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In the quest for continuous quality improvement of both products and processes, experimental design (ED) based on Shainin’s variables search method is still playing a major role in the manufacturing community. This article presents a simple methodology in a step‐by‐step manner for Shainin’s variables search method, in terms of uncovering the key process variables or factors which influence a response or quality characteristic of interest. In order to illustrate the potential of this powerful methodology as a problem solving tool, a simple catapult experiment was carried out. The authors believe that this simple experiment can be used in the classroom to train engineers and scientists on variables search method in order to identify the most critical variables which influence the process or product performance.

The purpose of this paper is to propose a framework based on cash flow matching for computing the Solvency Capital Requirement under Solvency II.

The time horizon of the insurance liabilities is typically longer than the maturities of bonds available in the market. With the assumption that a collection of bonds will be available for purchase in the future, the authors study the cash flow matching program under interest rate lattice models.

The solution can be interpreted as the worst‐case cost and the economic capital can be found accordingly.

The paper illustrates the methodology of computing the Solvency Capital Requirement using a dynamic cash flow matching framework under lattice models. The proposed method is particularly useful for insurance products with a typical long time horizon when most duration matching techniques are not easily applicable.

Despite the abundant literature on panic buying during COVID-19 pandemic, the several causes and consequences of panic buying have been enormously ignored. The purpose of this study is to emphasize the consumer’s behavior during the COVID-19 pandemic and illustrate the comprehensive theoretical model of consumers’ panic buying to investigate its causes and consequences in a developing country empirically to uncover this gap.

The authors collected data from 419 households of all socioeconomic classes of Bangladesh. A hierarchical regression model analyzed the data.

This study finds that internal and external factors such as rumors, government strategies, fear and anxiety and health security significantly affect consumers’ panic buying behaviors. This finding supports some theories of human behavior. This study also finds that panic buying has internal and external consequences such as price hike, shortage of supply of products, dissatisfaction of consumers and increase in utility (benefit) of the products but not on consumer’s budget. This finding supports as well as contradicts some established theories of human and consumer behavior.

This study proves that panic buying cannot help the consumers and they are the ultimate sufferers of this. The findings of this study will help the government, media, suppliers and consumers to interact properly to maintain panic buying during a pandemic crisis. Giving a holistic explanation of the causes and consequences of panic buying by introducing some novel variables is a momentous strength of this study.

This issue is a selected bibliography covering the subject of leadership.

Teachers, students, librarians, scholars and domain experts often spend a lot of time and effort to select good and suitable textbooks. This study aims to propose and construct a computer-aided bibliometric system to rate textbooks. Through the software system designed here, the quality of every textbook can be easily and quickly known. This system will benefit both scholars and librarians.

Four methods were used to evaluate textbooks in this study, including: questionnaire recommendation analysis, dissertation citation analysis, library circulation analysis and bibliography analysis. The system architecture includes three subsystems: the textbook indexing and searching subsystem, the statistics added-value analysis subsystem and the citation report inquiry subsystem. An example demonstrates the usability and validity of the proposed method and system. The example uses surveying textbooks. The following percentages were used in the correlation calculation: textbook citation percentage (TCP), textbook library circulation percentage (TLP) and textbook recommend percentage (TRP).

There are three textbook assessment methods applied in this study, including: dissertation citation, library circulation and questionnaire recommendation. Dissertation citations for textbooks have a high correlation value with library circulation. The frequency correlation calculation was 0.7, while the TCP, TLP and TRP correlation calculation was 0.84. Therefore, the dissertation citation method can be accepted to evaluate textbooks effectively.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first work related to evaluating surveying textbooks using a computer-aided bibliometrics system that can deal with large amounts of data and generate results quickly. This can be applied to other fields as well.

The purpose of this paper is to review the causes of long waiting time in Hong Kong public hospitals and to suggest solutions in the service, organisational, systems, financial and policy perspectives.

The paper is a review of waiting time of public hospital services. Total joint replacement, which is one of the elective surgeries in public hospitals, is presented as a case study.

The average waiting time of semi-urgent and non-urgent patients in the accident and emergency departments of public hospitals is two hours, and that of specialist outpatient (SOP) clinics is from 1 to 144 weeks. For total joint replacement, it is from 36 to 110 months. Measures like Government subsidisation programme for the replacement surgery and employing adequate physiotherapists, Chinese medicine practitioners, clinical psychologists and nurses to reduce the waiting time are suggested. Issues concerning the healthcare system of Hong Kong, such as structural reform, service delivery model, primary care, quality and process management, and policy reviews, are also discussed.

The ‬over-reliance of public services has resulted in long waiting time in public hospitals in Hong Kong, particularly in the emergency services and SOP clinics. However, the consequences of long waiting period for surgical operations, though much less discussed by the media and public, can be potentially detrimental to the patients and families, and may result in more burdens to the already stretched public hospitals‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬.