional methods of linking and integration. The challenge of integrating CGDC into larger archives has effectively silenced diverse community voices within our national collection. Our Heritage, Our Stories (OHOS), funded by the UK’s AHRC programme Towards a National Collection, responds to these urgent challenges by bringing together cutting-edge approaches from cultural heritage, humanities and computer science.

Existing solutions to CGDC integration, involving bespoke interventionist activities, are expensive, time-consuming and unsustainable at scale, while unsophisticated computational integration erases the meaning and purpose of both CGDC and its creators. Using innovative multidisciplinary methods, AI tools and a co-design process, previously unfindable and unlinkable CGDC will be made discoverable in our virtual national collection.

There currently exists a range of disconnected, fragile and under-represented community-generated heritage which is at increasing risk of loss. Therefore, OHOS will work to ensure the survival and preservation of these nationally important resources, for the future and for our shared national collection.

As we dissolve barriers to create meaningful new links across CGDC collections and develop new methods of engagement, OHOS will also make this content accessible to new and diverse audiences. This will facilitate a wealth of fresh research while also embedding new strategies for future management of CGDC into heritage practice and training and fostering newly enriching, robust connections between communities and archival institutions.

Additive manufacturing offers the ability to produce complex, flexible structures from materials like thermoplastic polyurethane (TPU) for energy-absorption applications. However, selecting optimal structural parameters to achieve desired mechanical responses remains a challenge. This study aims to investigate the influence of key structural characteristics on the energy absorption and dissipation behavior and the deformation process of 3D-printed flexible TPU line-oriented structures.

Samples with varying line orientations and infill densities were fabricated using material extrusion and subjected to quasi-static compression tests. The design of experiments methodology explored the significance of design variables and their interaction effects on energy absorption and dissipation.

The results revealed a statistically significant interaction between infill density and orientation, highlighting their combined influence; however, the effect was less pronounced compared to infill density alone. For low-density structures, changing the orientation from 0°/90° to 45°/−45° and increasing infill density enhanced energy absorption and dissipation, while high-density structures exhibited unique energy absorption behavior influenced by deformation patterns and heterogeneity levels. This study facilitates the prediction of mechanical responses and selection of suitable TPU line-oriented printed parts for energy absorbing applications.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, the present work have investigated for the first time the energy-related responses of flexible line-oriented TPU structures highlighting the distinction between the low and high density structures.

This study analyzes the mediating effect of purchasing efficiency on the relationship between purchasing analytical skills and restaurant performance.

A structured questionnaire was used to collect data from 169 restaurant managers in Dodoma, Tanzania. The collected data were analyzed by using partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM).

The results established the direct and indirect effects of purchasing analytical skills on restaurant performance. Specifically, purchasing analytical skills have positive and significant effects on restaurant performance and purchasing efficiency. Also, purchasing efficiency significantly mediates the effect of purchasing analytical skills on restaurant performance. Since purchasing analytical skills significantly influence restaurant performance, and the mediating effect of purchasing efficiency is significant, the study establishes and confirms the partial mediation effect of purchasing efficiency.

The current study solely focused on purchasing analytical skills. Future studies may examine other types of purchasing skills (technical and managerial skills) to expand the study's findings. Furthermore, different mediating variables can be used to study the indirect effect of purchasing analytical skills on restaurant performance.

This study presents empirical evidence from Tanzania, an emerging economy, on the link between purchasing analytical skills and restaurant performance. It also contributes to the body of knowledge by studying the mediating effect of purchasing efficiency in the hypothesized relationship.

This work aims to focuse on improving the performance of the new exponentially weighted moving average (NEWMA) scheme for monitoring process dispersion. The authors use the generalized time-varying fast initial response (GFIR) to further enhance the detection ability of variability NEWMA control charts at the process startup. The performance of the proposed chart and other schemes discussed in this article are evaluated; and compared using the average run length (ARL) and standard deviation run length (SDRL) measures. It is observed that the ARL of the proposed scheme is quicker in detecting small and moderate shifts in the process dispersion than its counterparts. The real-life application of the proposed scheme is presented.

The dynamic parameter of GFIR is used to enhance the detection ability of variability NEWMA control charts. The authors apply GFIR to the control limit of variability NEWMA scheme. This further narrows the control limit, hence enabling it to swiftly detect small and moderate changes in process dispersion.

The authors present the performance comparisons by examining the ARL properties of the proposed chart and its counterparts. The performance comparison shows that the proposed chart is highly sensitive in detecting small and intermediate process shifts. The real-life application presented also supports the study’s conclusion from the simulation studies. The performance comparison of the proposed chart and its counterparts shows that the proposed scheme is efficient in detecting process abnormalities, especially at the startup.

In terms of the control limits, the proposed chart is the generalized variability NEWMA control chart in which all the previously proposed NEWMA variant schemes can be obtained. Also, the newly proposed control scheme is more efficient in detecting small or moderate persistent shifts in the process dispersion.

In our societal context, the neoliberal competitive and knowledge-oriented culture still exerts a stranglehold on teachers' sense of professional autonomy giving rise to a deficit image of them as ‘excessively entitled’. The purpose of this chapter is to eschew this deficit view of teachers by bringing their agentive side to the fore. First, it explores the concept of ‘excessive teacher entitlement’ in terms of the prevalent characteristics of the culture of teaching in schools and the nature of authority wielded by teachers in this culture and its negative consequence on student learning using an excerpt from an English as Second Language (ESL) classroom in India where this study is set. This episode helps expose the teacher's unawareness of the gaps between their intention and action, a hallmark of excessive entitlement. Second, it juxtaposes an alternative image of ‘teacher as researcher’ to foreground teachers' ‘transformative activist stance’ which revolves around their ideological becoming in agentively striving to realise their ‘best-loved self’. Framed within Vygotskian Cultural-Historical Activity Theory, the principle of ‘double stimulation’ provides a powerful analytical lens to unpack the complex discursive dynamics of their practice nested within historically developing contradictions. These contradictions work tacitly to drive a wedge between teachers' intentions and action making them feel excessively entitled to passively acquiesce with the existing order of things. This study provides some signposts for teacher education about creating an environment where teachers can reclaim their transformative agency freeing themselves from the ‘excessive entitlement’ that binds their practice to the status quo and diminishes their relationships with students.