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The purpose of this paper is to propose a mathematical model that can quantitatively and vividly measure the current capability of enterprises by evaluating their existing knowledge inventory.

Knowledge management starts from assessing the current position of enterprises, visioning future intention, and then specifying knowledge objectives and formulating knowledge strategies. Along with this process, a critical component that must be realized in order to assist management in determining knowledge objective and strategies is the assessment of existing knowledge inventory.

The paper finds that enterprises can better position themselves by deciding realistic objectives and formulating achievable strategies.

The force that drives human history from agricultural age to industrial age, information age, and finally to the knowledge age was innovation, and the crucial element determining the level of products and services innovation lies in people. In other words, all innovations come from human resources, and knowledge enables human beings to be creative. Especially, in this global era with stiff competition, enterprises should create, manage and preserve knowledge better than their competitors in order to maintain competitive advantage, and therefore remain ever‐lasting existence.

Previous investigations mainly employed qualitative methods, such as questionnaire survey and in‐depth interviews, to explore knowledge management performance of enterprises.

The paper shows that by categorizing the knowledge inventory in terms of knowledge depth and width, enterprises would be able to formulate suitable knowledge strategies of accumulation, widening, deepening, or strengthening and specify proper learning strategies to bridge the knowledge gap to cope with the competition.

The shipper selects a suitable shipping route and plans for a voyage in order to import and export cargo on the basis of published sailing schedules. The reliability of the sailing schedule will influence the shipper’s logistics expense, which means that the logistics costs will depend on the reliability of schedules published by container shipping companies. Therefore, it is important to consider factors which can cause delays would for container ships sailing on sea routes. The reliability of published sailing schedules can be affected by a number of different factors. This study adopts the multi-criteria decision making (MCDM) method to estimate the importance of the delaying factors in a sailing schedule. In addition, the consistent fuzzy preference relations (CFPR) method is applied to identify the subjective importance (weights) of the delaying factors. The entropy weight method combined with the actual performance of the container shipping company are both used when estimating the objective importance (weights) of the delaying factors. According to the analysis results, the criteria can be divided into four quadrants with different management implications, which indicate that instructions for chase strategy, sailing schedule control, fleet allocation, transship operation arrangement and planning for ports in routes are often ignored by container shipping companies. Container shipping companies should consider adjusting their operational strategies, which would greatly improve their operational performance.

The purpose of this paper is to study the corrosion behavior of Q235 steel in the bentonite-based resistance-reducing agent (RRA) with different infiltration rates of underground water.

The corrosion behavior of the steel in underground water was assessed by weight loss experiment, electrochemical impedance spectroscopy and polarization curve.

The results showed that the corrosion rate of the steel in the RRA pastes was much lower than that in the original acidic soil. The underground water infiltration slightly accelerated the corrosion rate of the steel in the RRA pastes, but the acceleration role is weak. The bentonite-based RRA can be compatibly applied in the acidic soil.

The bentonite-based RRA can significantly reduce the corrosion rate of the steel and is suitable to compatibly apply in the acidic soil.

The purpose of this paper is to study the corrosion behavior of Q235 steel in saturated acidic red and yellow soils.

The corrosion behavior of Q235 steel in saturated red and yellow soils was compared by weight-loss, SEM/EDS, 3D ultra-depth microscopy and electrochemical measurements.

R_p of the steel gradually increases and i_corr gradually decreases in both the red and yellow soils with time. The R_p of the steel in the red soil is lower, but its i_corr is higher than that in the yellow soil. The uniform corrosion rate, diameter and density of the corrosion pit on the steel surface in the red soil are greater than those in the yellow soil. Lower pH, higher contents of corrosive anions and high-valence Fe oxides in the red soil are responsible for its higher corrosion rates and local corrosion susceptibility.

This paper investigates the difference in corrosion behavior of carbon steel in saturated acidic red and yellow soils, which can help to understand the mechanism of soil corrosion.