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As a senior manager or project manager, do you experience the challenges of dealing with complexity and uncertainty while trying to deliver on time? Do you feel that the overall planned project duration 'should be enough', but time gets wasted? Critical chain has been proven to address the root causes of these challenges in both planning and delivery.This guide:explains what critical chain is and its benefits, with credible case studies (including links to videos)shows how critical chain works with 10 simple 'rules of flow', and recommendations for further readingprovides a clear path to getting started.

China’s large power grid enterprises often need to achieve optimal allocation of resources between different levels. This paper establishes a multi-level resource allocation model of large-scale power grid enterprises based on the difference of hierarchical demand, and puts forward the allocation strategy of multi-level resource optimal allocation, and thinks that it is necessary to establish and improve the cross level power market to promote the optimal allocation of resources at different levels of power grid enterprises.

is a tree legume that grows in the Cape Floristic Region (CFA) in poor nutrient soils. A comparison between high and low phosphate growth conditions between roots and nodules was conducted and evaluated for the plants ability to cope under low phosphate stress conditions in . We proved that the plant copes with low phosphate stress through an increased allocation of resources, reliance on BNF and enhanced enzyme activity, especially PEPC. Nodules had a lower percentage decline in P compared to roots to uphold its metabolic functions. These strategies partly explain how can sustain growth despite LP conditions. Although the number of nodules declined with LP, their biomass remained unchanged in spite of a plant decline in dry weight. This is achieved via the high efficiency of BNF under P stress. During LP, nodules had a lower % decline at 34% compared to the roots at 88%. We attribute this behavior to P conservation strategies in LP nodules that imply an increase in a metabolic bypass that operates at the PEP branch point in glycolysis. The enhanced activities of nodule PEPC, MDH, and ME, whilst PK declines, suggests that under LP conditions an adenylate bypass was in operation either to synthesize more organic acids or to mediate pyruvate via a non-adenylate requiring metabolic route. Both possibilities represent a P-stress adaptation route and this is the first report of its kind for legume trees that are indigenous to low P, acid soils. Although BNF declined by a small percentage during LP, this P conservation was evident in the unchanged BNF efficiency per weight, and the increase in BNF efficiency per mol of P. It appears that legumes that are indigenous to acid soils, may be able to continue their reliance on BNF via increased allocation to nodules and also due to increase their efficiency for BNF on a P basis, owing to P-saving mechanisms such as the organic acid routes.

As an important contribution to debates on property theory and the role of law in creating, disputing, defining and refining property rights, this volume provides new theoretical material on property systems, as well as new empirically grounded case studies of the dynamics of property transformations. The property claimants discussed in these papers represent a diverse range of actors, including post-socialist states and their citizens, those receiving restitution for past property losses in Africa, Southeast Asia and in eastern Europe, collectives, corporate and individual actors. The volume thus provides a comprehensive anthropological analysis not only of property structures and ideologies, but also of property (and its politics) in action.

Background Evidence based practice has been associated with better quality of care in many situations, but it has not been able to address increasing need and demand in healthcare globally and stagnant or decreasing healthcare resources. Implementation of value-based healthcare could address many important challenges in health care systems worldwide. Scaling up exemplary high value care practices offers the potential to ensure values-driven maternal and newborn care for all women and babies. Discussion Increased use of healthcare interventions over the last century have been associated with reductions in maternal and newborn mortality and morbidity. However, over an optimum threshold, these are associated with increases in adverse effects and inappropriate use of scarce resources. The Quality Maternal and Newborn Care framework provides an example of what value based maternity care might look like. To deliver value based maternal and newborn care, a system-level shift is needed, ‘from fragmented care focused on identification and treatment of pathology for the minority to skilled care for all’. Ideally, resources would be allocated at population and individual level to ensure care is woman-centred instead of institution/ profession centred but oftentimes, the drivers for spending resources are ‘the demands and beliefs of the acute sector’. We argue that decisions to allocate resources to high value activities, such as continuity of carer, need to be made at the macro level in the knowledge that these investments will relieve pressure on acute services while also ensuring the delivery of appropriate and high value care in the long run. To ensure that high value preventive and supportive care can be delivered, it is important that separate staff and money are allocated to, for example, models of continuity of carer to prevent shortages of resources due to rising demands of the acute services. Summary To achieve value based maternal and newborn care, mechanisms are needed to ensure adequate resource allocation to high value maternity care activities that should be separate from the resource demands of acute maternity services. Funding arrangements should support, where wanted and needed, seamless movement of women and neonates between systems of care.

A UNIQUE ENGINEERING AND STATISTICAL APPROACH TO OPTIMAL RESOURCE ALLOCATION Optimal Resource Allocation: With Practical Statistical Applications and Theory features the application of probabilistic and statistical methods used in reliability engineering during the different phases of life cycles of technical systems. Bridging the gap between reliability engineering and applied mathematics, the book outlines different approaches to optimal resource allocation and various applications of models and algorithms for solving real-world problems. In addition, the fundamental background on optimization theory and various illustrative numerical examples are provided. The book also features: An overview of various approaches to optimal resource allocation, from classical Lagrange methods to modern algorithms based on ideas of evolution in biology Numerous exercises and case studies from a variety of areas, including communications, transportation, energy transmission, and counterterrorism protection The applied methods of optimization with various methods of optimal redundancy problem solutions as well as the numerical examples and statistical methods needed to solve the problems Practical thoughts, opinions, and judgments on real-world applications of reliability theory and solves practical problems using mathematical models and algorithms Optimal Resource Allocation is a must-have guide for electrical, mechanical, and reliability engineers dealing with engineering design and optimal reliability problems. In addition, the book is excellent for graduate and PhD-level courses in reliability theory and optimization.

This research addresses the problem of multi-objective resource allocation or resource deficits, offering robust answers to planning decisions that involve the elementary question: “How is it done?”. The solution to the problem is realized using the general scheme of multi-criteria decision-making in uncertain conditions. The bases of the proposed scheme are associated with the possibilistic approach, which involves the generalization of fuzzy sets from the classical approach to process the uncertainty of information to produce robust (non-dominated) solutions in multi-criteria analysis. Applying this general scheme makes it possible to reduce regions of decision uncertainty through the maximum use of available quantitative information. In the case where quantitative information analysis is insufficient to obtain a unique solution, the proposed approach presupposes the appropriation of qualitative data extracted from experts, who express their opinions considering their knowledge, experience, and intuition. The information on the qualitative character can be represented in diverse preference formats processed by transformation functions to provide homogeneous information for decision procedures used at the final decision stage. The presented results have been implemented within the system of multi-criteria decision-making under uncertain conditions described in the paper. Its functioning is illustrated by solving the typical problem in investment planning activities.

Using household data from Northern Ghana, this study examines how cognitive skills affect the allocation of schooling across the children of a household. The analysis reveals that relative to the rest of the siblings in the household, an increase of one standard deviation in the score of cognitive tests increases by 0.123–0.237 the number of years of schooling attended in the following four years, depending on the cognitive test used. These results are consistent with the main prediction of the theoretical model for intra-household allocation of resources developed in the seminal paper Becker (1981): parents reinforce cognitive differences between siblings through allocating more human capital resources to the more able siblings. We find larger effects for boys than for girls while they do not differ significantly among poorer and less poorer households.

SMART Vaccines-Strategic Multi-Attribute Ranking Tool for Vaccines-is a prioritization software tool developed by the Institute of Medicine that utilizes decision science and modeling to help inform choices among candidates for new vaccine development. A blueprint for this computer-based guide was presented in the 2012 report Ranking Vaccines: A Prioritization Framework: Phase I . Ranking Vaccines: A Prioritization Software Tool,Phase II extends the proof-of-concept presented in the Phase I report, which was based on multi-attribute utility theory. This report refines a beta version of the model developed in the Phase I report and presents its next iteration, SMART Vaccines 1.0. Ranking Vaccines: Phase II discusses the methods underlying the development, validation, and evaluation of SMART Vaccines 1.0. It also discusses how SMART Vaccines should-and, just as importantly, should not-be used. The report also offers ideas for future enhancements for SMART Vaccines as well as for ideas for expanded uses and considerations and possibilities for the future.

Background The mass scale-up of antiretroviral therapy (ART) in Zambia has taken place in the context of limited infrastructure and human resources resulting in many operational side-effects. In this study, we aimed to empirically measure current workload of ART clinic staff and patient wait times and service utilization. Methods We conducted time and motion (TAM) studies from both the healthcare worker (HCW) and patient perspectives at 10 ART clinics throughout Zambia. Trained personnel recorded times for consecutive discrete activities based on direct observation of clinical and non-clinical activities performed by counselors, clinical officers, nurses, and pharmacy technicians. For patient TAM, we recruited consenting patients and recorded times of arrival and departure and major ART services utilized. Data from 10 clinics were pooled to evaluate median time per patient spent for each activity and patient duration of stay in the clinic. Results The percentage of observed clinical time for direct patient interaction (median time per patient encounter) was 43.1% for ART counselors (4 min, interquartile range [IQR] 2–7), 46.1% for nurses (3 min, IQR 2–4), 57.2% for pharmacy technicians (2 min, IQR 1–2), and 78.5% for clinical officers (3 min, IQR 2–5). Patient workloads for HCWs were heaviest between 8 AM and 12 PM with few clinical activities observed after 2 PM. The length of patient visits was inversely associated with arrival time – patients arriving prior to 8 AM spent 61% longer at the clinic than those arriving after 8 AM (277 vs. 171 min). Overall, patients spent 219 min on average for non-clinical visits, and 244 min for clinical visits, but this difference was not significant in rural clinics. In comparison, total time patients spent directly with clinic staff were 9 and 12 min on average for non-clinical and clinical visits. Conclusion Current Zambian ART clinic operations include substantial inefficiencies for both patients and HCWs, with workloads heavily concentrated in the first few hours of clinic opening, limiting HCW and patient interaction time. Use of a differentiated care model may help to redistribute workloads during operational hours and prevent backlogs of patients waiting for hours before clinic opening, which may substantially improve ART delivery in the Zambian context.